Margriet van Weperen @ #YTMDX2016 : Goffman & YouTube: best buddies on social identity?

In 1959, Erving Goffman wrote his famous book ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’, in which Goffman describes his dramaturgical analysis of face-to-face interaction. Central themes mentioned in this book are social identity, self presentation and self image. By describing different aspects of a social interaction, Goffman’s analysis shows how people use and manipulate ‘others’ during the interaction. YouTube is an online contemporary medium, where the interaction is mediated. However, despite the difference in interaction with Goffman’s analysis and the time period, social identity, self presentation and self image remain crucial concepts for this medium; not only for the platform YouTube itself, but also for the YouTubers. YouTubers present themselves in a specific manner to get their desired social identity and in the hope to receive a (big) audience. Therefore, a comparison between Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis and the self presentation of YouTubers in their videos is of contemporary interest.

I have analyzed around 150 videos of three different vloggers on YouTube for the features mentioned by Goffman. Example of these features are (not-)addressed themes, settings and framing. Important to note are the differences and the similarities between the two research settings. How do we explain the differences? Based on developments in society, explanations for the differences are suggested. Time plays a important role here, as society and the use of self-image has changed over the decades. One can think of the growing individualism of people and the growing influence of

marketing on society. During the conference, I will discuss these differences and my final conclusions will be reported.