Facebook profiles certainly allow for identity-based digital deception, but lying does not take place blatantly and brashly—it is more of a gentle, implicit process. In simply having users input their tastes and interests into a “Personal Info” section of their profile, the site grants the power of completely controlled identity manipulation and selective self-presentation. However, in interviewing one of my friends, I’ll call her E for anonymity purposes, I found that she kept an extremely accurate profile—with only exceptions for minor selectivity and unintentional lies due to forgetting to update.
The main elements of a Facebook profile that a user can customize include a picture, basic info (year, sex, relationship status, birthday, hometown, e-mail address), and as mentioned before, personal information. I had E rate the subsections of her “Personal Info” on a scale from 1, being extremely unaccurate to 5, being absolutely accurate (she only rated the personal information, because she instantly acknowledged all the other, more serious information (contact, education info, etc) was completely truthful. She gave her “Activities” list a 4 because she is involved in much more than the three that the profile indicates. Her “Interests” received a 3; she last updated that a few years ago and her interests have since changed. E’s favorite movie, TV show, music, and book sections all received 5’s.
Having known E for more than two years, I can say with confidence that her profile is an extremely accurate representation of her real self. The only aspect that I am not so sure about is indeed her “Interests” section—which reads “guitar, photography, tv, outdoor stuff”. Specifically, the photography and outdoors elements struck me as uncharacteristic. And as she explained, this was because these were her old interests, and it has been long since she adjusted her profiles. However, these demi-lies were extremely low in frequency and slight in magnitude.
In terms of Donath’s assessment signals, some can be manipulated on Facebook while others cannot. A user’s name and e-mail address is required, but other assessment-providing information such as hometown and physical appearance (via the profile picture and other photos “tagged” of the user) can be omitted. Conventional signals are completely subject to alteration, by changing the appearance and content of the profile. E was very honest in the way she gave off her signals.
Because Facebook is very closely tied to reality—users usually meet each other face-to-face before becoming “friends” on the website—it is generally difficult to make large magnitude lies. But what Facebook does allow is the user to create a perfectly tailored, selective self-presentation. Editing profiles is asynchronous, and subtle, often subconscious modifications make it extremely difficult to detect when deception is taking place—even when one is doing the deceiving.
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2 comments:
I definitely agree that with Facebook profiles, selective self-presentation places a major role. Basically everything that we choose to put or exclude in the profile falls under selective self-presentation.
It is interesting how you mentioned that your friend had most of her information has extremely accurate in her profile. I think that this makes sense, because like in lecture last week, one of the "self-presentation goals" was to appear honest. This implies that we only want to lie subtly, if at all, for anticipation of possible future interactions with people we are friends with on Facebook. Though we were talking about online dating profiles, I think this definitely applies in the chase of Facebook profiles too.
An interesting variable that you introduce, about how your friend had inaccurate information just because she had not updated it in a while makes a good point about unintentional deception. In that case, according to our definition in lecture (digital deception: the intentional control of information in a technologically mediated message to create a false belief in the receiver of the message) would technically not apply in that case.
So although the information was inaccurate, it is not considered deception, because of the sole fact that it wasn't intentional.
Great post. This was a thorough assessment and it nicely points to theory. I'm particularly interested in your final point about Facebook being so closely tied to reality. This fact makes Facebook a much different CMC channel. It works opposite of what we normally expect from online interaction, in which we begin with FtF and end up in a CMC setting. It's true that this makes deception much more difficult to get away with. Deceptive conventional signals in Facebook would have to be very subtle to avoid detection from someone who knows you in real life.
As we start talking about building online relationships and interpersonal attraction, we begin to see the impact of mixed mode relationships and how our CMC interaction changes when there is potential for a FtF meeting. It's very interesting to examine Facebook and how deception and self-presentation come into play in Facebook's subtle profile editing. Especially when many of the relationships online have already started out as FtF.
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