After hearing the assignment of performing a similar interview to Catalina's study I immediately had reservations. I doubted as to whether this would support the findings of Catalina due to sizable role difference of Facebook and online dating sites. The goal of keeping in touch with friends presents vastly different requirements than trying to attract someone to a relationship. Knowing this it seemed clear to me that people on Facebook would lie less, or not at all as this betrays trust between friends who can relatively easily verify your claims. With this prediction in hand I started my interview.
A Facebook profile consists of a mix of conventional and assessment signals. Assessment signals consist of a Cornell email, major, certain address information and the myriad of uploaded photos. Conventional signals are the interests, about me, and favourite ..., parts of a profile. After going through the profile, my friend listed the accuracy of everything at a 5 save for interests and music which she rated a 4. Those 2 fields rated at a 4 were simply because they were slightly outdated. As for validation, I noted the she did indeed listen to the music and watch the movies she listed. In addition she had already talked about books on her list to me prior to the assignment. So far my predictions have held true, but why?
Numerous theories are available to explain why my friend did not lie on her Facebook profile. Media Richness Theory (MRT) and Feature-based theories directly support my findings. The complex task of lying is difficult to accomplish in a small, simple text/still photo environment especially when coupled with the feature based arguments that Facebook is an asynchronous and recordable environment making it easy to verify information.
The third theory, Social Distance theory, is a little more difficult to explain. SDT predicts that people will use the media with the largest social distance to lie in order to separate themselves from the target and avoid the unpleasantness of lying. With that in mind, many people may propose that an asynchronous CMC based media such as Facebook would be ideal for lying. As a result, my findings contrast with SDT predictions. However, I propose that Facebook is not as socially distant as it may first appear. Many people check Facebook multiple times throughout the day, commenting on changes to profiles in FtF and other CMC based media. It is also possible for wall posting to approach synchronous communication. In essence people often quickly know what and when information on your profile changes (thanks to the newsfeed). This vastly reduces the social distance as friends can easily challenge one about changes to a profile. The very nature and makeup (almost friends only) of Facebook reduces its social distance to the point where even SDT would predict that people would not lie on Facebook.
A few interesting observations arose during the experiment that warrant extra attention. Firstly, how do we define lying on Facebook? Certainly explicit lies would count, but what about omissions? A profile may be completely factual, but is it the whole truth and would we consider that a lie? Or do we simply view omissions as a compromise to keeping a profile short and sweet? Secondly, theories predicting how people lie seem to fail to consider the purpose of similar media. Arguably, Facebook and MySpace are exactly the same. However, Facebook primarily is for friends already met in real life. The origins of Facebook only strengthen this as it was meant for college students only in the beginning. Myspace in contrast is more of a general networking site. Lying to friends is a lot more serious than to the random strangers found on Myspace. We can see that the issue is more complicated than any one theory can predict by itself. Personally I find it reassuring that people, at least from my observations, are more real on Facebook than what our gut reaction may lead us to believe.
4 comments:
Interesting post! I also found that my subject's profile was surprisingly (based on Catalina's research, not the integrity of my friend) factual.
I believe that omissions should count as deception on Facebook. Of course, it depends on the relative importance of the information; no one should complain if one left out a love of stamp collecting in the Interest section, but people would likely get upset (and claim to be deceived) if one "forgot" to mention that they were an axe-murderer.
I agree with your point that Facebook networking is between those that have already met in real life, but I don't think that implies that everyone who could potentially view your profile (or photos of you) already knows you intimately. In my experience, people seem to pay the most attention to the information of people they have not yet met.
Joe,
I think that your post brings up its fair share of substantial points. First, I think that you are on to something when you talk about how people don't lie on Facebook as much as they would on Myspace, considering the intent of the medium. Like you said, with Facebook one would be lying to one's "friends", who could all to easily find out whether was was presented was aligned with the truth. However, with respect to Myspace, which is a mass networking site geared at making connections, rather than maintaining existing ones, lying would clearly be more prevalent.
Second, you bring up several interesting questions toward the end of your post that I wanted to address the concept of what constitutes as lying on Facebook. To me, as well as other self-proclaimed Facebook users, lying on Facebook can simply be posting a profile picture that is not you, but pretending that it is. With respect to omissions, I feel like it is difficult to make the argument that an omission is a form of lying. With Facebook individuals decide what information they are willing to make public. Thus, their decision to not include something is just that- a decision not to share something.
Your section about the social distance of Facebook is particularly interesting. While reading our numerous required readings and course book, Facebook seems to not entirely fit into one pre-fabricated psychological space. It has elements of an asynchronous discussion board, but also contains new elements not previously definted, like the newsfeed, photo albums, and numerous other features that made Facebook unique. I agree that these features, as well as the underlying purpose of the site, contribute to a closer social distance than if it is evaluated strictly under Wallace's criteria.
Technically, a lie by omission is still a lie, but since the Facebook information fields ask for very specific information,(and therefore it makes sense that a person would only provide exactly what is in the form) it's difficult to make that call.
I agree with your assessment of Social Distance Theory and how it relates to Facebook. According to SDT, Facebook, at first glance, would be a den of liars. However, Facebook is an odd case in the sense that it isn't a typical asynchronous environment. Also, there are people you know in real life as well as random strangers that have access to your profile, so I would say there's an added pressure to be more honest considering there may be someone that can contradict your lies.
It would actually be interesting to compare the type/degree of lies told on profiles now with the same, but prior to the newsfeed and other features being added.
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