Hi!
I chose to do option #2 in assigment #4. I am fascinated by the facebook phenomena and an chance given to me to explore it in further depth is exciting.
While Facebook started as just a websit for college students that gave their name, major, age and a few other basid facts; the site has evolved into much more with applications such as "what do you think of me?" , "quote of the day", "advanced wall" and the all knowing "news-feed." The most basic Facebook preofiles include a picture of the person (however this picture is not necessarily a self portrait), and below the picture are more options such as viewing other pictures of the person, "poke-them", "message them,'' and "add as a friend." On the left hand side of the page we start with personal information" age, sex, interested in, hometown, looking for, birthday and religious views. Below this is the mini-feed which provides an outline of the person's recent activity on the site (including new friends, groups joined and events attending).
The next section of the page allows the person to give contact information such as email, screen name, phone number and address. Below this section one can provide further personal information such as activities, interests, favorite music, TV-shows, movies and books, quotes and "about me." Next the person can provide education information such as where they went to high-school and where they go to college and in addition can provide information about past/current work experience.
Relating the Facebook site to the signals of identity discussed by Donath (1999), one could say that assessment signals (those difficult to manipulate) would be email address, phone, and your picture. It is scary to realize that most of the options on Facenook would be categorized as conventional signals. One can lie (or tweak) their birthday, name, hometown, cell phone, interests, job experience, highschool and sometimes even picture. While many people may not actually lie about this information the ability to do so directly correlates to the Social Distance Theory which posites that lying is uncomfortable so we use more "socially distant" media to lie. Facebook allows people to lie about small aspects of who they are and if taken to its full potential one can pretend to be almost a completely different person (if they don't put lots of extra pictures up). Similarly the medium allows people to have full ability to self- present..e.g. one can be extremely funny, serious, religious, crazy or sober on Facebook. In addition on can select certian pictures to present in an effort to show relationship they believe will make them appear more attractive.
I looked at one of my close friends Facebook profiles and had them rate their honesty on a scale of 1-5 ( 5 being completely honest) on each element of their profile. The results are as follows: education-5, sex-5, name-5, hometown-1, religious view-1, interested in-5, relationship status-5, email/aim/mobile-5, activites-3, interests-3, favorite music-2, TV-shows and movies-1, books-4, and finally major-1. What I find particularly interesting is that not knowing this person someone might actually believe some of the facts they wrote in their additional personal information which do seem a bit odd when looking at the other information on the profile. However, knowing this person well it is obvious that the lies they told were more to give their profile a humorous affect rather then pretend to be someone they weren't. Given this I raise the question as to whether we should be more careful about how we assess lies eg...are the subjects trying to deceive or just crack a joke? Should we look at each situation differently? Are people really likely to deceive Facebook, or is it more common in instant-messaging and chat rooms? Why/Why not?
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Facebook has actually become the top priority in peoples lives. It’s like a new world but it’s a world all to their own, one that they can create to their liking. We can pretty much shape the person we want to be. Our age, interests, and pretty much any fact about our lives can be tweaked around to be the person we want to be. It may not be a technical term but if you think about it, it’s ID fraud. The assessment signals such as email, telephone are the ones that directly influence your ID and are difficult to change. Hence why people on facebook put so much time and effort into the “about me, favorite movies, music, activities” sections because they have more control over shaping the person they want to project.
Hi Whitney! I don’t believe that the lies that are told on Facebook to simply “crack a joke” should be categorized any differently. They are still misleading the viewer to believe things about the person in the profile that are not true. Any way you look at it, its still a form of deception. It is obvious that Facebook users use selective self-presentation to portray an image of themselves that they want others to see. In doing this, we tend to exaggerate the truth to make ourselves become more appealing to others. While these exaggerations may not seem like that big of a deal, and not technical lies per say, they are still extraordinarily deceptive. People use facebook for a variety of reasons, whether is to simply make friends, stay connected with friends or meet potential new boyfriend, we always want to be viewed as attractive and interesting even if it means stretching the truth a bit.
Hi, Whitney. I like your post.
About the questions you proposed, I think certainly these two situations you mentioned should be treated differently. If one just wants to crack a joke, although he is intentionally lying, his purpose is not to form false belief about him. His intention is to make people who read his profile laugh. This case would not satisfy the characteristics of deception.
If your second question is observed under Feature-Based Model, Facebook is asynchronous, definitely not recordless, and distributed. Since it only satisfies one category, people would not prefer Facebook in order to deceive others. I think this can also be explained by Social Distance Theory. As you mentioned in your post, according to Social Distance Theory, people prefer socially distant media to lie and Facebook is certainly not a socially distant media. College and high school students use Facebook as one of their major tools to build networks and to know more about others. Therefore, I would say people deceive more frequently in instant-messaging and chat rooms than in Facebook.
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