Contemporary social interaction: How communication technologies alter goffman's dramaturgical model?

plicit’ 
display, such as profile picture, photo album 
(Hum et al., 2011; Zhao, Grasmuck & Martin, 
2008). Each field of a profile can be regarded 
as a splitting piece of the online personal 
front. When those pieces mix up together, 
they will tell the audiences a clear story or 
film of the individual (see Robards & Bennett, 
2011). 
Given the diverse items of profiles, 
social network sites also offer the individual 
opportunities for dramatic realization and 
idealization on the Internet. This is due to the 
impression management of online self-
presentation is more ‘controllable and fluid’ 
(Whitty, 2008, p. 2). This can be understood 
by the fact that the individual can control 
 Contemporary Social Interaction: How Communication Technologies Alter Goffman's... 79 
which items should be published on the 
Internet in order to best portray her/his image. 
In other words, their audience might only 
view the ‘good’ or ‘admirable’ side of the 
performers (see Boon & Sinclair, 2009; 
Lampe, Ellison & Steinfield, 2007; Nosko, 
Wood & Molema, 2010) while other sides are 
hidden. This is similar to the case of mobile 
phone’s users where the individual is able to 
decide to give her/his phone number to 
expected people or to express her/his voice 
softer than usual to impress the hearers. 
The mix of backstage and frontstage 
The diversification of the social self and 
the interaction order requires us to reconsider 
the concepts of ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’. 
These terms are also called front region and 
back region in Goffman’s terminology. A 
frontstage is where an actor uses to organize 
her/his show, while a backstage is where the 
actor rehearses for her/his show but tries to 
keep it away from the audiences’ eyes. While 
the frontstage is where the individual gives 
the best out of her/him in order to make 
audiences see the desirable/admirable side of 
her/his personality, the backstage is where the 
individual presents her/his truer self, namely, 
s/he might behave in a manner s/he never 
wants to show in front of others. 
In the telephonic context, for example, 
the back region of the performance is the 
current setting in which s/he is staying, that is 
hidden from the fellow’s eyes. If two phone 
users use a video call, then the front region 
will be the limited part of the setting 
appearing in the phones’ cameras. In the case 
of normal calls, the front stage is not visible, 
because it appears only in the conversation 
between the individual and her/his audience. 
In the instance of the Internet, the back stage 
is the same as that of telephonic conversation, 
but the front stage is more electronically 
constructed. It is more visible than that of 
telephonic situation, because its situation is 
defined in terms of status updates or window 
chats or photos or videos uploaded or topics 
discussed. 
The most remarkable thing that attracts 
our attention is the entwinement between 
frontstages and backstages of three domains 
of interaction that the actor might involve. 
The actor no longer plays in a sole stage. 
Her/his participation in the physical setting, 
the telephonic setting and the digital setting 
can coincidence. Thus, it seems that we 
cannot sometimes draw a clear boundary 
between backstage(s) and frontstage(s). The 
use of mobile phone poses an essential case. 
For example, an individual is talking with 
her/his friends at a bar and then her/his mobile 
phone rings. In this case, the individual is 
currently the performer who plays before 
her/his friends as audiences and the space of 
the bar is the frontstage. However, when 
her/his mobile phone rings, s/he must talk 
with other friend via her/his mobile phone, so 
that s/he has to deal with two groups of 
audiences, one at the bar and one in the 
mobile phone conversation. The bar is the 
frontstage on which the individual gives the 
show to her/his friend, but it is also the 
backstage on which the individual uses to 
support her/his conversation with other friend 
via phone call. The mobile phone is the part of 
backstage in the phone call conversation but 
at the same time appears on the frontstage of 
the face-to-face talk. The fact that the mobile 
phone as a ‘backstage device’ can be brought 
onto frontstage of the face-to-face interaction, 
leads ‘what was the frontstage’ – the situation 
at the bar - to being ‘a type of backstage’ of 
the phone call situation (see Ling, 2009, 
p.278). The act of talking with other via 
mobile phone before a set of audiences, for 
instance, forces one deal with two frontstages 
at the same time, ‘the local one and the 
telephonic one’ (Ling, 2009, pp. 282, 288). 
This situation can be more complicated if the 
Internet-based interaction is involved. 
Imagine, for instance, an individual is talking 
80 Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University – No. 3(15) 2015 – August/2015 
with her/his friends at bar but s/he is also on 
Facebook or Skype by her/his laptop or tablet 
to chat with other friends or to post a status or 
a tweet. The situation is denser when her/his 
mobile phone rings. In this situation, the 
individual has to deal not with dual 
frontstages but treble frontstages: the local 
one, the telephonic one, and the virtual one. 
Her/his laptop and mobile phone are her/his 
backstage devices but also can be brought on 
face-to-face frontstage. The physical 
surroundings are on the frontstage of face-to-
face interaction but can be used as backstage 
devices for the digital interaction or the 
telephonic interaction. Hence, in the interplay 
of three domains of interaction, the distinction 
between back regions and front regions is 
very fluid, and the impression management 
must be flexible. 
5. Conclusion 
In this paper I have examined the 
influence of the recent improvements of 
communication technologies on the 
microsociology and the dramaturgical model 
proposed by Erving Goffman. This paper 
shows that the communication technologies, 
especially the Internet and social network sites 
have significantly contemporary social 
interaction. Through the dramaturgical lens, 
the interaction order has evolved to the extent 
that consists of not only the face-to-face 
interaction, but also the telephonic interaction 
and the digital interaction. In this new 
interaction order, the individual has to learn to 
express her/his self in new ways. S/he can 
choose to depict her/his self-image diversely 
from one domain to other. Her/his self can 
appear to be very different in one domain 
compared to that of in other domains. Her/his 
self is multi-faced self. The front in which the 
individuals play their shows is also diversified 
by each form of interaction. The individuals 
now have to take care of different frontstages 
and backstages if s/he wants to perform a 
good show for her/his own creditable image. 
These facts call forth a necessary alteration to 
Goffman’s dramaturgical model in order to 
better explain the contemporary phenomena. 
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