Assignment 4, Option 2

Like many people who have posted before have commented, facebook is truly a revolutionary internet device. While social networking sites have existed before, Mark Zuckerberg (the creator) had the wonderful luck of creating a networking site designed for college kids that actually attracted college kids. Nearly everyone who goes to an undergraduate institution has some sort of profile on facebook. In recent years, more people have protected their profile so not just anyone can access their profile. I feel this current theme can be related to the hyperpersonal model because you are just allowing a picture of yourself to be shown and little more for people to infer details. Thus, you can create a certain image with a certain picture.

I chose to use one of my friends in my “experiment”. Conventional signals in facebook are such things as interests, hobbies, favorite music and movies. These are such items that are low cost and can be easily manipulated to change your general impression. Assessment signals are such things as name, birthday, hometown and relationship status. They are high cost signals which are much harder to lie about because they are easily verified and offer defining characteristics of you.

After talking about my friends profile with him I found out that he didn’t really lie about much. High cost assessment items such as birthday, hometown and sex were spot on. They’re just too hard to lie about. Some conventional signals were lied about more often. Hobbies in particular were often lies. He gave the impression he was more into athletics and school work than he really was. Movies and music were also lied about more because he didn’t update his profile to reflect his current tastes. Lying in these categories makes sense because they are low cost and easily lied about. This idea of lying fits into the hyperpersonal model of self presentation because it makes others believe things about you which might not be entirely true. Due to facebooks inherently textual environment, cues such as verbal, nonverbal and situational cues are not present. This allow for a much easier environment to lie because all you have to analyze someone on is the text that they write.

Overall I found the exercise interesting to see where truth normally falls in facebook profiles.