Webcams and Social Interaction During Online Classes: Identity Work, Presentation of Self, and Well-Being

The well-being of children and young people has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The shift to online education disrupted daily rhythms, transformed learning opportunities, and redefined social connections with peers and teachers. We here present a qualitative content analysis of responses to open-ended questions in a large-scale survey of teachers and students in Romania. We explore how their well-being has been impacted by online education through (1) overflow effects of the sudden move to online classes; (2) identity work at the individual and group levels; and (3) Students’ and teachers’ presentations of self in the online environment, with a focus on problematic aspects of webcam use. The results indicate that both students and teachers experienced ambivalence and diverse changes in well-being, generated by the flexibility, burdens, and disruptions of school-from-home. The identities associated with the roles of teacher and student have been challenged and opened for re-negotiation. Novel patterns have emerged in teachers’ and Students’ identity work. Failure or success at the presentation of self in online situations is relevant for the emotional valence of learning encounters, impacting well-being. Online classes have brought about new ways to control one’s presentation of self while also eliminating previous tactics and resources. The controversy regarding webcams has captured this duality: for some, the home remained a backstage that could not be safely exposed; for others, the home became a convenient front stage for school. Well-being was affected by the success of individual and collective performances, and by student-teacher asymmetries. Overall, our study of online learning indicates powerful yet variable influences on subjective well-being, which are related to overflow effects, identity work, and presentation of self.

The Musical Diplomacy of Metternich

That festivities are woven into the historical image of the Austrian diplomat, foreign minister, and state chancellor Clemens von Metternich (1773–1859) is in part the byproduct of his investment in music. As an amateur performer, passionate connoisseur, attentive patron, and frequent host, Metternich cultivated an international soundworld that presented opportunities for cooperative performances. Ensemble music and collective listening provided experiences of international concert that gained significance in the context of multilateral congresses and meetings. Musical exchanges, sustained through the activity of women and professional musicians, contributed to fostering diplomatic relations and international presence. In the context of the Restoration’s competing soundworlds, Metternich deployed a patronage of Rossini’s work and Italian opera music, with increasing intensity but mixed effect. This history speaks to the function of music in the presentation of self in international encounters and the resources to be found in the plurality of roles diplomats perform.

The Burden of Having to Wonder: Minority Stress Experiences of LGBTQ+ Hospice Family Caregivers

Home hospice care relies heavily on informal caregivers, often patients’ family and close others. Hospice family caregivers report stress, burden, and unmet support needs associated with poor health and bereavement outcomes. These outcomes are sensitive to the quality of interactions with professional hospice providers, especially for historically marginalized groups, yet little research examines experiences of LGBTQ+ hospice family caregivers. Informed by minority stress theory, we conducted in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ home hospice family caregivers across the U.S. (N=20). Participants reported demographics and described their caregiving experiences including interactions with hospice providers. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and content-analyzed. Participants were mostly white (n=15, 75%), non-Hispanic (n=19, 95%), cisgender (n=19, 95%), gender binary (n=19, 95%), lesbian (n=10, 50%), women (n=12, 60%); average age was 52.3 (range 25-67, SD=13.84). Along with known end-of-life caregiving stressors, participants experienced minority stress that complicated caregiver-provider communication. Distal stressors included lack of LGBTQ+ competent resources, inadequate legal protections, providers’ assumptions about relationships, and difficult dynamics with unaccepting relatives. Proximal stressors included perceived risks of disclosure, expectation of poor treatment, feeling the need to modify presentation of self or home, and wondering whether negative provider interactions were due to being LGBTQ+. This generated a background level of uncertainty, caution, and concern that was particularly distressing in the home setting. Minority stress affects LGBTQ+ people across the lifespan and generates added burdens and support needs for hospice family caregivers. Providers who understand these effects are better positioned to deliver safe, effective care to all families at end of life.

Dramaturgical Accounts of Transgender Individuals: Impression Management in the Presentation of Self to Specialist Gender Services

Demand for gender dysphoria (GD) treatment has increased markedly over the past decade. Access to gender-affirming treatments is challenging for most people. For dysphoric individuals, much is at stake. Little is known about the specific needs, challenges, and coping strategies of this hard-to-reach group. We examined the experiences of treatment-seeking adolescents and adults using in-depth unstructured interviews with 26 people attending specialist gender services and 14 transgender people not referred to services. Patients with gender dysphoria distrust clinical services and describe considerable anxiety in sustaining their impression management strategies to obtain treatment. An authentic presentation is regarded by some participants, especially non-binary individuals, as inauthentic and emotionally difficult to maintain. Impression management strategies have partial success in accessing services. The presentation of “idealized” selves may result in unmet mental health needs of patients, and the receipt of interventions incongruent with their authentic selves.

One of the Good Ones: Rhetorical Maneuvers of Whiteness

Drawing on the literature on white habitus, colorblindness, diversity ideology, and happy talk, I argue that rhetorical maneuvers are key aspects of white habitus that allow whites to construct a non-racist self by drawing on colorblind discourses. To explore how white habitus influences interview dynamics when the respondent and interviewer are of a different race, I conducted 48 interviews with whites from rural and urban areas of the Greater Buffalo Area. Specifically, I examine the relationship between white habitus, a non-racist presentation of self, and rhetorical maneuvers that whites deploy when talking about race and immigration. I also introduce two new frames of colorblindness: differentiation and civility. The civility frame conflates friendliness and civility with anti-racism and is used as evidence that everything is fine. The differentiation frame attempts to draw distinctions between themselves (“non-racist white people”) and other whites (“bad apples”).

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life: biografia de um livro

Resumo Na marca dos 60 anos de sua publicação, este artigo reconstrói a biografia do livro The presentation of self in everyday life , de Erving Goffman, de 1959. Utiliza-se, de forma adaptada, a perspectiva de Robert Darnton, original e revisitada pelo autor em seus estudos sobre a história dos livros. Além desse referencial, o artigo faz uso de textos originais de Goffman, da tradução brasileira, de estudos bibliográficos, artigos críticos, resenhas, coletâneas, e de entrevistas e informações que fazem parte do Erving Goffman Archives. Na análise da obra, procura-se acompanhar a trajetória do autor, enfatizando a importância e o impacto do texto, com dados quantitativos e qualitativos, cuja importância estende-se além da academia.

Sociology of Mass and New Media through an Interactionist Lens

This chapter explores symbolic interactionist insights and perspectives on both mass media and new media, with a concentration on the ways in which different forms of media influence meaning-making through social interaction while also being influenced by those interpretive processes. It also examines the relations between various media and the construction and interpretation of social reality, the ways that media shape the development and presentation of self, and the uses and interpretations of media within and between communities. Although it clearly distinguishes between mass media and new media, the chapter also discusses the variety of ways in which they intersect throughout social life.

Heal and Serve

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan can be seen as a laboratory for examining the Soviet construction of masculinity during the last decade of the USSR. Focusing on male Soviet military doctors as individuals, this article aims to present how these doctors constructed their virile presentation of self in a war situation and how they managed their position within the military community. Taking a pragmatic historical approach, the article considers the doctors through their interactions with both women and men, examining gendered practices such as “protecting weak people,” “asserting authority,” “expressing emotions (or not),” and “impressing others.” It offers a case study for the analysis of one of the many forms of Soviet military masculinity under late socialism and its place in Soviet society.

Alone With Goffman: Impression Management and the TV Series

Alone is an American reality television series on the History Channel. The show features 10 contestants who are vying to outlast each other while living off the land. Notably, there is no camera crew, and the contestants must film themselves everyday; the production team creates a weekly program that marks the journey of each individual. This study sought to understand the degree to which participants are able to shape their public identities through the video footage they shot and that was subsequently edited in Alone’s cutting room. The research team employed an explorative case study methodology, which allowed them to watch hours of publicly available official video clips from the History Channel’s Alone YouTube channel. The analysis was driven by theory (Goffman’s The Presentation of Self conceptual framework) and an inductive thematic analysis, which took place in a cyclical fashion through interpretation meetings at the end of each of the six series that were watched. The findings first showed that the contestants were performing to multiple audiences, such as their families, the public, the producers, and even God. Second, the boundary between the frontstage and the backstage was highly blurred. Third, the contestants were able to continue shaping and “repairing” their identities through their own social media outlets after the program. Finally, the theme of gendered approaches to living outdoors shone through in ways that were very complex, overlapping, and non-binary. There is an undeniably strong “impression management tension” between the selves that participants wanted to project and the narratives that were constructed by the Alone program’s producers.

Single Nucleotide Polymorphism rs2075876 in AIRE Gene is a Strong Rheumatoid Arthritis Determinant

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a progressive and common autoimmune disease with multifactorial etiology. Several pieces of research show that genetic factors play a major role in the incidence of RA. Several genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified the autoimmune regulator (AIRE) gene as one of the candidate loci. This gene encodes a transcription factor, which is involved in the presentation of self-antigens and the negative selection of self-reactive T-cells in the thymus. Studies have indicated that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the AIRE gene can change the gene expression and/or function. In the present study, we assessed the possible association between SNP rs2075876 (intronic variant) in the AIRE gene with RA risk in the Iranian population. A case-control study using 56 RA patients and 58 control subjects was undertaken to evaluate rs2075876 genotypes using the real-time PCR high resolution melting method (HRM). Logistic regression analysis demonstrates that homozygous AA and heterozygous AG genotypes compared with GG genotype increase the risk of RA (AA vs. GG; OR=16.43; 95% CI [5.33-50.71] and AG vs. GG; OR=3.21; 95% CI [1.22-8.45]). Also, individuals with allele A were more frequently affected with RA than subjects with G allele (OR=5.81; 95% CI [3.28-10.30]). Furthermore, in the patient group, we found a significant correlation between erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein concentration with rs2075876 polymorphism (P<0.05). Our findings propose a substantial correlation between rs2075876 polymorphism and RA risk.