Assignment #4: Deception on Facebook

The anatomy of a facebook profile consists first of basic information including network, sex, birthday, and hometown. Next, contact information is listed, including email, screen name, and phone number or address. The following section consists of more personal information like activities, interests, TV shoes, books, quotes, and an about me section. There is also an education and work section where you list where you go to school and present and past employers. And the last part of the facebook anatomy includes all of the “extremities” like profile picture, photo albums, wall posts, and other applications. The signals on facebook that I would say are assessment signals include the network because you have to have a valid email address to get into certain networks. I also think that to some degree your pictures are also assessment signals. Although you could theoretically put up a picture of someone who is not you, there are people on facebook who know you personally can already know what you look like; so in this sense it is very difficult to put up pictures that are not you. In accordance with this thought, sex, is also an assessment signal. There are many conventional signals on facebook. Some of them include interests, favorite books TV shows, movies, and quotes. You can adjust these signals at any time and it is very easy to lie about them.

I interviewed my house mate about her profile. Since we are close friends, it was easy to tell what on her facebook pages is not completely accurate. She rated everything that had to deal with assessment a 5. These categories included network, sex, relationship, birthday, hometown, email, etc. The section where her number started to vary and the deception started to increase was when you go to the personal information. She rated her interest, music, and TV shows all a 3 or 2. These signals, which are conventional, were easy for her to lie about. Another aspect of her facebook that had deception was her pictures. There were a lot of pictures of her partying and going out, when in fact she is very much a homebody. And the last part of her facebook profile where there was deception was areas where she had not updated the information, like her work information. She was no longer working at the place her facebook indicated, so in this sense it was not really deception; but on the other hand, if someone had asked her face to face where she worked, she would not say this specific company because that would be a lie.

Looking at the Feature Based Approach, I saw that my findings related to the theory. The lying that occurred on facebook was not excessive, and this can be explained by the fact that it is a synchronous and not recordless. It makes it more difficult to lie on facebook because you do not have people responding to you and giving you feedback immediately, also everything you put on facebook is somewhat recorded, because if you put something on your profile one day, someone can look at it tomorrow and see it again (unless of course you update it within the given amount of time). Another theory that jumped out of me was self presentation. I found that the lies that were made on facebook, were subtle, but were also strategic. They were made in order to portray a certain image of yourself. My friend wanted to look like she was a fun person, so she put a lot of pictures of her with friends and laughing. She also wanted to show that she was eclectic, so she put down that liked all music, when in fact she does not. When we do lie on facebook, we are lying in subtle and strategic way in order to manage our self presentation and depict a certain character.