Assignment 4- Honest Facebookers

The anatomy of a Facebook profile has greatly changed even in the past few months. It used to contain only pictures, a list of friends, a brief section for personal information, a place for contact information, and a venue to list favorite activities, interests, music, movies, books, and quotes. There is a place to list your school and major. You can join groups, which will appear on your profile. Of course, the original Facebook profile contains the Wall, where friends can leave messages. In the past few months, the addition of the news feed and now applications, everyone’s profile can be customized to the point that almost no two are the same.

Conventional signals can be shown through different shows of interests. For example, my subject mentions that he enjoys parties and sports in his interests section. He has various applications that feature sports teams, and he is a member of many anti-Yankees/pro-Red Sox groups. These all suggest that he is a very masculine person. He also hints toward his sense of humor through quotes and references to different comedic TV shows and movies. Other conventional signals can be found in photo albums, and any type of group or application one decides to display on his or her profile.His assessment signals show his appearance (in his picture). They also brand him as being in a committed relationship. His profile picture features both him and his girlfriend. His girlfriend is the sole person featured in his “Favorite Peeps” application. She is also the most frequent poster on his wall. Other assessment signals can be found in an e-mail address ending in “@cornell.edu” or a membership in a certain geographical network.

My subject showed very little frequency or magnitude of dishonesty. The lowest he ranked any of his profile features was a “3” on his interests and favorite music. Beside his notation, he wrote “(dated)” because he had not updated his profile in quite some time. He still had some high school activities listed, as well as bands and singers he no longer listens to as frequently. My rankings of accuracy showed no discrepancies with his, and I know my subject on a very intimate level.

His honesty is consistent with Media Richness Theory because revealing his personality on Facebook is a minimally equivocal task, as he has expressed to me before I even began this class. Media Richness Theory states that a person will use less “rich” media (media with fewer cues, little opportunity for feedback, lack of message personalization, and no langage variety) for less equivocal tasks (for example, confirming a lunch date). He is not concerned with being vague or deceptive because his purpose on Facebook is to remain in touch with current friends; his goal is not to make new friends or appear a certain way to acquaintances. However, there are enough cues available on Facebook that he doesn’t appear cold or unapproachable. Since Facebook does allow a certain degree of customization of profiles, it is easy to argue that it is a much richer media than e-mail, text messages, or other asynchronous media. But since he is not attempting to convey himself to unfamiliar parties, he has little occasion to deceive through Facebook. According to the chart comparing frequency of dishonesty through different media, Media Richness Theory predicts lies to happen face to face. In this way, my subject’s profile is consistent with the theory.