Facebook and Myspace are two places to keep in touch with old friends, students in your school and also a place to meet someone new. Due to the advancement of Facebook with more of a user friendly applications as well as a more private profile page the popularity of Facebook took off. Since this explosion of users occurred more people have joined and it’s not as private as it used to be. This could possibly be the reason someone would lie about himself or herself when filling out a profile. I decided that I would ask a roommate of mine that I met through the Cornell ’11 network through the Low Rise 6 Group.
To start off this experiment I logged into Facebook and viewed what can actually be filled in for the profile and started to list them for my survey. After compiling a list of different categories I decided to narrow the list down to the 10 categories that I would check if I were going to meet someone new. The categories I choose were: Name, Photos, Networks, Sex, Relationship Status, Birthday, Hometown, Contact Info, Personal Info: Music, TV Shows, Movies, Books, and Groups. They were chosen because the truth can be revealed about these topics when talking Face to Face.
I decided to log into her profile first and look at each item and then make my grade from what I knew about her from the last 3 weeks that we have been together here at cornel and this is how the results went:
Name:
5
Photos: 4
Networks: 5
Sex: 5
Relationship Status: 5
Birthday: 5
Hometown: 5
Contact Info:
5
Personal Info
• Music: 5
• TV Shows: 4
• Movies: 5
• Books: 3
Groups: 4
After I finished the survey about her profile, I then gave her the survey to fill out to see what she actually lied about if she did at all and her response was as follows:
Name: 5
Photos: 5
Networks: 5
Sex: 5
Relationship Status: 5
Birthday: 5
Hometown:
5
Contact Info:
5
Personal Info
• Music: 4
• TV Shows: 5
• Movies: 5
• Books: 5
Groups: 5
When she asked me that question I knew that I was not going to get the response that I was looking for because of the implication that its stupid to lie on Facebook. The one category I thought she might have added some flavor to was the books but after having a discussion with her about some of the books that she listed I later came to the conclusion that everything she said was true. The outcomes of this experiment are going to be interesting to read because I think Facebook is a space where you don’t really need to lie about anything because the people you are going to be friends with will know you. If this was a dating site like match.com or something along those lines we would probably have seen some stretching of information in order to look good in their profile page, but since its more of a social thing lying doesn’t make sense.
I believe that the only real theory used for Facebook is deception. We have access to different types of photos of the person that we are looking at, but the person whos profile it is has the ability to choose which go up. Facebook combines both rich and lean media together. The thing with Facebook is that if you are just meeting a person on your network for the first time your impression management will be based on the pictures and hopefully the truthfulness of their profile.
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2 comments:
Hi Jadd,
I "interviewed" a friend on his Facebook profile too, except I knew him for two years. It's interesting how you chose someone you knew for only 3 weeks, but answered the survey very similarly to her actual answers. Maybe that shows how well you know her through your everyday FtF interactions, which translated onto her profile too.
It's very true that Facebook contains both rich and lean media, and you don't need to lie on Facebook, since it's used for social purposes but the distance is close enough(your school network, for instance) that outright lying isn't possible. The exceptions in my survey, was that my friend deviated from the truth just for fun.
Maybe you can expand on the theoretical aspect of this assignment, more about the deception theory. Also, there might be more than just that theory involved here.
While I understand your point that you do not need to lie about anything because the people you are going to be friends with will know you, I think that people still find reasons to be deceptive on Facebook. People besides your friends may view your profile, which gives people the chance to create an “ideal” self. While many may chose to be truthful, we still have ideal impressions of ourselves that we may unconsciously try to show through our profiles. For example, when I interviewed my friend, she was part of some groups that didn’t really apply to her interests, traits, or personality, but joined because she thought they were funny or friends had started that group. If someone just read through her groups to see what she was like, they wouldn’t be getting a very accurate impression. Even detagging pictures that you don’t like of yourself may be considered a form of “lying” because you’re only allowing yourself to be portrayed in the way you want others to see you. So while it may be pointless to lie because your friends know the “true” you, people still find reason to do so.
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