By now, everyone either has a facebook profile or at least has heard of facebook. Officially facebook is a social networking tool, initially for college students with a .edu email address but is now open to the public. Unofficially, personal experience tells me most people’s use can be classified as “stalking.” I would argue that “stalking” is anything that one would do on facebook that would rather be avoided in person. For example, browsing through an attractive girl’s (or guy’s) photos or reading personal information of a random person. Keeping this in mind, it is interesting to study the accuracy between one’s online profile and the true self.
Analyzing facebook, the most prominent feature is the online picture located on the top left of the profile page. Here, you select which picture to showcase yourself to the online world. To right, one displays objective information such as your name, gender, school, class, birthday, etc. Directly below is a section for more subjective information such as favorite movies, music, books, etc. Directly below your profile picture, facebook displays a few of your friends and displays any photo albums and other applications. Ultimately, your profile provides the information used for impression formation by anyone who may look. I would say your profile picture and objective information are assessment signals while subjective information and other applications are conventional signals.
I analyzed the facebook profile of a good friend. I’ve known GW since freshman year of high school, so I felt I knew the reasonable accuracy of his profile. The following outline his data:
Name: 5
Photos: 3
Networks: 5
Sex: 5
Interested In: 5
Relationship Status: 5
Birthday: 5
Hometown: 3
Political Views: 4
Contact Info: 5
Favorite Music: 5
Favorite Movies: 4
About Me: 3
Groups: 4
He rated the majority of his profile to be very accurate. However, from my experience, his profile is lacking to be completely honest. For example, RD rated a 5 for his favorite music, while I know from personal experiences that his tastes are much more refined. His favorite movies are also incomplete. His “about me” section is just one line from his favorite song and even though he may identify with it, I know that there is more to RD than what is written.
My experience on facebook falls in line with the Features Based Approach because RD was accurate in the majority of information. The only noticeable deception was only through omission of information. Facebook is asynchronous and keeps a record of all information, therefore Features Based Approach would correctly predict little deception. However, with the deception that did occur, it follows Donath’s identity based signals because he was truthful with objective information/assessment signals while he was not with subjective/conventional signals. Also the selective self-presentation of the Hyperpersonal Model plays a big role because his omission of information could be because RD wants to portray some image of himself that may not be accurate.
3 comments:
I found a lot of the same experiences that you had when you went through your friend's facebook. I also thought that many of the sections of his profile were mostly incomplete due to abandonment of updating his profile consistently. This leads to a more skewed conception of deception, since there was no intentinality of deception, but withholding information is nonetheless not the truth.
I like how you took into consideration the Hyperpersonal Model, something that I did not think of. Indeed the lack of cues may lead viewers of your friends profile to form an exaggerated impression of certain characteristics if they do not know him that well on a personal level. Overall, very insightful!
I thought the idea that your picture is the most important aspect to your profile was a really interesting point. This really supports the issues raised in other blogs as many people found deception in the pictures people decided to put up. Because your picture is the first thing that people see in your profile, people go out of their way to make sure it’s conveying a certain impression about themselves.
Additionally, I also never considered the fact that omission of information could be considered deception. By not putting down a relationship status or political views, there is an air of ambiguity in the profile. The results, as you pointed out, would include an exaggerated impression and highlighting other characteristics.
I completely agree that the omission of facts can be considered deceptive, but with something like facebook, can we lay the blame entirely on the profile's owner? Whatever he chooses not to put in his profile, we sort of fill the blanks with our imagination based on the facts that he does choose to give. So the person we create in our mind can be very different from the actual person. But isn't that understood by all who choose to browse his profile? Don't we accept the fact that we may be easily deceived online? We go ahead and take the risks anyway. I think none of us actually believes everything we read on a stranger's facebook profile. We use the description as a starting point to evaluate the person, but we will definitely not vouch for his personality.
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