Facebook: the social networking site that gives the owner of the profile the leverage to control what they want on it; from favorite books, to favorite movies to favorite quotes. With the profile owner’s intentional control of information in a technologically mediated environment, digital deception is bound to happen. When was the last time you came across a friend’s Facebook profile and saw that he/she listed hundreds of favorite books? How many times was that friends claim completely bogus, because well, he/she just doesn’t read? How many times have you untagged your Friday night beer pong pictures just because you heard job employers venture into a potential hire’s Facebook? These are all examples of digital deception. Basically, you either funnel what was posted about you (wall posts, photos) to what you want posted about you or you put up what you feel is most ideal (favorite movie title, quotes, books, etc). By doing such, you are creating a false image in the mind of the person sitting on the other side stalking our profiles, which put that way doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
The other day I went into one of my friend’s profile. It was funny to see how he listed all these philosophical books, and well I knew that he hadn’t read them. I knew that he had the least bit of interest in philosophy, touting it as being an “utter waste of time” at one point. In terms of accuracy, I rate the favorite books element of his Facebook profile a 1: completely inaccurate. Furthermore, when I saw his quotes, it was quite interesting…I had seen that same chunk of varying quotes elsewhere. And then I remembered it was in another of my friend’s profile. Although he always took an interest in quotes, the types of quotes posted were beyond what he would’ve liked strongly. He is a fan of short direct inspirational quotes – but when I saw the following quote, “you don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around- and why his parents will always wave back”, I thought twice. He was not a fan of kids at all, so when asking him he said he was trying to impress this girl. On the quotes element, I rated him a 2: somewhat inaccurate. I continued the ratings with other elements of his Facebook profile, and I verified the components of these elements FtF.
This was interesting because here I was doing a study on a CMC environment, and verifying using the FtF environment. What I saw on my friends profile and the response I received from him in a FtF environment supported the social distance theory. In a much richer media (i.e. FtF), he told me the truth and told me the intentions to posting what he did. Just by looking at his Facebook profile, located in a CMC environment, he would come off as a completely different person without a FtF meeting. The number of lies per interaction in the CMC environment was by no question, far greater than the FtF environment. As social distance increased, lies increased. This is not the case for the media richness theory which says that a CMC environment generates less lies than a FtF environment.
Basically, because people have certain self presentation goals they strategize a way to portray these goals using deception. In the case of my friend, deception was present in every element of his Facebook profile (books, quotes, pictures), but the way it was presented was subtle and strategic. In between a chunk of inspirational quotes, you have this one quote about children and human nature. My friend could have found all quotes of the aforementioned nature, but he didn’t, just because deception should be subtle and strategic.
Furthermore, to sum up, using my friends profile as an example, deception detection will be more accurate in FtF than in CMC. When I was FtF with him, there were more cues & feedback for detection in FtF. Also, as a person who has the leverage to edit the profile, CMC liars have the luxury of taking their sweet time. The CMC environment is simply much more conducive to liars.
Comments:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2774598650119543771&postID=2624869660791309842
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-4-option-2-xbook.html
2 comments:
Heena,
Your discussion of the Social Distance Theory seemed particularly accurate and well thought out. You supported your claims and summarized your findings nicely.
I agree completely with the distinction you make between CMC and FtF communication. CMC, when compared to FtF, is undoubtedly a leaner medium. As a result, and also due in part to the Social Distance Theory that you speak of, diception is easier to achieve. Facebook is such a great example because this is where society now turns to determine identity. Allowing for easy deception however, we must ask, is this the best place to turn?
Overall really nice job. There were a few gramatical errors and structural problems that could be fixed but nothing that hindered your overall message.
I agree that your comments regarding the Social Distance Theory were appropriate and well thought-out. I did the same assignment, and I anticipated that I would get similar results to the ones you did: that the person whose profile I looked at would be using at least some deception, because it is very easy to lie through CMC (in part, as you said, due to the fact that it can be asynchronous and thus gives people more time to think of something convincing).
My results ended up differing, but it is reassuring to see that there are other people who did the same experiment but DID get the results I thought I'd get, meaning that - if nothing else - at least I wasn't completely wrong.
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