Facebook interests me because of how different profiles can be from person to person. Some people choose to share a lot of personal information while others only share minor details. Each profile starts off with a picture if the person has chosen to upload one. Next to the picture is their identity information listing the user's name, birthday, gender, sexual preference, hometown, and their email or aim user name. I don't think people are likely to lie about these pieces of information. A person can choose to list as much or as little about their interests and activities as they want and control who is able to see the information, and as a result, people on facebook have total control of how people see them.
I analyzed a certain friend's facebook profile to see how accurate each category was and then afterwards i asked him from 1 to 5 how truthful they are:
Activities: under activities he had "hangin wit some *expletive*'s". I wont say the word because it might offend some people. I know that this isn't typical of my friend and doesn't really represent who he really is. I guessed that this was either a joke or that my friend using selective-self presentation. He rated this category as a 2 so there is an obvious lie here.
Interests: My friend chose not to have this section at all on his profile.
Music: For the most part the music category went along with what I knew about my friends music tastes, all metal bands. I was surprised to see a few rap artists listed. I didn't think it was typical of my friend to like rap, he normally hates it. I know some of his friends like that music so this is most likely listed in order to alter the impressions certain people have. My friend rated this as a 3, so this category is true for the most part.
TV shows/movies: These are two categories that my friend listed things I'm positive he actually likes. His rating of the truthfulness of these categories was 5 for both. He even said himself that he sees no reason to lie about what sort of movies or tv shows he watches.
My friends profile was for the most part accurate other than a few instances of selective self presentation. He chose voluntarily to not say very much about himself but that doesn't make his profile inaccurate just lacking in detail. Because it is unlikely that a person will challenge your profile's accuracy, a person can lie very blatantly and not worry about being caught. Even so, I think that people tend to use more subtle methods to alter how people perceive them through their facebook profile.
The next thing to address is where does facebook fit between Ftf and Email in regards to social distance and richness of media. Facebook is unique in that even though it is for the most part asynchronous, the community it creates has a significant effect in reducing social distance. The richness of the facebook media has components of FtF and cmc, as one can see photos of their friends and share audio and video clips. I believe that neither the Social-distance theory or the Media-richness theory can accurately represent facebook as it shows aspects of both theories. Because the social distance is low and the media richness is rather high for facebook I would say that facebook can be best described by the feature based model and would show a lie percentage somewhere between that of FtF and instant messaging.
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3 comments:
I was surprised to see that you encountered such large discrepancies. That differed from my experience with this experiment; I found only small, subtle lies (rated “3” or higher) that seemed intended only to tweak the person’s image rather than radically redefine it.
I agree that the subtle methods of lying are definitely more prevalent in everyday life. I know, just thinking when I first came to Cornell, there was definitely an unspoken pressure to include things in the “Interests” section that might give more of an appearance of fitting it. However, what I’ve also realized is that the longer you stay at a place, the more that pressure will erode. It’d be interesting to do a study of someone’s profile over a few years to see how it changes with that person’s social situation.
Awesome post!
Very nice job on the thorough analysis of the Facebook profile. Your knowledge of your friend’s interests help to reveal the reasons behind his deception. It’s interesting that you bring up how people rarely question a profile’s accuracy. I was thinking that lies would be easy to find because of how the information is recordable, but it’s true that the tendency is to believe information in the profile, and it’s difficult to prove otherwise. Like how your friend mentioned a few rap groups that you were surprised to see, anyone that doesn’t know him very well would have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the information.
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