Abstract
Social media platforms such as Facebook have been understood to present new possibilities for interaction. Yet, there have been concerns surrounding the reducing quality of our interaction and conversation. Such debates, however, have not considered the pre-post dimension of online environments: that is, the preparatory work that occurs to online posts before they are shared with their audience. Based on real-time recordings of Facebook Messenger interactions, this article asks what the pre-post perspective tells us about the quality of our interactions online. The analysis is theoretically informed by Goffman and methodologically by conversation analysis and addresses this question with a specific focus on processes of identity construction and face. In presenting innovative screen capture data, this article argues against claims that our interaction online is declining in quality instead showing the ways users perfect their online posts by elaborating a new stage of online communication: the ‘rehearsal’ stage.
Introduction
Social media platforms have long been understood to present new opportunities for interaction. Among these opportunities, however, there have been long-standing concerns surrounding the ‘decline’ or even ‘death’ of our social interaction and conversation in media discourse (see The Guardian, 2012; The New York Times, 2012). Such claims have emerged in two ways:
In reference to the impact digital technologies have on our offline encounters. For example, concerns of decreasing time spent in person and increasing time spent with screens.
In relation to the declining quality of our digital interactions themselves.
It is this second argument that is the focus of this article. Concerns around the quality of our digital conversations centre on how our online interaction is becoming shorter and more quantified, for example, through actions such as liking and sharing. Yet, social media users still engage in conversational dynamics that are more time consuming and less quantifiable, for example, writing posts and messages. Even in this context, though, scholars such as Sherry Turkle (2011) have argued that we ‘flatten out what we say to each other’ in new ‘reductive’ ways on digital platforms and that we are increasingly becoming accustomed to reductions within our daily interactions (p. 280). Turkle (2011) has spoken about this in reference to ‘reductive genres of abbreviation’ (p. 280) with other scholars referring to reduced audio, visual and contextual cues (see Green et al., 2016). However, these debates have not been discussed from the ‘pre-post’ perspective of online interaction. Here, pre-post refers to the activity and interactional work that occurs before (‘pre’) messages are sent (‘posted’) on social media platforms. This article thus provides a unique perspective on these issues by examining what the pre-post space online reveals about the quality of our digital interactions.
Defining ‘quality’ in interaction can be approached in various ways. It can be measured on the basis of time or length, for example, a written message is less reductive than a ‘like’ or a ‘share’ due to its more invested nature. Quality can also be approached through the Goffmanian notion of interactional order: the idea that interaction is entwined with rules and rituals that set expectations around the most appropriate or moral way to act and behave. Quality in this sense would be synonymous with maintaining a social order within online interactions as opposed to reducing or ‘flattening’ it out. Interactional order is a set of rules that encapsulates what it means to be ‘appropriate’ and ‘moral’ beings within our encounters with others. In this way, interactional order, and thus the quality of our interaction, is intrinsically linked with the presentation of self (see Goffman, 1959). The more order is maintained, for instance, the more individuals perform appropriate and moral presentations of self. It is because of this link that this article addresses the concerns of the declining nature of our online interactions through the lens of identity construction. There have been long-standing discussions regarding the opportunities and possibilities that social media platforms offer us in relation to identity construction (Marwick, 2013). These discussions, though, have also neglected the pre-post dimension: the work that occurs behind the screen before posts are shared; the space in which we prepare our performances of self.
In this behind the screen space, social media users have the ability to engage in what this article terms ‘pre-post editing’: the ability to change, edit or completely restart an interaction before it is shared with the intended audience. Pre-post editing is made possible by certain platform characteristics such as asynchronicity. This is tied to the unidirectional nature of online interaction. Because messages are constructed and sent separately, there is a time lag between the sending and receiving of information. This lag ‘allows individuals to carefully craft the information being sent for a desired effect’ (Quinn and Papacharissi, 2018: 359) giving users the opportunity to ‘maintain a consistent presentation of self’ and ‘maximising their ability to generate a desired image’ (p. 359). In this way, there is an already established connection between the affordance of editability and the opportunities this provides for identity construction. However, exactly how, and to what extent, social media users edit their messages is understudied. This article examines this through the use screen capture technology. The screen capture recordings examined in this article show the moment by moment edits Facebook users make within their message constructions revealing every change, edit and deletion. This provides a hitherto unseen insight into the identity work that occurs online and reveals exactly how the affordance of pre-post editing is utilised by users to construct and perform self.
The pre-post space of online interaction has, as stated, been recognised by scholars but has, until now, not been theorised. This article therefore coins this preparatory space as the ‘rehearsal stage’ of interaction. This argument extends Erving Goffman’s (1967) conceptualisation of ‘stages’ and puts forward that pre-post editing occurs not in what he termed the ‘front’ or ‘back’ regions of interaction but instead in a ‘rehearsal’ space that is made possible through the architectural qualities of platforms like Facebook. Drawing on a conversation analytic approach, I present a micro analysis of screen capture data to explore how users utilise the rehearsal stage in their processes of identity construction and assess what data from the pre-post space tells us about the quality, or order, of our online interactions. In addressing these concerns, I draw on a further Goffmanian concept: that of facework (Goffman, 1967). In using this concept, I challenge the existing ways of thinking about facework by suggesting that we need to pay attention to the multidirectional nature of face, for example, we should not simply focus on how users defend their own face but also consider the work involved in protecting the face of others.
Facebook is a multimodal platform offering a variety of modes of communications within the boundaries of one virtual space. Despite the variety of content on the site from images, to videos, to hyperlinks, this article focuses specifically on Facebook Messenger interactions: arguably the most private form of interaction on the platform, with messages being sent via instant message, inbox to inbox. Past research exploring facework on social media has argued that the ‘back stage’ of interaction occurs within these private message spaces providing an opportunity for users to relax and where the pressures of maintaining face cease to exist (Davies, 2012; Stenros et al., 2011). By focusing on messenger interactions, I am able to question this and argue that significant facework still occurs in this supposedly ‘backstage’ region of Facebook.
I begin by discussing the theoretical foundations of this work. First, I distinguish the rehearsal stage from Goffman’s well-known notions of the front and back regions. Second, I make distinctions between managing different aspects of ‘face’. I then introduce the empirical aspects of the article, outlining existing research in the study of pre-post interaction and the unique methodology of screen capture before examining findings emerging from the analysis of Facebook Messenger interactions. Moreover, addressing concerns about the quality of our online interaction, this article raises important questions around the role that pre-post editing plays in our everyday interactions and the increasing control that the rehearsal stage gives users. This article argues that the affordance of pre-post editing has important impacts on the quality and interactional order of our talk and therefore calls into question social media user’s levels of ‘editing literacy’. With the ability to carefully craft our presentations of self in this space, it is also essential for us to consider what, if any, pressures this creates for users to put forward the perfect self. With increasing attention to the discourse of digital detoxes and growing concerns around social media and mental health, this article argues that critical perspectives on these issues are increasingly pressing.
The ‘rehearsal stage’ of online communication
The metaphor of stages, or regions, of interaction has been used previously to understand the structures and organisation of our online interactions with many scholars drawing on the Goffmanian notions of the ‘front’ and ‘back’ regions of interaction (see Davies, 2012; Lillqvist and Louhiala-Salminen, 2014; Rettie, 2009; Stenros et al., 2011). The idea of the front and back stages of interaction has been adapted to the online context in varying ways. Davies (2012) and Stenros et al. (2011), for example, anchored the interactional stages to place understanding more public communications that occur on social media as the front stage (e.g. public posts) and more private communications as the back stage (e.g. Facebook Messenger). In contrast, Rettie (2009) and Lillqvist and Louhiala-Salminen (2014) approached the stages in relation to the nature of the interaction itself. Here, the front stage is where ‘the main performance takes place’ (Rettie, 2009: 427) and the backstage is ‘where an individual can drop the role performed on the front stage, prepare props, collude with other team members, or relax in privacy’ (p. 427).
Neither of these interpretations, however, accurately depict the pre- post stage of interaction. In both of these approaches an audience is present sharing either the front or back stage performance. The pre-post stage of interaction, though, is a space only usually visible to the user themselves. In this way, it is not a space of ‘performance’ at all. It is instead a stage where users draft, prepare and practice their performances before sharing them with their audience. Goffman (1974) himself refers to the activity of practicing as a ‘technical redoing’ (p. 58) in which the purpose is to give experience in performing under conditions which (it is felt) no actual engagement with the world is allowed, events have been ‘decoupled’ from their visual embedment in consequentiality. (p. 59)
This notion of practicing can be transferred and applied to pre-post editing. This is an activity that is, as Goffman states, ‘decoupled’ from consequentiality as the process is not visible to any audience and thus not accountable as an interaction. One type of practicing that Goffman refers to is ‘rehearsal’. Rehearsals are chances where ‘all parts are eventually practiced together’ allowing for ‘more or less full anticipation of what will be done in the live circumstances’ (Goffman, 1974: 60). This is evident in the construction processes of Facebook messages as all parts and elements of an interaction are put together before the ‘live circumstances’, which, in the context of Facebook, is the message being sent to other interactants. Despite pre-post editing occurring ‘behind the screens’ of Facebook, then, such an activity cannot be understood through the notion of either the back or the front stage. Instead, what the pre-post unveils is an alternative stage of interaction: that of the ‘rehearsal stage’. Here, a type of practicing occurs that is ‘distinctive from the real experience’ of interaction (Goffman, 1974: 61), it is a space in which social media users can construct, draft and redraft their final presentations of self.
It is important to note how the rehearsal stage is not new, or specific, to social media platforms. Having a space to prepare and draft interactions has been available via other forms of communication such as email and even letter writing. Despite this, it has until now not been recognised as a separate, and consequential, region of interaction and has not been captured in ways to reveal its moment by moment operations. There are also key differences between these forms of interaction. Unlike letter writing and email functions, Facebook Messenger is designed to be more synchronous meaning that the time lag between interactions should, technically, be reduced. In this sense, the amount of time users spend preparing their messages should be less than in more asynchronous modes of communication. This article explores whether this is the case, arguing that the rehearsal stage is in fact a region of interaction that transcends the boundaries of synchronicity.
Face-work on Facebook: the defensive and protective orientations
The presentation of self was the focus of Goffman’s (1959) earlier writings. Here, he discussed interaction through dramaturgical metaphors understanding individuals as actors who perform self when in the co-presence of others (Goffman, 1959). One concept central to his work was that of ‘Face’ or ‘Facework’ defined as ‘the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself’ and as ‘an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes’ and is often approached as something that can be maintained or lost within interactions (Goffman, 1967: 5). Studies that have drawn on the concept of face in the context of social media have focused on how individuals ‘do’ friendship on Facebook (Davies, 2012) as well as how politeness norms are maintained (West and Trester, 2012). However, as highlighted by Lim et al. (2012), western interpretations of ‘face’ have often given more consideration to what they call ‘self-face’ (concern with one’s own image) and less attention to ‘other-face’ (concern for another individual’s image). This is important as Goffman (1967) himself recognised the two-way nature of facework in his original writings: just as the member of any group is expected to have self-respect, so also he [sic] is expected to sustain a standard of considerateness; he [sic] is expected to go to certain lengths to save the feelings and face of others present. (p. 11)
Goffman (1967) goes on to highlight how ‘a person will have two points of view- a defensive orientation toward saving his own face and a protective orientation toward saving others’ face’ (p. 14). This article therefore extends existing research on facework in social media by not only accessing the pre-post work involved in managing face but also through focusing on both the defensive and protective orientations, exploring empirical examples of how such orientations are accomplished.
The study of pre-post interaction
Research into the pre-post space of online environments has been limited due to the methodological challenge of accessing ‘behind the screen’. Not only is this an inherently private space, for example, one usually only ever visible to the user themselves, it is technologically difficult to access. However, with recent innovations such as APIs and screen capture software, there has been an increased interest in pre-post activity – particularly in relation to how artefacts are constructed before publication. Such interest has mapped across both online and offline contexts. In the study of fine art, for example, x-ray technology has been used to ‘peel back’ the layers of paint on works to unveil the edits that were made by artists thus revealing the pre-publication moves made as they crafted their work (see Gooch and Tumblin, 2007). Such work makes visible an aspect of the process of artistic production that is normally hidden from the naked eye. Similarly, in online contexts, there has been a move to use new methodological technologies to reveal the ‘behind the screen’ details of our online worlds – details that, like artistic edits, usually remain invisible to anyone but the creator. Through the use of API technology, for example, studies have accessed usually hidden details of online life such as deleted tweets and Facebook posts (see Almuhimedi et al., 2013; Das and Kramer, 2013). These studies, however, have not captured the moment by moment edits made by social media users, instead revealing the frequency that posts are deleted on Facebook (Das and Kramer, 2013) or the entire tweet that was removed. Screen capture technology, however, captures not only that these edits and deletions happen but also importantly their specific detail. In other words, it allows researchers not just to ‘go back in time’ and retrieve past constructions and edits, such as the x-ray technology used in art, but allows for the moment by moment capture of such edits – as if the artists process was being recorded in its entirety.
The value of capturing moment by moment pre-post activity has been questioned by scholars. Ian Hutchby (2001), for example, challenged the extent to which researching pre-post activity was ‘key’. He states, . . . while participants may indeed ‘change their mind’ about (i.e. self repair) the form their next turn will take in the course of its production, what every other participant on the channel has access to in their attempts to make sense of what is going on is precisely, and only, the turns themselves as they appear in the public discourse arena. (Hutchby, 2001: 183)
What Hutchby is referring to here is that it is only the user who is doing the typing and producing of message that can see the pre-post edits (or self-repairs as they are referred to here). The user’s interactional partner(s) do not have access to such information thus they only see the finished, published message that is eventually sent. Hutchby (2001) argues that because of this, the ‘key thing’ is to ‘look at how they repair’ problematic events in the course of their ‘mutually available exchange of turns’ (p. 183). He emphasises that the important thing to examine is the interactional detail that occurs within the published message that is available to both interactional participants. However, by focusing only on the published posts of on social media a whole alternative stage of interaction – that of the rehearsal stage – is left unexplored. This is important. By discounting the rehearsal stage, the construction process of identity, for example, exactly how and to what extent this space is utilised by social media users, is missed. Due to the presentation of self being intrinsically linked to interactional order and quality important indicators of how, and whether, quality is built in to our online communications will also be overlooked.
Other scholars have found purchase in accessing and analysing the pre-post space and have used screen capture technologies to capture the moment-moment details of constructing online posts. Garcia and Jacobs (1999) conducted an early study analysing pre-post activity in the context of classroom discussion forums, and Walther (2007) specifically explored pre-post edits made to the linguistic features of content, for example, the types of words edited. More recently, Meredith and Stokoe (2014) used screen capture technology on Facebook to explore the similarities and differences between repairing offline and online talk. Here, they identified the process of pre-post editing as ‘message construction repairs’ (Meredith and Stokoe, 2014: 182) and found similar interactional actions were repaired in this space as were in offline conversations. Despite a selection of existing research from pre-post perspective, how social media users utilise this space in processes of identity construction online and what this then tells us about the quality of our social interaction has not been explored.
Capturing the ‘pre-post’: the use of screen capture technology
This article is based on screen capture recordings of Facebook user’s interactions. Screen capture software can be downloaded onto a laptop and run in the background of any computer activity in order to record whatever is on the screen. In other words, what the computer user sees on their screen, the software captures and saves as video files. Recordings display interactive detail ranging from keystrokes and deletions to cursor movements and click-throughs revealing, moment by moment, how users navigate through a social networking platform. This approach allows for research to go ‘beyond the screen’ and examine the identity work that occurs during the construction of interactions. Participants of this project downloaded the software litecam or Movavi on to their own devices and recorded their Facebook interactions at times to suit them.
Collecting live recordings of private interactions inevitably presents challenges in relation to ethical debates of privacy and consent. Informed consent was gained from all recording participants as well as ‘secondary participants’: ‘those whose screens are not being recorded but who are participating in the interaction’ (Meredith and Potter, 2013: 376; also see Ditchfield and Meredith, 2018 for more discussion on this). Due to the prevalence of Facebook usage on mobile phones, I also considered recording participant interactions on mobile devices in addition to laptops. At the time of data collection in 2015, however, mobile operators blocked the use screen capture applications (see Ditchfield, 2018). This meant that I was restricted to recruiting participants who still used Facebook on laptop devices.
In terms of sample, four participants were recruited collecting a total of with six and a half hours of data. This, inevitably, is a small sample. However, the aim of my analysis was to examine the ability to pre-post edit was managed within the interactions of my participants, focusing on the interactional details on participant’s messages, for example, the editing of just a few words of a message. In this way, the focus of my analytic work was on the user’s interactive behaviour and not the user themselves. This means that the critical issue at hand was the size of the sample of interactive movements and engagement with pre-post editing rather than the amount of time recorded or the number of people that I gathered the data from. Due to the small sample of this analysis, it is important to note that this article is not claiming to provide a generalisable sample of how Facebook users engage in pre-post editing. Instead, I provide an empirical insight into a previously unexplored stage of online life. To do this, I use innovative methodological techniques to reveal some of the ways that pre-post editing is utilised and thus make an important contribution to existing understandings of online interaction.
Due to recording such private interactions, participants were recruited through my own social network to ensure existing trust and rapport was intact (for a detailed exploration of approaches to access and recruitment in screen capture research see Ditchfield, 2018, and Ditchfield and Meredith, 2018). Of the participants, two were male and two were female. They ranged from 24 to 40 years old and were all of a British background. Participant demographics were not determining factors as to who I recruited. As this project is concerned with the interactional work that individuals do online, my priority was on the interactional moves that the participants made rather than the user’s personal background This is a common approach in discourse analytic work where ‘any text or person who speaks to the issue at hand will do as well as any other’ (Wood and Kroger, 2000: 79). I therefore focused on the recorded interactions and no further contextual information on participants and their relationships to one another was collected.
Data analysis
This article draws on the approach of conversation analysis (CA) (see Sacks et al., 1974). At its most basic level ‘CA is the study of talk-in-interaction’ and is the ‘systematic analysis of the kinds of talk produced in everyday naturally occurring situations of social interaction’ (Hutchby, 2001: 55). Despite CA traditionally being used to understand offline interaction, the application of CA to digital environments is on the increase (Giles et al., 2015) with this project joining a growing body of work that focuses on the micro, interactive detail of the online world (see Gibson, 2009; Giles, 2006; Stommel, 2016). To date the primary focus of this academic interest has been on the products of online interaction; the content that is eventually made visible in messages, posts or tweets. The approach has been used minimally in understanding the activity that occurs ‘pre-post’; the work that goes on before content is shared with a user’s network. Like other discursive approaches to analysis, CA’s purpose is not to ‘find out what people really mean when they say certain things’ or to ‘discover the reality behind the discourse’ (Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002: 21). Instead, the starting point is that ‘reality can never be reached outside of discourse and so it is discourse itself that becomes reality’ (Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002: 21). CA is an approach that focuses on how interactional acts are managed and accomplished (Drew, 1989) with an interest in what it is people ‘do’ in talk. This approach therefore helps identify how participants use the ‘pre-post’ space to accomplish certain presentations of self within their Facebook interactions.
All six and a half hours of data were analysed in this research. Selections regarding what pre-post editing examples to include in this article were made on the basis of two criteria: (1) the level of complexity of the edits and (2) the relevance of the edits to facework. First, previous work exploring pre-post editing (such as Meredith and Stokoe, 2014) has revealed edits such as word swaps or deletions that occur immediately within the typing out of a message or post. This article, however, unveils a more elaborate form of editing not previously captured. Such editing involves users engaging in several minutes of work making multiple edits, large deletions and in some cases completely rewriting their posts. To showcase these new data and make original contributions to this field, I therefore prioritise the analysis of the more complex pre-post editing examples.
Second, extracts selected on the extent edits were utilised in both defending and protecting face. I selected examples on the basis of whether they made contributions to understandings on how face is both defended and, importantly, protected. Extracts presented in this analysis all come from one recording participant: Mark. All four participants recruited for this research did conduct pre-post editing however, Mark was the participant who conducted the most extensive editing. Due to the hitherto unseen nature of this form of editing behaviour, Marks’s examples were thus prioritised. In many of Mark’s recordings he spent significant time editing his messages before sending. This analysis largely focuses on the longest example of pre-post editing captured: a case where Mark spends 12 minutes editing. By focusing on this specific example, this article is able to demonstrate, through in-depth analysis, the sustained and consequential nature of this form of editing behaviour.
Analysis
This analysis makes a distinction between two different orientations to face: the defensive and protective. Although analysed separately in this article, it is important not to regard them as separate elements as in trying to save the face of others, the person must choose a tack that will not lead to loss of his own; in trying to save his own face, he must consider the loss of face that his action may entail for others. (Goffman, 1967: 14)
Together, both discussions develop an understanding of how pre-post editing is utilised in the process of constructing identity as well as the extent the quality of our online talk is ‘reducing’.
The defensive orientation to face
The data presented here focuses on the construction of one Facebook Messenger interaction. The primary participant in this interaction is Mark, so it is his pre-post editing work that is captured by the screen capture. The secondary participant in this interaction is Poppy. The following analysis focuses on Mark’s response to Poppy’s message seen in extract 1 and explores pre-post edits made in relation to ‘disclosing a secret’ to Poppy.
In responding to Poppy, the screen capture data shows how Mark initially drafted a response based on the narrative of buying a new property (see extract 2). Three minutes into the construction of this message, however, Mark deletes his response and begins re-drafting his message, this time based on the narrative of taking helicopter lessons (see extract 3). This version was the message eventually sent to Poppy. In total, Mark spent over 12 minutes constructing his response to Poppy before sending.
Although discussing different topics, both these extracts involve disclosing a secret to Poppy. More specifically, disclosing a secret to keep from a particular individual – Katie. Despite this similarity, Mark constructs his disclosure in alternative ways that are consequential for his presentation of self. First, in both messages, Mark provides an account for why he is not telling Katie about both the property and lessons. In version one, this account can be seen on line 4 with ‘as I promised her I would stop after this one’. This reason reveals to Poppy that an interaction has clearly occurred between Mark and Katie that involved a promise being made. It is then revealed that Mark has indeed broken said promise through ‘pushing forwards’ anyway (line 4–5). Through this particular message design, the message presents Mark as someone who breaks promises and who could be inferred to have untrustworthy tendencies. This disposition of being untrustworthy is further worked up by the description of Mark’s action as ‘sneakily pushing forwards’. Being ‘sneaky’, or to do things ‘sneakily’, is in alignment with other descriptions such as being deceitful, shifty and dishonest and further invokes negative connotations in terms of the construction of self.
In version two of this message (extract 3), the rationale that is presented for ‘not telling Katie’ is different. It can be seen that there is a shift in terms of who is accountable, or to blame, for Mark keeping a secret from Katie. In version one, the emphasis is on Mark’s action of ‘promising’ (or the breaking of) as the reason that Katie must not know about the property. However, in version two, Katie’s ‘worrying’ is presented as the reason to keep this information from her: ‘(as she worries about my coordination when changing gears in a car)’ (line 2–3). This works to shift the blame of Mark’s secret telling away from Mark himself and on to Katie. Although this edit redesigning accountability within the message, the reason itself ‘as she worries’ works to present Mark as someone who is wanting to ‘protect’ the people he cares about. The implication is that he is not keeping this information from Katie due to his own, selfish reasons (such as in version one where he is working to protect himself from the threat of Katie finding out he broke a promise) but for the selfless reason of protecting Katie from the stress of ‘worrying’ about him. By editing the message in this way, Mark’s presentation of self shifts from someone who is untrustworthy to a caring and concerned friend who is committed to protecting those he cares about.
Although there being differences in the way the rationale for secret keeping are constructed, the design of the actual disclosures varies too. In version one, when talking about property, Mark admits that he has started to ‘sneakily push forwards to get one more’ (line 4–5). The verb that communicates Mark’s action, ‘push’, works to create a certain level of commitment towards the disclosed activity. To ‘push forwards’ suggests that some kind of conscious effort is being put in to achieve a certain goal (in this case, ‘getting’ another property) constructing the ‘getting of this property’ as a thought about action. In version two, however, the disclosure itself begins with ‘but I woke up and randomly decided I wanted to fly a helicopter’ (line 3). The idea of waking up and ‘randomly deciding’ to do something presents the decision to take helicopter lessons as a spur of the moment, spontaneous action with little (or no) forethought. This lack of thought is reinforced by the utterance of ‘why I don’t know’ (line 4) creating a stark contrast with version one’s more purposive and conscious action of ‘pushing forwards’. Generally, planning and intending to do something harmful (in this case keeping secrets) is seen to be a more severe and malicious act compared to carrying out a harmful act without. Therefore, although in both versions Mark is essentially doing the same thing: exposing the fact he is hiding something from Katie, hiding something randomly and spontaneously is perhaps a more favourable construction compared to ‘sneakily pushing forwards’.
These extracts demonstrate that the pre-post space is used for essential identity work and is a stage where significant changes to user’s presentations of self are made. In the above examples, pre-post editing has been utilised to take Mark’s performance of self from arguably untrustworthy and dishonest to caring and protective. To make this shift, Mark constructed his message for 12 minutes making more than 60 individual edits to his response. This is not reductive or simplified interaction; this is an expansive, elaborate and complex approach to interactional and identity work online.
The protective orientation to face
This article extends existing research by exploring the two-way nature of facework within our interactions. This section addresses the lesser understood orientation of face: that of the protective orientation and the way in which users protect the face of whom they are taking to. The following extract focuses on Mark’s response to Poppy’s message:
it’s fine welcome to my world Poppy. I’m confused everyday. Ye I’m really good thanks . . .
Mark’s message initially started with ‘Haha it’s fine’. This is then deleted and replaced with ‘welcome to my world Poppy. I’m confused everyday’. The response of ‘it’s fine’ here works to treat Poppy’s ‘you know what I’m like everything confuses me’ as an action that needs ‘accepting’ in some way. More specifically, ‘it’s fine’ is often an utterance used to accept some kind of wrongdoing or disapproving action. It is a phrase that commonly follows apologies, for example, sitting well as a reply to ‘sorry I couldn’t be there last night’ or ‘sorry I forgot that you asked me to do that’. This ultimately creates segregation between Poppy and Mark within this interaction, with Poppy’s confusion positioning her as the apologetic and Mark’s ‘it’s fine’ positioning him away from such confusion as the acceptor. In contrast, the edited response of ‘welcome to my world Poppy’ performs a different treatment of Poppy’s confusion. Rather than working to accept Poppy’s action as an apology the phrase ‘welcome to my world’ works to align, instead of segregate, the two participants in this interaction. By ‘welcoming’ Poppy to ‘his world’, this message communicates a sense of understanding to Poppy that Mark too experiences confusion and knows what Poppy is going through. This communication of understanding demonstrates how Mark’s message is performing, or in other words ‘doing’, empathy through language. The practice of ‘doing empathy correctly’ involves ‘demonstrating an understanding of another person’s situation and/or feelings and communicating that understanding back to the person’ (Pudlinski, 2005: 267). Expressing similar experiences or feelings is a common way that individuals ‘do’ empathy and understanding within their interactions (Pudlinski, 2005). This is often accomplished through ‘an assertion of similarity’ (e.g. ‘welcome to my world’) followed by ‘a report of similar feelings’ (e.g. ‘I’m confused everyday’) (Pudlinski, 2005: 281). Mark’s edited version of this message works to align and empathise rather than segregate from Poppy. Through the discursive moves identified within this message, Poppy’s face is thus protected with Mark’s message being constructed in a way that understands, rather than disapproves, of Poppy’s characteristics. In terms of Mark’s self presentation, it could be argued that the edited version of this message also constructs a more understanding, approachable self-image through the empathetic nature of the response. Therefore, through this edit, not only is Poppy’s face protected, Mark performs important identity work and thus maintains a positive construction of self.
Extract 5 comes from a conversation in which John and Mark are discussing Mark’s recent engagement. John then makes an enquiry into who Mark’s best man is going to be:
Ultimately I’ve known Joe thelongest so thought it was only fair to. However, I would still like to have you as my right hand
Within this interaction, John’s self-image is threatened. John is asking Mark, in an indirect fashion, who will be best man at his wedding. It can be assumed from Mark’s response that John and Mark are close friends as John is listed as one of Mark’s ‘really close contenders’ in line 3. By inquiring into who is Mark’s best man, John is thus taking an interactional risk. He could find out that he is in fact Mark’s best man, a positive outcome for John’s ‘face’. However, he also runs the risk of finding out that one of his close friends has not picked him for this role at his wedding. In fact, due to Mark describing his friends as ‘contenders’ (line 3), it can be seen how a narrative of competition is built up around this choice. Thus, if John is not chosen, he loses this ‘competition’ in which he is ‘contending’ and is put in a position of rejection rather than approval. It is of course revealed in line 3 (within the deleted utterance) that is it Joe that he has ‘ultimately’ been chosen and not John. In this message, an edit is made in lines 3–4. Initially, Mark begins to construct an account of his best man decision that explains the reasoning behind the choice he has made: ‘Ultimately, I’ve known Joe the longest so thought it was only fair’. This account indirectly works to answer John’s question as although Mark does not explicitly answer in a way such as ‘yes, Joe is my best man’, he begins to justify the reason why he has, in fact, chosen Joe for this role (‘I’ve known Joe the longest so thought it was only fair’). It has been suggested that accounting for and explaining one’s behaviour is often used as a strategy to ‘protect the receiver of the explanation from being hurt by one’s actions and/or to maintain a positive relationship between the giver of the explanation and the receiver’ (Hareli, 2005: 359). Within this interaction the ‘giver’, Mark, initially did begin to provide an explanation for his ‘action’ in line 3, however then deleted this account from the message and instead continued with: ‘However, I would still like to have you as my right hand man if that’s okay?’. This edited version of the response is even more indirect and vague in its nature than the first as it features no mention at all as to who will be best man. What it does do, though, is communicate to John (indirectly) that he is not the best man but is still needed as the ‘right hand man’. This edit works to highlight the importance of John to Mark rather than the importance and role of Joe in Mark’s life; the focus is on how John is ‘needed’ rather than the qualities that make another ‘contender’ more qualified for the job (e.g. knowing Joe the ‘longest’). Through this move, this message protects John’s face and self image, even though he is indeed not the best man.
Extracts 4 and 5 demonstrate the significance of focusing on the protective orientation of face. Facework is not one-directional: it is something that individuals do in ways that both defend their own face but, importantly, protect the face of others. Pre-post editing plays a key role in this process. By editing messages before they are sent to respondents, users are able to reduce the chances of interactional partners losing face. In doing this, their own identities are constructed in a positive way. In protecting the face of his interactants, for example, Mark constructs an identity of an empathetic, understanding and appreciative friend. Thus, through the ability to pre-post edit, Mark is able to simultaneously protect the face of Poppy and John while maintaining, and even enhancing, the construction of his own identity. This, again, is not a reduced form of interaction. These extracts are simpler than extracts 2–3 in that the edits made as less expansive. However, significant facework occurs here. Pre-post editing is utilised to maintain face in a two-directional way with the defensive and protective orientations been simultaneously engaged with demonstrating the layered complexity of online interaction.
Conclusion
Despite scholars discounting its interactional importance, pre-post editing and the rehearsal stage of interaction play a key role in processes of identity construction online. Not only does this space allow for social media users to edit their own presentations of self in more favourable ways but it is also utilised to protect the face and identity of others. The extensive nature of the edits made presents a new perspective on the amount of interactional work that occurs behind the screen of sites like Facebook. Previous work that has explored practices of pre-post editing (such as Meredith and Stokoe, 2014) has instead revealed simpler edits such as swaps that occur immediately within the typing out of a message or post (e.g. those seen with extract 4 of this article).This analysis has unveiled a more elaborate editing process in which users engage in several minutes of work that includes multiple edits, large deletions and complete rewrites. This complexity and the laborious nature of pre-post work have not previously been captured.
Due to ability of users to carefully construct, edit and craft their interactions online important questions are raised around the perfection of user’s presentations of self. By perfection, I am not referring to the way users perceive the posts being constructed but more so the nature of the labour that goes in to them, for example, the polishing and editing that occurs as evidenced in this article. Through utilising the ability to pre-post edit, social media users can make extensive changes to their interactions before sharing them, crafting and perfecting their presentations of self with each edit they do. In this way, the quality of online interactions is not threatened, reducing or in decline as previous arguments suggest (Turkle, 2011). In fact, if anything, it can be regarded as more ‘perfected’ than before. Despite arguing that interaction itself is not reducing, I do argue that the act perfecting one’s presentation online is itself a form of reduction. Through the rehearsal stage and act of pre-post editing, the inconsistencies and messiness of offline face to face communication and identity are lost in the attempt to perfectly construct self and protect the face of others. In this way, concerns of decline and quality should instead be directed towards the reduced and ‘flattened out’ self instead of our reduced interaction and the consequences this may have on pressures to always ‘get it right’ online.
As noted earlier, the rehearsal stage is not unique to social media platforms. It is a space also available to users in both online and offline asynchronous settings, for example, email and letter writing. The practices revealed in this article therefore resonate with those of the most traditional form of communication. Rehearsing and preparing our interactions have thus always been available via written communication. This highlights that our interactional practices online are continuously linked with and related to our practices offline. What is distinct here, though, is that the rehearsal stage and pre-post editing not only transcends the boundaries of the online and offline communication but also the boundaries of synchronicity itself.
This article has argued that through the affordance of pre-post editing, our interactions are becoming more perfected than reduced. There is a high level of quality, and thus interactional order, being produced within our online talk, ensuring that the most favourable self is put forward. Instead of questions of quality, then, I argue that it is important to question user’s editing literacy. Quinn and Papacharissi (2018) argue that redaction – the action of editing a text – is now ‘an essential form of literacy’ online due to its role of ‘balancing and maintaining relationships within social environment’ (p. 366). What is apparent though is how it also plays an essential role in maintaining order and quality in our online interaction opening up questions of how aware users are of their role and how literate they feel in this area of online skill. The role of the rehearsal stage also presents pressures in terms of getting it right online. Due to this preparation space, users have limited excuse to get things wrong and misrepresent self working to construct a perfected, yet arguably reduced, versions of self. There has been much debate in literature around the tensions and opportunities of identity expression online (see Davies, 2011; Quinn and Papacharissi, 2018), however these debates are often focused on the tensions of performing a self to collapsed audiences without compromising ones’ authentic sense of identity. Instead, I argue focus needs to be brought to the tension, or pressure, of perfection online with a critical examination of how users experience this in a world of increased digital detox and disconnection.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
