Research On Media Self-presentation Of The Elderly From The Perspective Of The Dramaturgical Theory

The changes in media technology have brought about changes in the structure of information,media power and consumption scenes.From text and pictures to short video,the barriers to participating in content production have gradually weakened,and a new digital interface has been brought to more vulnerable groups of media,among which the most significant format is the short video industry.Short videos empower everyone to "see" and "be seen",and provide a new channel for "how to be seen".In this way,the elderly have been able to flood into mass media on a large scale and become participants in the information chain of production,distribution and consumption.Compared with the previous absence of the elderly in the perspective of Internet culture,the momentum of the elderly group of independent digital practice is more and more obvious.More and more elderly people actively shaping their self-image through their own perspectives and multiple narratives,and contributing their distinctive elderly style to the youthful short video ecology.This paper takes the self-presentation phenomenon of the elderly on the Tik Tok platform as the research object,and selects 30 representative and widely popular accounts of the elderly,such as "I am Tian Grandma","Pan Grandma" and "Manna Uncle" as observation samples.Under the perspective of sociologist Goffman’s "drama theory",this paper analyzes the stage change,role construction and impression management in the self-presentation of the elderly,and finally answers the questions of "What kind of image the old people have created " and "what shortcomings exist in the practice of self-shaping the image of the elderly" and gives relevant suggestions.The research found that practice of self-image building of the elderly are quite fruitful,breaking through,improving and transcending the old stereotypical image of the elderly.Based on the Tik Tok platform,the elderly present a more positive image and are more recognized by the younger generation.However,at the same time,the self-presentation of the elderly also reveals problems such as the image being divorced from reality,the image type being homogeneous,the image credibility being too low,the image subject being offset and so on.The independent construction right and inner value of the image of the elderly are covered,which is not conducive to improving the real media situation of the elderly.Therefore,this paper puts forward the following suggestions: First,encourage the elderly to return to the elderly themselves,and restore the real diversity,deep-seated image of the elderly rather than catering to the fancier imagination of other generations;Second,continuous digital feeding by families helps the elderly master more mature operations rather than stopping at entry-level skills.Accordingly,the government and platforms should launch fine-grained and hierarchical digital support activities for the elderly to reduce the barriers that the elderly encounter in the image presentation;Third,content creators involved in shaping the image of the elderly should diversify the value of the elderly,pursue the aesthetic taste and cultural transmission of elderly videos instead of the single economic value,and emphasize giving viewers a sense of acquisition to establish a healthy and positive image of the elderly.