First Impression: Importance Of Impression Management And Secondary Orality

Importance Of Impression Management And Secondary Orality

Introduction

In this modern era, teenagers have many options to impress themselves in front of the outside world. The main aim of my research is to explain that how teenagers act differently when they use social media and when they actually meet the outside world. Sometimes they behave opposite of who they are, when they meet people rather when they present themselves on social media. For instance, they look very confident on social media pictures but, in real, they are very shy, less confident, less focused. Moreover, it is important how you express yourself to others.

Due to advancements in science and technology, our way of communication has changed and both terms have a great impact on the way we communicate. Teenagers get connected with each other by the internet and feel free to talk to anybody. The way of commination effects teenagers where they just build their image over social media to impress and create a wall between their social image and their personal image and they act differently. As Walter Ong discussed about technology that it creates secondary orality where computers and televisions gave platform for interaction and socialization. Therefore, it is important to know about impression management and secondary orality and their importance in our lives.

Introduction of impression management

Impression management refers to the process in which a person influences the perception of others. For instance, in business most of the time businessman uses impression management for the presentation of his product via advertisement. He expresses his product in such a way that it makes a quick impression in the minds of the consumers and they buy it. It means impression management depicts the image we show to others, so they accept it the way we show them rather what is the actual image we have.

Impression management refers to the self-presentation of a person with a goal to create or enhance his or her image in the eyes of others. It refers to be in good books of others and get positive judgments of our self. People mold themselves while they interact with each other and they play various roles to modify themselves. This approach can be divided into two parts: front stage and backstage. Front stage refers to a situation that when you put on, in a society. Backstage refers to a situation where you are actually who you are, and you can be yourself, a place where you work on your impression management and it becomes your training area where you motivate yourself.

Importance of impression management

Teenagers get influenced by their social media life as they cannot imagine their lives without Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Through these medias teenagers easily make connections by sharing their life, building professional careers and enjoying social lives. It makes them alive and give a reason to be in others company and feel safe about themselves. By creating their new image and be who they are, they feel the energy within them and set themselves free.

Example: According to Dijck (2013)” In fact, the widespread presence of platforms drives people to move many of their social, cultural, and professional activities to these online environments.” (p.4).

Here dijck explains that because of the emergence in online environment where Facebook, twitter and YouTube, people communicate over these online sites and present themselves. These are those platforms where anyone can be present himself or herself as they want to, so they shut the world down and create their own world online and make friends over the internet to share their opinions and life with others. In these days meaning of impression management seems like people set themselves free while they are on their social sites and try to impress others by doing different things. Former people were communicated with other by personal meeting and get together but latter people are happier while they are online than personal meetings. In his book he mentioned two people Zara Alvin and Sandra. Zara Alvin cannot even live without Facebook and Sandra is totally dependent on Twitter for maintaining customer relations in business. Here Zara use Facebook to impress or see posts of others and get influenced by others.

Introduction of secondary orality

Meaning of orality and secondary orality: Orality means the quality of verbal and when communication is done orally. It is the medium through which we exchange information. Storytelling is an example of orality. Walter Ong mentioned that the oral primary culture did not know anything about written language. Due to technologization, it emerged the secondary orality where there was the domination of writing and print culture and use of technology for communication. He suggested that secondary orality is the communication where western society is dominated by the writing and electronic media and change the way of sharing information. Televisions and telephones have emerged as modes of secondary orality and due to continuous progress in these it revolutionized the way we communicate.

Ong explained the detailed difference between orality and literate cultures. Oral cultures are those when society was not familiar with writing while literate culture belong to recent development where a language is written. Moreover, humans could orally depict a particular experience with others by storytelling in orality but they give permanent retention or preservation to their words by writing it in literature.

Importance

Brake. D reflects the light on the main changes which incurred after secondary orality has risen. Secondary orality has great importance in our lives where we cannot even think about to live without the internet, or our social networking cites. Technology made our works easy and gave us various tools to share our opinions with each other while we are sitting far from them. Now teenagers have all information about outside world, and it is changing the thinking of teenagers and they communicate appropriately.

Written communication: Secondary orality has importance in our day to day life where we use written communication to write our thoughts and opinions and share with others with the help of technology that is over the internet.

Print information: secondary orality emerged the print culture where people print their information and exchange it. In business, advertising is the main tool that businessmen used to communicate about his product to his consumers in previous generations.

Spread the Information: With the use of secondary orality someone can share and spread his information across the world. Any kind of news on television or telephone is because of technology.

Generation like a documentary:

This documentary produced and written by Frank Koughan and Douglas Rushkoff. This documentary helps me to exemplify the meanings of impression management and secondary orality. It is all about how teenagers use technology to communicate with each other and to impress, express, share their views with others. Nowadays, teenagers mostly indulged in activities which they can post on their online social accounts. Moreover, teenagers spend their time on digital spaces which make them to get addicted to these online platforms. Technology is changing as time passes and innovation in technology create new world for teenagers where they cannot even understand that why they are so addicted to it or why they cannot get away from it. In this documentary, I will discuss various teenagers which are interviewed in this documentary.

Bibliography:

1. Ong, W. J., & Hartley, J. (2013). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. This book will help me to figure out secondary orality and its characteristics.
2. Goffman, E. (2008). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books. This book talks about example of impression management and its how teens use their social media to attract or influence others.
3. Brake, D. (2014). Sharing our lives online: Risks and exposure in social media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. It depicts the consequences about posting online and risks involved which teens can face.
4. Dijck, J. V. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. New York: Oxford University Press. This book will help me know about how these social media have affect our experiences of online sociality.
5. Meyrowitz, J. (2014). No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York: Oxford University Press. It will cover power of like statement which means teens mainly focus on that how many likes they get on their profile picture and they behaved accordingly in society.
6. Tsang, N. M. (2007). Orality and Literacy. Journal of Social Work, 7(1), 51-70. doi:10.1177/1468017307075989 This journal will talk about issues of orality and literacy and mindsets.