For this assignment I decided to analyse the facebook profile of a good friend of mine who relatively recently got a job working on a presidential campaign. When she first started looking for a job on a presidential campaign, my friend deleted almost her entire profile: pictures, wall-posts, groups, and almost all her personal information. Upon reflection, she says she did so out of necessity. The campaign managers use facebook not only as a tool for judging an individual's character, but also for assessing their personal acquaintances in an attempt to avoid hiring "the enemy." She removed as much frivolous information from her account as possible in order to appear as neutral as possible to future employers. After getting the job working on a campaign, her profile has yet again changed. Her campaign manager chose to shorten her name in person, and as a result she changed it on profile in a sort of attempt to announce to the rest of her world that she was shortening her name. Her profile is now filled with political statements wherever they may fit in: status, groups, networks, work info, and the "US politics" section. After asking her to analyse her own profile based on Catalina's 1-5 scale, she came up with the following ratings:
name: 4
networks: 5
sex: 5
interested in: 4
birthday: 5
hometown: 5
political views: 5 (an enthusiastic one at that!)
contact info: 5
personal info: 3
photos: 2
groups: 4
educational info: 5
work info: 3
representations of herself. I even went as far as to poke fun, but was met with defense on her part as she emphasized the importance of ambiguity in her representation of self in the professional world. Though she wasn't necessarily being deceptive in her presented information, she was certainly creating a deceptive representation of her whole self in her When I asked her why her accuracy ratings for personal information were lower than her generic information, she claimed to have done so out of necessity. in order to appear intelligent, hard working, and neutral to those potentially hiring her to work on a campaign she had to delete anything in her profile that had the potential to be used as a judge of character. As a result, when analysing her current profile, she noted that the lower accuracy ratings for personal items including the info, photos, groups, etc. were due to her withholding information about herself, not her making up any lies. Thus, she chose selctive self-representation as a mode of deception. The only activity she kept in her profile, though she participated in many in college, was Phi Beta Kappa, a national honors society. The only work information she kept in her profile, though she has a wide range of experience, is her current position as a field organizer for a presidential candidate. These were all elements of her profile that I, as a close friend, was able to pick up on as inaccurate.
In essence, I believe that she removed as many assessment signals (old photos and wall posts, personal information, previous work experience) from her profile as she possibly could, and chose to keep only conventional signals present (name, contact info, a few generic bits of personal information) in order to create identity based deception in an asynchronous online scape. Facebook, as an asynchronous space, allows her to pick and choose which assessment signals she wants to represent herself with. Her initial lack of assessment signals allowed her to initially maintain ambiguity in her public representation of self when trying to obtain the job. Once hired, she boosted her assessment signals but only in her public support for her candidate. Thus, I think my friend followed the hyperpersonal model in modifying her facebook profile, as she chose to create a very selective representation of herself without actually lying. The "self" represented on facebook is no where near the "self" I have known for many years, however no lies exist in her profile, only omissions of the truth. This is perhaps explained by the feature-based approach which notes that people tend not to lie in situations that are recordable, of which facebook is certainly one.
3 comments:
I think it's very interesting that you included your friend's "un-tagging" habits in your measure of the accuracy of her profile. Personally, when I un-tag a photo, it is because the picture does not represent what I really look like. Naturally, all of the photos that I un-tag are unflattering pictures. But in real life I don't have squinty eyes, a huge forehead, or a constant expression on my face that makes me look confused or angry. Therefore, I can argue that the un-tagging of photos can be done in favor of an honest portrayal of myself. I believe the same can be true for your friend.
Going with what Brianne said... what is an honest portrayal of one's self? Would that be how others see you, or would that be how you see yourself? Maybe others think you do have a constantly angry expression, but you don't think this because you know you don't feel angry inside. Which one would be the truth in this case?
It's interesting how much we can mislead other people if we only omit some truths, not actively lying and making up features of ourselves. It brings to mind the example Prof Hancock used at the very beginning of the course, where a bunch of adjectives are listed about a person. One type of adjectives (warm vs. cold) could change our entire perception of that person, even if all other adjectives stayed the same. I believe it's precisely this type of crucial adjectives that your friend is trying to conceal. It's the key piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is her personality. Without it, people can imagine her as many different types of person.
Going with what Brianne said... what is an honest portrayal of one's self? Would that be how others see you, or would that be how you see yourself? Maybe others think you do have a constantly angry expression, but you don't think this because you know you don't feel angry inside. Which one would be the truth in this case?
It's interesting how much we can mislead other people if we only omit some truths, not actively lying and making up features of ourselves. It brings to mind the example Prof Hancock used at the very beginning of the course, where a bunch of adjectives are listed about a person. One type of adjectives (warm vs. cold) could change our entire perception of that person, even if all other adjectives stayed the same. I believe it's precisely this type of crucial adjectives that your friend is trying to conceal. It's the key piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is her personality. Without it, people can imagine her as many different types of person.
Post a Comment