Facebook is a psychological space in which members can manage their impression through selective self-presentation. Donath distinguishes between two types of signals that can be found in the facebook profiles. Assessment signals are costly displays that are difficult to change or come by, which includes the profile picture, networks, major, email address, phone number etc. Unlike assessment signals, conventional signals are comparably low cost displays that are easily changeable and therefore an easy target for deceptive identity manipulation such as activities, interests, favorite music, and favorite TV shows. Given the extent of control over assessment and conventional signals, do people engage in deception on their facebook profiles?
To answer this question, I applied Catalina’s method by asking a friend to report the accuracy of the elements in his profile and then rate it based on a scale from 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate), which I then verified.. For elements in “basic information” and “contact information,” he rated the accuracy as 5 while for personal information that included interests and a general “About Me” section, he rated it as 4 because he did not update recent changes in interest. After verification, I found most of his profile to be accurate except a comment (clearly a joke) that says “People usually mistake me for Brad Pitt.”
Unlike online dating profiles in which Catalina found that people tend to lie frequently to appear attractive yet subtly to appear honest, people do not lie frequently and with very low magnitude on their facebook profiles. The difference between the frequencies of lies may be due to the differing self-presentational goals. Catalina predicted that the goal is to appear attractive, which is why people tend to lie frequently while the facebook profile is generally used to present themselves to people they already met. These findings do not support the Social Distance Theory that predicts the people tend to lie more through leaner (socially distant) media because lying does not come easily. A theory that does predict that people will deceive less on lean media is the Media Richness Theory, due to the lack of cues and the unavailability of feedback. Yet MRT does not sufficiently explain the results from the study. Instead, the accuracy found in facebook profiles support the Feature Based theory, which says that one is less likely to deceive if the media is asynchronous, recordable, and undistributed. Although it is distributed, because the facebook profile is asynchronous and most importantly recordable the chances of getting caught and the consequences of putting up even a jokingly deceiving message up is detrimental to one’s image. This is perhaps why he no longer claims to look like Brad Pitt and instead his “twin brother who is not exactly identical but yet not too far off.”
Comment 1
Comm 245 Blue: Assignment 4/Option 2 - My Best Friend Lies!?
Comment 2
Comm 245 Blue: Assignment 4-1 Lies and Deceptions
2 comments:
You make some really interesting points. I would have expected online dating profiles and facebook similar in terms of lies, but you give some valid points why it is not. Sure there may be subtle lies in peoples' profiles here and there, but Facebook is used to present yourself as your friends know you. You are generally presenting yourself to people you already know and who might be checking your profile page often. A lie on Facebook could be much more costly. This also clearly relates to presenting your ideal-self versus your actual-self.
I agree that the Feature Based theory is an accurate indicator of the accuracy of profiles on facebook. Like you said, Facebook is recordable, and to a larger extent than perhaps anything else. People see profile changes almost immediatley with the "news feed" and even a small line could be seen by many friends shortly after it is made.
I feel like our experiences analyzing facebook were very similar. I too could not pin point the main theories we talked about in class (social distance theory or media richness theory), and so I had to look elsewhere for ideas as to why people don’t lie very much on facebook. Featured based theory was a good fit, even though I felt as if facebook is erasable and not always recordable. You can have one thing up for your interests one minute, and the next minute a totally new thing could be written in its place. And where did it go? Is it still somewhere in the cyberspace world? I don’t think so. I mean it is in a way, but people who didn’t read it, will never know it was ever there. So in a way it fits the featured based theory, but not totally. The main reason I think people do not lie on facebook though is that they know all or most of their “friends” and would get quickly called-out by whoever read the inaccurate information.
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