Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Assignment#4:

I thought it'd be interesting to review a facebook profile of a friend I made over the summer.

For the self-assessment, he judged his profile fairly accurate.
Name: 5
Profile Photo: 5
Sex: 5
Birthday: 5
Hometown: 5
Mini-Feed: 5
Contact Info (Email and Residence): 5
Website: 1
Interests: 5
Favorite Music: 5
Favorite Quotes: 5
Favorite Movies: 5
Education Info: 5
Work Info: 5
Networks: 5
Friends: 5
Groups: 5

After reviewing his profile, I made an assessment myself.
Name: 5
Profile Photo: 3
Sex: 5
Birthday: 5
Hometown: 5
Mini-Feed: 5
Contact Info (Email and Residence): 5
Website: 3
Interests: 5
Favorite Music: 5
Favorite Quotes: 3
Favorite Movies: 5
Education Info: 5
Work Info: 5
Networks: 5
Friends: 4
Groups: 4

His profile picture is ambivalent, because he's standing with his two brothers without tags. I also feel that while his profile picture is neutral, it doesn't represent his appearance in person well. However, his intentions are not to false image: he never untags himself from photos other people upload or deletes mini feed items.

Considering the fact that he is an engineer and has been constantly on a job market looking for internships, he selectively shares personal information. His interested sex, political and religious views are not listed, while more than 20 of his obscure favorite bands and movies take up most of the profile. Although I have not heard of most bands listed, I believe it's pretty accurate, because bands he went to concerts over the summer are included. In my knowledge, the only faulty information he gives is his website. He lists his favorite bakery as one. However, I believe even that bit of information reveals who he is: he loves eating pastries and the jokes how he wants to quit engineering and open a bakery.

Blatant deception on facebook is rare within a relatively small network, because the information shared is available for verification by other members. However, members are allowed to adjust the amount of information available. Hancock's Feature-Based Model seems to be at work in this case. Selective representation of informaion is the most powerful tool in asynchronous, tractable environment.

5 comments:

Jennifer Yao said...

I agree that your friend selectively chose how to present himself. He wanted to appear most attractive to job recruiters by only choose to show specific information that would help him further his career.

It would be interesting to see what impression people would make from his profile if they didn't know his ambitions. Would they also think he was professional?

My friend also selectively showed certain information on his profile. In his case however, he chose to withhold and show certain information based on his sense of humor - what he thought would entertain his visitors.

It is interesting to see the motives behind self-presentation.

Sophia Ng said...

I also agree that your friend chose to selectively present himself due to the information provided. My friend also did the same thing because he is currently on the job market and has effectively set as many privacy settings on his facebook as well. I find this a part of selective presentation because he chooses who sees him in this chosen environment.

I thought it was interesting that you emphasized how your friend had so many details about his movie and music choices. I wonder if this is becuase he feels people tend to judge less on the issue of your likes versus beliefs. With that being said, it would seem appropriate that with him being on the job market, he has made himself relatively netural on any subjects that are more politically involved versus less serious topics of interest.

Overall I find that many people use self presentation in accordance with current lifestyles and the knowledge of future effects of facebook on their face to face interactions, either with employers, friends or people they have yet to meet.

Alison Wollenberg said...

I think you did a really good job analyzing your friends facebook profile; I liked that you gave examples of the subjects and the scores you gave them. I like the examples you chose of the way he self-presented himself. For example, how his picture was one of him with his brothers and possibly didn't accurately portray him, from you can tell from his newfeed habits and his lack of detagged photos that he wasn't trying to trick anyone. It was also a good analysis to take into consideration that he is looking for a job, and could be purposly self portraying himself in a professional manner. Perhaps the self portrayed information is all purposly placed there in case potential job recruiters look at it (which is very common these days).
The only thing I wonder is, since you said it was a friend from the summer, did you really get to know him in that much depth? Perhaps the facebook profile portrayed himself in the same way he presented himself to you this summer. Perhaps he could also be completely different in some ways and you still don't know it. However, from your descriptions it sounds like you do know him pretty well, since you knew which concerts he attended this summer.
While you did a good job linking it to Hancock's feature based model, I think other theories of self presentation could be applied as well. I feel you could have used the social distance theory to describe how he portrayed himself online. Especially if he was selfpresenting himself a certain way through an asynchornous space when it comes to being recruited for a job.

Anonymous said...

After reading your blog I have changed my opinion that no one really needs to lie on Facebook. What struck me the most was the profile photo. This is one of the lies that you do not write down but what you put up as the best photo shot of yourself instead of the everyday shot. This is probably where the lies happen the most, since you wouldnt put up a bad or ugly picture of you as your "profile shot." The other topic I now thought about were the quotes,movies, and music section. This is the part where normally they are to long to type because their are so many; so you start listing whats the most popular at the time, even though this might not give the best image of yourself. The category shouldnt be list the bands or movies but should list the genre or type of movie allowing us to interpret if you like comedy or rap music instead of specifics.

Melissa Bernard said...

Su,

In your friend's attempt to manage his impression made on potential employers he has not included any controversial and unfavorable information. This supports digital deception theory in that he has intentionally excluded true information that might prevent him from getting a job. His selective self-presentation can be perceived as "blatant deception" because intentionally excluding information is considered by many as lying by omission. For example, the interests he has included might be very true, but has he included all those interests that might cause viewers to form negative opinions about him?

I think you did a really good job at analyzing your friend's portfolio and I agree that that the Feature Based Model best captures the nature of his profile. My comments only offer a different way of interpreting the truth of his profile.