The Similarities Between Mead And Erving Goffman

Cyberbullying is a form of aggressive behavior that uses digital media to communicate false, embarrassing, or hostile information about another person (O'Keeffe and Clarke-Pearson, 2011). Bullied victims get harassed because they are usually not accepted among their peers or associates in a social environment for countless several reasons. Bullying has many negative side effects for the victim such as suicide. The theories of scholars George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman can be used to compare how the scholars would portray modern society’s problem of cyberbullying.
Both George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman focused on the self in their studies. The self is understood by the concept of the looking-glass self, coined by Charles Horton Cooley. The
Cooley’s concept of the self leads to Mead’s self concept.
Mead believed that the mind and the self coincide with one another and that they are processes (Ritzer and Stepnisky, 2018). The self emerges overtime and one cannot be born with it. Mead argued the self is a part of social experiences and processes (Ritzer and Stepnisky, 2018). Many people believe that bullying is a part of growing up, a normal social experience everyone goes through (Donegan, 2012). That is why people rarely intervene. “The self allows people to take part in conversations with others.” (Ritzer and Stepnisky, 2018). Bullied victims often are not capable of conversing among groups of friendships or help because aggressive harassing behavior has disrupted their self-esteem. These aggressive harassing behaviors can be expressed through gestures. Gestures are any behaviors intended to get a response from another person such as body language, verbal requests, and emails (Ritzer and Stepnisky, 2018). Bullying behaviors are indeed intentional. The behavior is meant to hurt the victim. Mead argued that humans are the only beings capable of engaging in intentional behavior (Ritzer and