Sociology Notes on Social Interaction and Everyday Life in the Age of the Internet

Sociological theories of interaction: impression management, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis.
The relationship between social interaction and broader societal features.
The continuing importance of face-to-face interactions in the internet age.

Erving Goffman (1922-1982):
- Focused on interaction and microsociology.
- Used the metaphor of the theater to explain social interaction.
- Impression management: Preparing for the presentation of one’s social role.
- Individuals possess a fragile "self" and are sensitive to how others view them.
- People try to "save face" and collaborate to avoid embarrassment.
Goffman’s Theory:
1. Daily routines and interactions structure our actions.
2. Studying everyday life reveals human agency in shaping reality.
3. Analyzing social interaction illuminates larger social systems and institutions.

Social interaction: The process by which we act and react to those around us.
Roles: Expected behaviors associated with particular social positions.
Status: Social honor or prestige accorded to a group by other members of society.
Social position: An individual's social identity within a group or society (e.g., gender, occupation).
Adopting roles: Henslin and Biggs used a dramaturgical metaphor to describe a woman’s visit to the gynecologist.

Audience Segregation: Separating behaviors in different roles.
Civil Inattention: Acknowledging others without intrusiveness.
Nonverbal communication: Communication through facial expressions and gestures rather than language.

Facial expressions of emotion (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise) are innate.
New Guineans identified six emotions from photographs, supporting the universality of facial expressions.
Culture influences the context for using facial expressions.
Gestures are not universally consistent across cultures.
Internet users have developed ways to convey emotion without face-to-face interaction.

Encounter: A face-to-face meeting between two or more people.
Focused interaction: Direct engagement in a common activity or conversation.
Unfocused interaction: Interaction among people in a setting without direct face-to-face communication.
Response cries: Involuntary exclamations made when surprised, experiencing pleasure, or dropping something.

Time-space: The when and where of events.
Regionalization: Dividing social life into different regional settings or zones.
Clock time: Time measured in hours, minutes, and seconds, versus by natural events.
Back region: Areas where individuals can relax and behave informally, away from front-region performances.
Front region: Settings where people put on a “performance” for others.

Personal space: The physical space individuals maintain between themselves and others.
Zones of personal space:
- Intimate distance (family/lovers)
- Personal distance (friends)
- Social distance (formal)
- Public distance (performing to an audience)

Ethnomethodology: The study of how people make sense of what others say and do in daily social interaction.
Background expectancies and breaching experiments.
Ethnomethodology focuses on the “ethnomethods” people use to sustain meaningful interchanges.
Even seemingly inconsequential daily talk relies on complicated, shared knowledge.

Conversation analysis: The empirical study of conversations, using techniques from ethnomethodology.
Examines naturally occurring conversations to reveal the organizational principles of talk and its role in producing and reproducing social order.

Interactional vandalism: Deliberate subversion of the tacit rules of conversation.
It challenges the idea that social boundaries are easily managed in urban settings through civil inattention.
Maintaining social order requires mutual recognition and respect for the rules of engagement and is a continuous, collaborative process.
Interactional vandalism can occur anywhere, not just in urban spaces.

Interaction on the “Digital Street”.
Jeffrey Lane’s study: Boys were more visible and dominant toward girls on sidewalks, while girls gained visibility and control online.
Safety, power, & control in social media.
Compulsion of proximity: People’s need to interact with others in their presence.