Monday, September 17, 2007

Facebook, dost thou deceive me? (Assignment 4, option 2)

Facebook has evolved to be a digital identification card, allowing you to display information about yourself and seek out information about your friends, and even complete strangers. It allows you to give general information about yourself, such as your name, birthday, and hometown, as well as more personal information, such as your interests or your favorite book or music. This however, leaves open a margin for some "creativity," a phenomenon known as digital deception. Although it is harmless for the most part, lying on Facebook profiles is still worthwhile to examine. The first step is to categorize the pieces of information you can display on Facebook into two groups: assessment signals and conventional signals.

Assessment signals are those that are harder to lie about. On Facebook, this includes things such as your network (a college network requires an e-mail address from that university), and depending on what you make your name, your sex and pictures as well. Conventional signals are those which are easier to lie about. This goes for just about everything else on your profile, including your interests, your favorite movies/books/music, and your political and religious views, among many other things. There is also a certain degree of subjectivity as to which is which. For example, I could have a fake picture of myself displayed on my profile, and while a stranger may think it's actually me, one of my best friends would instantly recognize it as fake.

I decided to ask one of my roommates to rate the honesty of each aspect of his Facebook profile, using the same 1 to 5 scale used in Catalina's study. He claimed that all of the aspects of his profile had a rating of 5 except for his relationship status, his birth year, and his hometown, which he rated as 2. When I rated his profile, I agreed with him for everything, except his favorite books and movies. Although he did not lie about anything he liked, he also did not include some of his favorite books and movies there. When I asked him about this, he said he wanted to emphasize the fact that he loved philosophy, which is an interesting case of the Hyperpersonal model in action: he used selective self-presentation to achieve an exaggerated image of himself. He also lied somewhat frequently about basic information, and the magnitude of those lies was staggering (he claimed he was born in 1925, for example). As a matter of fact, the magnitudes of all of his lies were very great: he claimed to be in a relationship when he was not, and he also did not include many of his favorite books and movies that were almost the exact opposite of what he displayed.

After this miniature experiment, I would say the Media Richness Theory completely explains my experience. My friend used a moderately rich media to accomplish a moderately equivocal task (selecting his favorite books to make it seem as though he was more of an intellectual). Additionally, because Facebook is asynchronous, somewhat recordable, and relatively rich, the moderate amount of lying that occurred was to be expected.

3 comments:

Randi Pochtar said...

I think it is very interesting that your friend lied about such key aspects of himself including relationship status, date of birth, and hometown. These are not things typically lied about, I would say, because most of them would fall into the category of assessment signals, which as you stated are difficult things to use in deception. Our hometowns and birthdays are pretty standard features about us that do not change. These should be cues to who a person really is and are pretty hard to control. I am sure that most people who read his profile recognize the fact that he was not actually born in 1925, which is why assessment signals are so difficult to modify. His favorite books and movies, on the other hand, which you also questioned, would more likely fall under the category of conventional signals. If someone did not know him as well as you, they would probably not even know that he was lying about these due to our nature to assume that what people say is true.

Ariel Tassy said...

I thought it was very interesting how your friend lied in order to emphasize his love for philosophy. It makes sense that people would purposely leave out some information to portray themselves in a certain way, but I never thought that that would be the case on facebook. I agree with you when you say the Media Richness Theory explains that, there is so much to portray on facebook so maybe we have to nit pick and decide exactly what we want to put on our profile because it may be overwhelming to fit everything. Usually when people use the hypersonal model (selective self presentation), they are trying to hide something about them that is perhaps unattractive. I like how your friend used this theory to simply highlight an attractive aspect instead of to hide an unattractive aspect.

Stefani Negrin said...

I agree with Randi and think it is really interesting that your friend lied about his birth year and hometown. I can see why one may lie about whether or not they were in a relationship and/or with whom, but I do not understand why he chose to lie about his birth year and hometown. Those two aspects are a basic part of one’s identity and are considered assessment signals because they are a “link to a person’s real world identity.” What was the point in deceiving others about this information – how does it relate to your friend’s identity or the identity he wants to present to other people? Is his ideal self older or from another town? Also, how significant are one’s birth year and hometown on a Facebook profile – is that what other people really focus on? If not, instead of the deception, why not just leave it out?