In my subject's analysis of his own profile, he rated personal details very truthful, with an average of 5. These included sexual orientation, relationship status, birthday, hometown, and all contact details. He rated his interest areas, which included actives, music, TV, movies, and the about me section, much lower. On average, this section was rated 3.4. This rating may be misleading because the subject gave his “about me” section a rating of 1, when for the purposes of this class it was no so much deceptive as it was sarcastic. Neglecting this section, the average rating for interests rises to 4.
While none are truly assessment signals, the personal facts would be more difficult to keep a deception up about on Facebook than the interests categories. They can be part of a deception, but they would not be subtle, in the sense that some of them are not difficult to corroborate. Goffman and Baumeister's notion of Self-Presentation goals suggests that people will lie in order to project a better image of themselves, but they prefer to do it in ways that are subtle. Deceiving about interests is one way to do this, as they are not readily verifiable, unless one has prior knowledge of the participants.
In class we looked at a study of online dating profiles and how truthful users were when using them. The study found that gender differences were most often the subject of lies in such profiles. While Facebook isn't explicitly a dating site, some parts of the study are supported by the subject's rating. In the study, the most truthful thing people put on their profile was their relationship status. Likewise, the subject gave his relationship status the highest rating of truthfulness.
Another study we have looked at in class was one about the frequency of deception compared in different media. Using the media features analysis of this study, Facebook would be asynchronous, have records, and be distributed, which is the exact profile of email. The results of the study could be extended to say that Facebook would have a similar deception frequency as email, the lowest of the four medium compared in the study (FtF, phone, IM, email). The subject's lower rating of his interest section may seem to be in conflict with this conclusion, but having prior knowledge of the subject, the deception there may not have been more due to lack of updating his profile than deliberate deception.
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http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-41-i-am-terrible-liar-online.html#links
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/a42-facebook-speaks-truth.html#links
2 comments:
This blog is very insightful. Your observation about the ease in which one can lie in their personal information versus their interests is very true, as it it much harder to contest possibly false interests. Also, the interests section has much higher potential of giving a reader an impression of the subject's personality.
Your comparison to dating sites is interesting, although I think your subject's high truthfulness in the "relationship status" section may not be representative of the general public since Facebook gives many silly/sarcastic options for relationship status. For example, it is not uncommon for girls to "marry" their best friends.
Overall I think that your comparison to dating website validity is interesting because both use their validity to serve a purpose to the subject of the facebook or dating page.
A very solid blog post. The reading was very clear, well argued and to the point. You bring up an excellent factor at the end about deliberate deception. My friend also had the same issue with reduced accuracy due to not keeping her profile up to date. People change and posted information about a person does not change automatically even when updated by said person.
I wonder if having a 'time since last edited' feature would change the way people considered one's interests. For example if one listed their favourite bands as, bands x, y, and z and had not changed it in a year would that be seen as being truthful because of its steadiness or untruthful because it may be outdated (does one really still like band Z?). On the contrary if one listed their favourite bands, but changed the list every 2 weeks would that be truthful, in keeping up to date and being honest about being finicky, or untruthful in that favourite music should have some sort of longevity?
It would definitely be interesting to see it implemented, although I worry about how people would react to my profile as it's been collecting dust for a quite a while.
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