#4, option 2...a ginger spice

For this assignment I decided to have one of my best friends at Cornell rate the accuracy of all the elements of her facebook profile, we'll call her "Ginger Spice." I chose to study Ginger Spice because I know her so well, so I knew I would be able to tell if she was being honest with her ratings. Just as Catalina did with her study, I had Ginger Spice rate the accuracy of all the elements of her facebook profile on a scale of 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate). Ginger Spice's average accuracy was a 4.1 throughout the levels of Profile Picture, General Information, Groups, Contact Information, Personal Information, and Education Information, and I found that her self-ratings seemed to be very accurate according to the information I know about her personally. According to Goffman and Baumeister's Self-Presentation Goals, the subject were most likely to lie frequently but subtly. The goal of lying frequently is to appear attractive to the viewer, and the goal of lying subtly is to appear honest to the viewer, which is for the most part consistent with what I found with Ginger Spice's facebook profile. While I found that Ginger Spice lied quite frequently throughout her profile, the lies were quite subtle for the most part (usually rated as a 3 or 4). However, there were a fair amount of 1's and 2's (enough for me to notice), and because of this I came to the conclusion that for Ginger Spice, appearing attractive is more important than appearing honest in the facebook environment.

In the facebook environment, there are very few assessment signals, and many conventional signals, as is typical with many online environments. As for the assessment signals, there were really only the profile picture and other photos, the email address (which confirmed the Cornell network), and the phone number. These are all assessment signals because they are the most closely linked with Ginger Spice's "real world" identity. What I found interesting with Ginger Spice's assessment signals, though, is that they were all completely accurate except her profile picture, which she ranked as a 1 (it's a picture of an ugly llama she found on google). I found this an interesting stray from the typical way we look at assessment signals online, because while this should be something linked to her identity to signify her real appearance, it was instead replaced with a gag photo, not to make herself seem more attractive physically, but perhaps to seem more attractive in terms of having a sense of humor about herself. I think it is easy to do this however, because she has 245 other photos which represent her accurately (rated a 5), which allows her to turn the profile picture into a conventional signal, really.

As for everything else in the profile, these were all conventional signals as well, because they are simply easy to manipulate text-based self-identification. However, the deception I noticed in these conventional signals as well is similar to the issue with the profile picture. There was frequent deception throughout the conventional signals of the profile, but they weren't necessarily kept close to the truth to appear honest, in fact, there were a few which were intentionally inaccurate (listed as a 1 or 2), the purpose of which was to appear more attractive (again, not attractive physically, but in terms of a sense of humor). For example, she listed her major as "History, Soul Decision," not because it's true, but because Soul Decision is a funny, fake major (check out their hit single "Faded," if you're not familiar).

So, because of the reduced cues and the editable nature of facebook, it is very easy to selectively self-present, and everyone can do it in their own way. Some people take facebook quite seriously as a way for them to network with others and identify themselves in an online social environment, and others see facebook as a kind of joke, where they aren't necessarily deceptive to put their best facebook-foot forward, but as a way of poking fun at the facebook profile and themself for having one (as Ginger Spice is doing). However, the interesting thing about being deceptive as a joke on facebook, is that it really is just another way of selectively self-presenting yourself to others as a person who has a good sense of humor, where you actually put quite a bit of thought into the profile, specifically so that it appears that you don't care about it at all. Therefore, Ginger Spice's facebook profile does align with the Self-Presentational Goals theory in that she used the reduced cues to selectively self-present herself in order to appear more attractive to the viewers who might over-attribute her qualities, but that appearing attractive to the viewer is more important than appearing honest to the viewer, and that in fact appearing dishonest is really just a way of appearing more attractive.

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http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/09/42-he-didnt-lie.html

http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/09/42-anatomy-of-taken-facebooker.html