Frame analysis on the word stage

Frame analysis reveals the complexity of mundane social activities and it brings out the arbitrary nature of any fixed, social-domain or activity-based dichotomy between what is “staged” and what is “real”. It brings out the reality-constructing capacities of what is staged, but also the staged nature of the everyday tangibly real. Note in this respect for instance that mass-media communication – including especially the solidly real called “news broadcasting” – is saturated by frame laminations which are deliberately and purposefully staged. What’s more, an understanding of media communication is rather hard to arrive at, unless one comes to terms with the constructed pretense of an absence of mediation and the audiences’ routine submission to an illusion of direct communication – even in situations where such a pretense becomes extremely hard to sustain…

via Stef Slembrouck | What is meant by discourse analysis?

All the world’s a stage

Way back in the 1950s, sociologist Erving Goffman proposed in his study The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life that the very warp and woof of the social world consists of carefully constructed dramaturgy, albeit of a manner that most performers were unconscious. Our daily lives and cultural rituals provide all the settings, costumes, props and scripts we need to take our roles. The same logic underpins our movement through digital spaces and online communities, but unhinged from the necessities of physical limitations, and with a greater promise of self-transformation — the dream of a complete rebooting of the self.

via Rhizome