Assignment 4, Option 2: Whoops

For this assignment, I chose to break down the anatomy of the Facebook profile, and to analyze my friends’ view of her own. I originally submitted this assignment Tuesday morning, but when I returned to the blog to begin commenting, I couldn’t find mine anywhere, so apparently I never actually posted it.

A typical Facebook page has many different aspects that can tell you a lot about a person - assuming they choose to utilize all the features and are honest with their responses. The first, and usually the most ‘important’ part of a person’s profile (at least in terms of interpersonal communication) is the profile picture. It is the starting point of anyone’s profile, and can convey a lot about the person. The profile picture, along with all the other photos of a person in their profile, is probably the largest example of selective self-presentation on Facebook. Next to the profile picture and directly under the user’s name, is the Status. This is similar to an away message on an instant messaging program, as it gives the person a chance to let their friends know what they are doing. While sometimes useful, it is often obsolete, as it is time sensitive, and is typically not accurate unless the user is of the rare breed that updates it regularly. The next major facet of the profile is the “basic” information: Networks, Sex, Sexual Orientation, Relationship Status, Looking For, Birthday, and Religious Views. This section of the Facebook profile is probably the most accurate and truthful part of the entire profile. Most people don’t lie about these basic characteristics of themselves, aside from the ever-popular “I’m married to my best friend” joke. Scanning down the page, the next thing you’ll find is the Mini-Feed. It’s impossible to lie in this section, as it is Facebook controlled content, and it simply displays what you have actually done. It is possible however, to selectively self-present here, as the user can “X” out certain things they have done so that their actions aren’t displayed. Contact Info is the next part of the Facebook profile. Many people choose not to display all of their contact info. Most people will simply show the e-mail address they registered with (it is mandatory to display this) and possibly their AIM screen name or phone number. Occasionally an overzealous user will display their address and phone number for everyone to see, but this typically isn’t a great idea. Directly under Contact Info is Personal Info. This is where you will most likely learn the most about the user, as they can display their favorite interests, music, TV shows, movies, books, quotes, and where they can tell you all “About Me”. It seems like there is a great deal of variation as to the amount of information displayed in this section. Some users will list every single thing they are a fan of, as well as give you a six paragraph autobiography to boot. Others will simply list one or two interests without bothering to use punctuation; it basically depends on the personality of the person. Overall the Facebook profile is manipulated a lot by users to display themselves as favorably as possible, thus the most prevalent theory at work on Facebook is the selective self-presentation theory.

To test this theory and to see if it was an accurate attribution, I questioned one of my friends about her Facebook profile and had her rank the accuracy of her statements. Her rankings of each part of her profile coincided with my original thoughts of her page. For her profile picture she stated that it was a 5, saying that “It’s actually me, so it has to be accurate.” This is obviously true, and while she didn’t quite realize that there are varying degrees of honesty when it comes to self-presentation, I would say the picture is very accurate as to her looks and personality. As for her status which was “Alex is finally sleeping”, she ranked it a 1, because as she put it “I’m obviously not sleeping right now.” This is a prime example of how inaccurate the status can be, as things can change so quickly and a lot of users don’t consistently update it. My friend also decided to not show anything in her Mini-Feed, selectively choosing not to make her recent activity public. She ranked all of her Basic Info a 5, except for her Relationship Status. She had this ranked at 1, because she is one of the users who is “married to” a female friend. Her ranks of 5 for the rest of the basics confirm that she was telling the truth, as most people seem to do in this section. For Contact Info she ranked her honesty as a 5, which is true. She shared her e-mail address, AIM screen name and cell phone number, which were all accurate. For Personal Info, she ranked her Interests at 4, and I would have to agree, as she listed some things, but wasn’t exactly too detailed, and I’m sure she’s interested in more than she shares. As for Music, she ranked this a 3. She only had two music groups listed, and she attributes the 3 to the fact that she “left a lot out because I don’t like them as much.” This exemplifies selective self-presentation; while I can confirm that she is in fact a big fan of the two groups she chose to list, she decided that the others were less important and thus didn’t deserve to be listed. She ranked her TV favorites as a 4, but then went on to say “that’s basically it, and I’m embarrassed by the others I like.” This strongly suggests selective self-presentation theory, as she has other favorites, but decided that they aren’t part of how she wants to convey herself to others. She only listed one Movie favorite, ranking the category’s accuracy a 5. I can attest that she does enjoy other movies, but she obviously deduced that they play a less important role in her personality and taste. She also might feel that listing one movie that she is extremely fond of makes a more powerful statement than listing 20 that she simply enjoyed. As for her Favorite Books, her profile says “I don’t like to read.” She marked this a 3. I attribute that middling ranking to the fact that she does enjoy some books such as the Harry Potter series, but the short list of books she enjoys is outweighed by her overall “dislike of reading”. As for Favorite Quotes, Alex has “I am the worst ever at remembering quotes.” She ranked this response as a 5, and I would have to agree that she is awful at remembering them, and when she attempts to recall one it is always way off. In her About Me section, Alex is a little more dishonest, but not in a harmful or bad way. She simply lists: “I’m Alex. I hate Facebook.” While she certainly is Alex, I doubt she hates Facebook, as she keeps an updated profile and visits the site frequently. She said the accuracy was a 2, and I would have to agree.

So once again, I feel the major theory at play on Facebook is the Selective Self-Presentation Theory. Most people are not downright dishonest; they are simply picking and choosing what truths they want to allow others to know about them.

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Assignment #4: Digitial Deception and Facebook

For this assignment I decided to analyze my best friend’s Facebook profile. I thought that she would be an appropriate person to consider since I know her very well and she tends to be extremely honest so I was curious to see how she portrayed herself online. I first asked her to rate the accuracy of her profile based on the different elements. She rated herself a 5 on all categories and after carefully looking over all aspects of her Facebook page, she is 100% correct with all information. Where some people tend to hide certain interests such as listening to bands like NSYNC or watching movies such as High School Musical, my friend posted all interests whether they were “cool” or not.
After verifying the truth of her profile, I decided to consider the Feature Based Approach. The Social Distance and Media Richness only assume richness and distance affect the use of particular media and that is why I chose Feature Based. According to this approach, synchronicity (degree to which messages are exchanged instantaneously), recordability (degree to which information is documented) and distribution are considered (if speaker and listener share same physical space). In regards to my friend’s facebook profile, it is an asynchronous space and the theory predicts that in synchronous spaces such as Ftf or instant messaging more lying occurs since people tend to lie spontaneously. Since Facebook is high in recordability considering all of the information is on record on the internet, according to the Feature’ Based Model, individuals are less likely to lie as in my friend’s case. This makes sense because people are more likely to get caught when lies that are recordable as they are on facebook. In regard to distribution, facebook is a medium where individuals are distributed. The theory suggests people are more likely to lie about issues such as physical setting. For example, on the phone you could easily say I am studying, when you are really at the movies. On Facebook, you can update your status to say where you are. In regards to my friends profile she did not have her status written at the time. However, often the status of a person of Facebook is a lie simply because they forget to change it. For example, one of my friends had “At Olin” for fours days. I am sure he was not at olin for four straight days, he just did not have the opportunity to change his profile. I think that based on my findings, facebook supports the features based model. THe theory even accounts for the fact that in regards to deception, not all lies are homogeneous. Also lies about facts are least likely to be told in a recordable media. I think recordability most certainly had a major impact on the truth behind my friends Facebook since Facebook mainly lists facts about a person.

Assignment 4: Accuracy on Facebook(!)

For this assignment I chose the second option, and had my friend rate her Facebook profile, and found that it was pretty accurate (according to her at least). There were three parts she rated as one, and they were all things she put down as jokes. For example, her hometown is “I’m a creep. And so is Laura, MA” and she took a quiz that showed what her DNA looked like, and surprisingly, that is not true. The only other parts that she did not rate as one were her interests and music because she said her tastes have changed and she didn’t update her profile. Her picture, contact, education, work, and personal information were all correct.
I would consider everything that is displayed on Facebook a conventional signal. All the information, including the display picture, is very easy to change. According to our class discussion on Thursday, people will lie frequently to appear attractive, and lie subtly to appear honest. My friend’s Facebook profile completely went against this, because she only lied three times in her profile, and all three of those times it is blatantly obvious it is not true. I think there was not a lot of lying in my friend’s profile because none of the information provided is very personal. Her height, weight, and body type are not listed, which were some of the most lied about things in dating profiles. Also, if she lied about those things, they could probably be proven to be lies by looking at all 331 pictures of her. For these reasons, I think that most peoples’ Facebooks are probably more accurate than we think.

4 Confessions of a Facebook Profile

For this assignment I decided to analyze the deception level of the Facebook profile of a friend from home. First, it is necessary to determine the various elements of a Facebook profile: physical appearance; relationship status; world views, including political and religious; activities and interests; favorites; and finally, contact and network information. Conventional signals, which are low cost displays that are only conventionally associated with a characteristic, are quite common and in fact dominate the anatomy of a Facebook profile, including relationship status, world views, activities and interests, and favorites. In contrast, there is much fewer assessment signals, which are costly displays directly related to an organism’s characteristics. Although physical appearance can be a conventional signal, the only way to determine physical appearance on Facebook is through actual posted photos (instead of a weight and height listing), so the display’s cost is increased. Also, since the only way to join a school network on Facebook is to have a working school email address, and it would be costly for someone to try to contact you with the wrong phone number or AIM screen name, contact and network information can be classified as an assessment signal.

My friend completed a self-report of profile accuracy, rating these Facebook profile elements on a scale of 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate). She rated physical appearance, relationship status, and contact and network information as 5, and her world views, activities and interests, and favorites as 4.

When I performed the cross-validation of her Facebook profile, I found that her profile was generally accurate. Her photos represented her physical appearance accurately, though I’m sure that a few, less desirable ones were untagged every now and then. Her relationship status, single, was also accurate. Her world views, though constantly changing, were currently as follows: political, liberal; religious, Justin Timberlake. Believe it or not, my friend does not worship Justin Timberlake; she is Catholic. In this case, the lie was so egregious that it was not meant to be taken seriously. A deception, yes, but an intentionally humorous one at that. Her interests, as well as her favorites, were accurate overall, but she had a particularly interesting activity listed – saving the world. Unless my friend has a part-time job where she has to quickly change in a broom closet, I think again she is being somewhat facetious in her Facebook profile. Finally, her contact and network information were entirely accurate.

I believe that my friend’s Facebook profile supports the selective self-presentation theory. The construction of any Facebook profile involves selective self-presentation – there is no way a person can list everything about themselves. Inevitably, my friend, like most others, chose her favorite, most desirable qualities. The main goals involved with selective self-presentation are to appear honest and attractive. In the case we looked at in class, this was achieved through frequent but subtle lies. My friend’s profile is the exact opposite though – by lying infrequently and so grossly, she appeared attractive by showing a sense of humor, and honest by the contrast of these obvious lies with the rest of her profile.

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Assignment 4: Facebook Face

For this assignment I decided to make an analysis of my friend's facebook profile to determine the accuracy of the different sections through an interview and observation. I was wondering how the self-presentation and a lack of face-to-face confrontations might affect the amount of deception that occurs on facebook. He, of course, has himself listed as a Cornell student studying as an English major. Both of which are true, but are also fields which I would expect most people to answer truthfully. Deception can only go so far on facebook, and it is usually limited to things that others would have to try to disprove. His facebook status was rather comical but possibly truthful. It was more of a sarcastic over exaggeration than a fact. The rest of his basic info was also rather accurate. Birthday, relationship status, interested in, sex, political views, hometown, and religious views are some of the fields that are more rarely lied about on facebook since the user is usually aware that others would know if he/she lied about them.

When we got down into the actual information section of the facebook profile I was worried that the ratings on the scale 1 to 5 would start to drop. It seems like this section is the one most prone for people to use in order to deceive and present themselves how they wish to be seen by those who would view their facebook profiles. However, in this case they did not; most of the fields were extremely accurate as well. Under the favorite TV shows section he listed 11 TV shows, all of which I know he has watched and enjoyed thoroughly. His favorite movies are listed as a top 101 favorite movies in order. I know that he spent a large deal of time creating this list and making sure that it was accurate. He rated the majority of these fields as 5 and I’m inclined to agree completely with him.

Considering facebook is a lean medium of communication, and, what seems to be, an easy area for deception I chose the Social Distance Theory. The theory says that the more lean the medium, there is increased chance of identity based deception. I find that what I was predicting would be that identity based deception, really only was selective self-presentation. The actual content was not there to deceive, only to make you perceive a single side of my friend. The side does exist, it just does not characterize him completely. He used facebook to create a profile for himself without using deception, just not telling everything that one would need to know about him to know him well on a face-to-face basis.

Assignment 4: Surprisingly Honest Face

For this assignment, I decided to dive in to the anatomy of a facebook profile. Each profile can be divided into about 8 separate customizable parts: the basic info, the contact info, the education info, the work info, the picture, the layout and the applications. Each of these is voluntarily given and shared with the other members of the site. When one considers which signals might be assessment and conventional, there are, of course, more conventional than assessment signals on such an asynchronous space. Almost everything included on a facebook profile can be manipulated or hidden in some way but if one considers the information that one actually chooses to share than there are a couple of assessment signals. The person’s school email address is usually a good indicator of where that person goes to school. If someone helped build a website or contributed to one and they leave the URL on the page than that can be an indicator of some projects that they may be working on. Facebook lets other users know if you are online at the same time as they and that is a good indicator of the kinds of hours during which people operate. Pretty much everything else on a facebook profile is a conventional signal.

Now when I interviewed my friend about her facebook profile, I pulled out my laptop, brought up her profile and asked her to rate the accuracy of each of the 8 parts into which I had previously divided the profile. As we went from section to section, I was barraged with little questions about technicalities and exception to the accuracy system. She wanted to know how I would be rating her accuracy but I told her that I would not tell her so she could not shape her answers to go with theory that she thought I was trying to prove. By the end of our assessment, she had rated all parts of her profile with either a 5 or 4 and many of her 4s were only given as fours because she did not want to give all 5s.

When I evaluated my friend’s profile and her responses to my questions, I found that it supported a theory that I agreed with (for the most part) when I heard it in class, the media richness theory. For the most part, my friend was very truthful about all the information that she put on her profile. She did not put much personal information but the stuff that she did put up is accurate as far as I know as her friend. Some could say that the great amount of information that she chose not to include was an act of digital deception but I do not think this is the case. When Hancock was defining digital deception, he mentioned how it entail purposely excluding information in the hopes of giving someone a false idea about who you are and what you stand for, etc. I know that my friend’s lack of information on her profile was probably a result of practical reasoning (like avoiding harassment or stalkers) and her own laziness to spill out her whole life in text fields. I really don’t believe that she cares enough about the opinions of the facebook community to painstakingly scrutinize every aspect of her profile before putting it up. I was surprised to see how much more truthful she is on a CMC medium than she is in her daily correspondence(I have seen say some pretty outrageous lies to people's faces).

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-lying-on-facebook.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-option-2-edit-profilesave-changes.html

4, option 1: Canada or Ireland

For this assignment to work I decided to would choose a person that did not know me well, yet would still be interested in what I had to say. The media that I choose were Ftf for the rich and AIM chat for the lean. The traveling memory that I lied about in my Ftf conversation was that I went to Canada over the weekend and lost a $1000 in Casino Niagara. On the other hand, I also told him the truth over AIM about my spring break trip to Ireland. It was not surprising for me to see that he could not detect the lie in any media. However, I did notice that he was less reluctant to accept my Ireland story but over time he started believing me.

Lying in the Ftf proved to be an easier feat since I was able to make eye contact and do some hand movements to really make the case that I was not lying. Furthermore, I was easily able to look at the person I was lying to and play off his non-verbal cues. For example, when I said that I lost a $1000 dollars, his facial expression changed to disbelief and immediately I was able to reply that I was not lying and he had to believe me. This type of action would have not been possible to perform on a CMC where I would not be able to observe the non-verbal cues of my friend. My Ftf experience goes against the Social Distance Theory which states that we lie most in a lean media since it is uncomfortable to lie Ftf. However, this theory would be true if I were telling a lie to my friend that was outrageous and then he would be able to detect all my non-verbal and physiological cues such as gaze aversion, hand finger movements, ‘ah’ speech disturbances etc. Since I had the time to plan for the lie, I was not nervous and was able to convince him about my loss in Canada. Therefore, I would agree with the Media Richness Theory that people lie most in rich media. It was very interesting to note that the truth that I told my friend over CMC was harder to tell that the lie during my Ftf conversation with him. This fact definetly agrees with Bos et al. (2002), which states that there will be delayed trust in lean media with a fragile trust. I certainly observed times where my friend would stop believing me and then start believing me again.

When I asked him about the deception methods he used to detect the lies he said for the Ftf chat he looked for steady eye contact, the tone of my voice and any interruptions in my speech. These non-verbal cues were very important and I saw how the truth bias came into play in this whole situation. Since all these cues were lost in the CMC, my friends was very hesitant to believe me and relied purely on how outrageous the information I told him was.

Assignment 4, Facebook Facade

Looking through the different Facebook profiles of my "friends," I noticed there are a lot of liars out there. Firstly, let me point out "friends" is in quotes because to be completely honest, some of the people I'm so called friends with I've never met and have no idea who they are. Why you would friend complete strangers is beyond me, but many a stranger has friended me. Anyway, getting back to the assignment, while I was looking through this I noticed that many of my friends’ profiles (and my profile too, for that matter) are complete lies. From my interpretation of it, they are not lies in the way one would lie on a dating service profile, but instead they are jokes making fun of either other people, social situations, or facebook itself. These are not lies intended to make themselves appear in a positive light or improve their image, but at the same time are not accurate descriptions of themselves. If a person did not know the individual whose profile they were looking at, they would not be able to pick up on the sarcasm associated with each "about me" feature and might believe that some of my friends have incestuous or homicidal tendencies.

Since most of the signals on facebook are conventional signals (favorite books, movies, music, tv shows), and it's a very lean asynchroneous form of communication, the social distance theory would say that this is an excellent medium for indentity deception. Even the simple statisticity assesment signals are self reported and can easily be altered, so there is no guarantee any information is completely accurate. Based on my impression of how often people posted an inaccurate relationship status or sarcastic interests or choices in movies, I would say this is true.

I chose the friend whose profile I would use at random, deciding beforehand that I would choose the top right person that appeared under my "friends at Cornell" window. Coincidently, the profile I chose to study appears to be extremely accurate. She keeps her conventional signals as minimal as possible, only listing movies, music, books, quotes, and about me. She rated everything a 5 as completely accurate, and after looking at her profile I have to agree. Her picture was her, she didn’t put on a fake relationship status, and she only listed movies and books she knew she loved. Some would say she had a very minimalist profile, with only 2-3 listings in each signal, and only one quote, and a single, brief sentence for an about me. She manages to keep an air of mystery and cool in her profile by having minimal information in it, and doesn’t lie at all, though I know for a fact she is leaving out information. She was very selective in the information she put out there and this leads to a positive self representation, though I have to agree with colleen about lies of omission. Ultimately, you decide what you want people to know about you via facebook, and although people may not be able to completely know the person who’s profile they’re looking at, the information you choose to disclose and the way you disclose it can give insight into you interests and personality.

#4: The Girl Who Cried Food Poisoning

Today I signed up to volunteer in Africa for three weeks during my winter vacation. Despite my excitement, my friend with me at the time responded with “It was nice knowing you, you are going to die from malaria.” I decided to tell her about my experience three summers ago where I volunteered in a third world county in the Caribbean. I told her about how I built a house and jumped thirty feet into a lake, which were all true. I also decided to tell a lie about how I got violently sick by food poisoning. Later on, I also decided to tell the same story to my friend online. Although neither suspected me of lying, partly because of my nature and partly because they either did not care to prove me wrong or knew nothing about the trip to assume I was lying, I found myself having two very different experiences lying in each media.

As to be expected, it was unbelievably easier to lie online than it was face-to-face. To my advantage, online communication lacks all the nonverbal cues that hinted to the fact that I was lying. Since talking online is an example of editable, asynchronous media, I could take my time and think about what I wanted to say before I said it. Therefore, it was not weird to take a few seconds to respond and she could not hear my voice falter or my eyes look up to try as I tried to make my story plausible. I also said the truth with the lies in similar styles so nothing seemed out of place. On the other hand, even though she might not have noticed, while talking face-to-face, I played with my hair a lot and had to pause to think about what I was saying before I said it out loud. Yet, when I was telling the truth, I told the story fast, animatedly and with many more details than I included in the lie. This experience relates to the Social Distance Theory which states that lying in uncomfortable so we use the more “socially distant” media in order to tell lies. I definitely felt much more uncomfortable face-to-face yet felt completely relaxed when I was telling my other friend the stories online.

Although lying is extremely uncomfortable, I wouldn’t conclude that I would always follow the Social Distance Theory and choose lean media everytime. I feel that rich media allows me to appear genuine as if I have nothing to hide, which lean media doesn't offer. This allows me to get away with many more lies even though it may make me an immoral person who will probably get food poisoning on my next trip.

Assignment #4: Digital Deception through Facebook

Facebook is an excellent example of an asynchronous form of communication that allows people to use the hyperpersonal model’s selective self-presentation. Users can control every bit of information on their profile to make themselves appear more attractive than they really are. In addition to appearing attractive to their viewers, Facebook users can also try to appear honest. So if they are to lie about their personal information, they lie subtly to prevent viewers from detecting any deception.

When viewers look at profiles, they tend to glance at the assessment signals (costly displays) such as network information, name, birthday, hometown, etc. However, conventional signals (low cost displays) such as activities, interests, movie, music, books, etc., are subjective to digital deception. Facebook is a lean medium that is mainly composed of conventional signals. According to the social distance theory, it is an excellent medium for identity-based deception.

To evaluate the ideas of attractiveness and honesty, and assessment and conventional signals, I decided to analyze one of my best friend’s Facebook profile. When I told her to rate each element in her profile based on Catalina’s “Deception in Online Dating Profiles” study, she rated herself 5 in each category except for her relationship status, which she gave a 1. Although in most cases, people would give high accuracy ratings for relationship status, my friend said she had an inside joke with one of her college friends. If the Facebook profile was instead an online dating profile, she would not hesitate to indicate herself as "single" and rate herself with a 5. After analyzing each element myself, I found her ratings to be accurate. She claimed that she frequently edits her profile to include her most updated personal information, which I verified to be true.

Even though I found my friend’s profile to be accurate, she may have selectively presented herself (hyperpersonal model's selective self-presentation). For example, maybe she loves a movie that has horrible reviews so she wouldn’t include it in her movie listings to avoid having unattractive qualities. People know that what they put online will be seen by others so factors that may create a negative or unattractive online image may be and probably are excluded from their profiles.

The accuracy of my friend's personal information supports the ideas from the Media Richness theory, which claims that there is less deception with lean media. Since Facebook is an asynchronous and recordable medium, people tend not to lie. However, the Social Distance theory cannot be supported. According to the theory, people will lie more in lean media, such as email and IM, than in rich media, like FtF. Though specifically for my friend's profile, I did not find the Social Distance theory to be true.

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http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-rock-paper-scissors-lie.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/09/girl-who-cried-food-poisoning.html

Assignment 4, Is That You In Your Facebook Picture?

Since I’m a terrible liar, and I value honesty, I chose Option 2 for this week’s blog assignment. I analyzed profiles of close friends, people I have never met, and everybody in between. This gave me a wide range of perspectives from which to view deception on Facebook.

As profiles are not a physical part of the people they represents, it was hard to classify some elements as Assessment Signals. Thus, aspects that are simply difficult to change were categorized as Assessment Signals. Inclusion in university-affiliated networks is very difficult to fake because a university email address is required. Elements of a profile – Friends and Relationship Status - that need confirmation from others also fall under Assessment signals. Since a user cannot control what other users say and do, wall posts share some of the Assessment Signal characteristics. While wall posts can be deleted, you cannot choose what people say on them. Lastly, which random sample of Mutual Friends and friends from the user’s network appears is controlled completely by Facebook.

I defined Conventional Signals as those that are easily changed or faked. Important elements, such as name and profile picture, are completely controlled by the user, and can easily be used in deception. Just as on online dating profiles, Facebook users can purposely use their personal information to deceive those looking at their profile. Gender, interests, activities, education, etc. can all be faked. These sections are easy to alter and, with no way to check validity, could conceivably be entirely false. The same is true for groups joined, photos added, and special applications used.

When I asked a friend to go review the truth in her Facebook profile, she reported mostly 5’s on a scale of 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate). After discussing her profile with her, I reviewed it and it is 100% accurate to my knowledge.

The level of accuracy on my friend’s Facebook profile is in line with the Media Richness Theory’s prediction of lying. Since social pressures like the physical presence and synchronous nature of FtF communication are missing in less rich media, such as email and networking site profiles, Media Richness Theory predicts less lying in lean media. My friend’s completely accurate and honest Facebook profile supports this prediction. Likewise, her profile goes against the Social Distance Theory that predicts more lying in lean media, where there is more of a distance between communicators. While lying is easier on Facebook, it is not as necessary since you are not trying to impress any one particular person, viewing people’s real time responses to your profile, or answering questions in a live conversation. Thus, Media Richness is more relevant to Facebook.

4. CMC Deception and Detection

Ahoy all.

So I decided to see whether lying to my friends would work over instant messaging. I decided to tell this lie to a close friend of mine but one that i hadn't really spoken to since the start of the semester. It seemed like a good blend of knowing the other person well so he could tell whether I was lying and yet at the same time giving a window which would allow me to tell him something significant without it being obvious that I was lying.

First I tried lying to him about something huge. I told him that I had Pats tickets for the weekend of fall break. He was really excited at hearing this news. It was an extremely realistic lie, but nevertheless, one that was somewhat sensational, but he believed it easily. I think that he believed it because of the tone that I used to tell him about it. I also think that if I told this to someone else that was a bit more rational-minded (like my father maybe), that it would have been perceived as a pretty transparent lie.

After that, I also told him something that seemed slightly outrageous, but this was true. I brought up some of the things that I had done over the weekend which was considerably bizarre, but still true. Ironically, he seemed slightly more reluctant to believe this truth than he believed the other story. Nevertheless, he did not outright detect this as a lie, and I couldn't see any indication that he thought it was. So I suppose that he believed me on both counts. Thus, he supported the idea that people are bad at picking up lies, even when not face to face.

I think that it would have been very difficult for me to tell this to him in person. Most difficult was the fact that he was roughly 1000 miles away at the time, but aside from that, I would have found it really difficult to make it seem like I really believed that I had the tickets. Doing so would have forced me to display a lot more enthusiasm and confidence than I can usually muster unless I am feeling them authentically. Thus, choosing a lean media in this case was conducive to my deceptive aim. This supports Social Distance Theory, because by choosing a leaner medium, I was in an environment that made it more comfortable to lie.

4, Option 2: Edit Profile—Save Changes

The frequency of digital deception and selective self-presentation on the Internet seems to depend on the type of space we are analyzing. In Catalina’s study, the subjects were users of online dating websites and therefore, were individuals who were most likely sifting through strangers’ online profiles in search of romance. However, many Facebook users simply utilize the space to network with friends, classmates, and others who they frequently already have a “real-life” connection to (and therefore, users could be better able to detect deception).

After explaining the simple 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate) scale to my friend “Jane,” I had her rate each element of her Facebook profile on accuracy. Initially to my surprise, she ranked every single aspect of her profile as a 5. Jane seemed to be telling the truth about all of the assessment signals and conventional signals, which according to Donath (1999), represent our identity in the CMC environment. The assessment signals found on Jane’s profile provide connections to her “offline” identity—such as her phone number, e-mail address, and home town. For example, her e-mail address ends in @cornell.edu, signifying that she is intelligent and attends an Ivy League University. The conventional signals are only conventionally associated with characteristics of herself. In her Facebook profile, conventional signals include the information found in her interests and various “favorites.”

Looking through her profile, I found no trace of digital deception. It didn’t seem as though Jane was intentionally trying to be deceptive nor did I believe she was trying to create a false belief in the minds of her profile viewers. However, with the asynchronous structure of Facebook, Jane was given as much time as needed to strategically craft a Facebook profile in which she could convey her desired impression through selective self-presentation. Jane chose to use self-presentational tactics, such as self-descriptions and attitude expressions in order to portray herself in a positive light. For example, she chose to highlight good aspects of herself by listing some movies that would show her intellectual side and others that would reflect her humorous side. However, she omitted some other information that may not reflect her desired image as well; such as when she didn’t list the hardcore punk band that she likes under her favorite music.

What I found most interesting about Jane’s profile were the sections she chose not to fill out. When discussing identity-based digital deception, Hancock briefly refers to identity concealment—hiding or omitting aspects of one’s identity. Although my friend has been in a relationship for over a year now, her relationship status is not listed on her profile. On Facebook, I believe there is no kind of social association stronger than being listed as “in a relationship” with someone, since it publically links one individual to another (proclaiming their relationship to the Facebook world.) Some may say that Jane’s lack of inclusion of this important detail should be considered deception—however, unlike sites such as Match.com, the relationship sector of Facebook is not the primary aspect we are concerned about and therefore I believe inclusion should be a matter of preference.

Jane’s Facebook profile allowed me to recognize that selective self-presentation may play more of a role than digital deception in this space. Facebook is a place where people can carefully choose ways to present themselves and leave various things out rather than lying—after all, we can always edit our profiles.

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4: Lying on Facebook: Unintentional?

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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Assignment #4 Option 2: Facebook Deception

Communication technologies affect deception production. While there are theories of communication deception that involve e-mail, instant message, telephone, and ftf interaction, there are no theories that seek to explain the frequency and magnitude of deception on Facebook. The current theories of communication deception are the Social Distance Theory, Media Richness Theory, and most recently, the Feature-Based Approach. While the Social Distance Theory hypothesizes that individuals seek a “leaner” medium to deceive given the uncomfortable nature of lying, the Media Richness Theory claims that individuals will lie most in “rich” media. Lastly, the Feature-Based Approach claims that communication technology deception involves more than the question of richness. Focusing on the synchronicity, recordlessness, and distribution of communication media, the feature-based approach hypothesizes that individuals will lie most on the telephone, a medium that is neither the leanest nor the richest.
Given that neither the Social Distance Theory nor the Media Richness Theory includes Facebook, it is necessary to consider both how lean or rich Facebook is, and to analyze it in consideration of the three features of the Feature-Based Approach: synchronicity, recordlessness, and distribution. Analyzing Facebook in consideration of the Feature-Based Approach, it is evident that it is recordable, asynchronous, and distributed. According to this Feature-Based Approach, therefore, it is likely that deception takes place on Facebook. Taking into account the radical dynamics of Facebook, in relation to the other analyzed forms of communication media, it is necessary to further examine what type of deception is possible on Facebook. As a dynamic impression management tool, Facebook offers users a wide arrange of self-presentation tools, one of which being the ability to alter one’s profile. Considering such dynamics, and the theories of deception it is evident that Facebook deception varies on both assessment and conventional signals.
Assessment Signals, which are costly displays that are directly related to an individual’s characteristics, such as one’s university are much harder to successfully deceive, than conventional Signals, which are low cost displays that are only conventionally associated with a characteristic. It is reasonable to assume that individuals on Facebook can successfully alter conventional signals, but not assessment signals. Taking these ideas into consideration, I approached my friend’s Facebook profile believing that there would few, if any lies.
In the interview, my friend was confident that everything presented in his profile was presented truthfully. He rated each element as completely accurate. After analyzing his profile, I concluded that it was nearly entirely accurate. While my friend did not lie about anything insignificant, such as his interests, or other conventional signals, he surprisingly lied about his major. Though my friend has not yet been admitted to the major that he put on his profile, he is working towards this goal, and therefore it is not entirely a lie. Overall, given the lack of research on Facebook, it is difficult to determine where this medium lies on the “rich” spectrum. Given this uncertainty, it is difficult to determine which theory best applies to deception on Facebook. Given the parameters set forth by the feature-based approach, it is reasonable to assume that there will be, if any, only moderate and infrequent lies. My interview supports this reasoning.

4 Lying on Facebook

The facebook profile consists of many different parts. There is the basic information section that contains information about one’s sex, relationship status, hometown, and other simple information. The next section, the contact section, allows one to fill in his or her email address, screen name, address, phone numbers, and multiple other means of ways to contact someone. Next is the personal section, which allows one to list his or her activities, interests, favorite movies, favorite books, favorite quotes, and any additional “about me” information. There is an educational section and work section as well. There is also a place for one to post his or her picture. Although there are many sections with many different questions about oneself, most everything is optional.

I had my best friend rate each section of her profile on a scale from 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate). She rated all five sections as being completely accurate, 5. When I reviewed her profile, to the best of my knowledge, she was completely accurate. There was no deception and therefore no frequency of deception.

We can compare this information and determine whether or not it lines up with the Feature Based Approach. The Feature Based Approach states that certain media features are conducive to deception. The Feature Based Approach states that with synchronous media people are less likely to lie. The Feature Based Approach states that the less recordable a media is, the more likely someone is to lie. Finally, the Feature Based Approach states that the more widely distributed a media could potential be, the less likely people are to lie. The Feature Based Approach states more people lie over the phone than any other form of communication, while people are most honest using email. Looking at facebook, it is asynchronous, somewhat difficult to record (because one can easily edit his or her profile), and widely distributed. According to the Feature Based Approach, facebook should be a form of media that one would find a lot of deception. The results from my experiment do not support the Feature Based Approach, however.

4, option 2: Lying on Facebook is Overrated

For assignment number four, I chose to analyze the truthfulness of my friend's facebook page. To my surprise, I found it to be rather accurate in its portrayal of her assessment and conventional signals. The facts about her assessment signals were all correct. She listed herself as a Cornell student with her major, hometown, date of birth and year of graduation. Her Cornell webmail address was also listed, verifying that she is in fact affiliated with the university. Her current status is also truthful; she listed herself and single and interested in men. Many people on facebook, particularly girls, find humor in listing themselves as married to their best friends. This may be deceiving to some new facebook members, but it is common and mundane to the experienced ones. With that in mind, she remained true to her identity and originality by simply listing single.

In the area of conventional signals is where the truthful rating of 5 begin to slip down to 4 and 3. To begin with, her quotes are representative of her personality. They are from her favorite movies and from a song undoubtedly featured in her top 25 iTunes playlist. One quote is from the movie "Miracle", which reveals that she is an athlete and has a great appreciation for sports. The Favorite Music list, on the other hand, begins to stray from her true personality. She claims that The Who is one of her favorites, although I am positive she only can name one song for which they are famous. Of the 20 bands she has listed, only two or three stretches of the truth are not enough to falsify her self-presentation. Her Favorite Movies and Favorite TV shows are not elaborated upon either. She declared a completely accurate 5 in this section, and I confirmed this, knowing that her DC++ library of tv shows really does consist of Entourage, That 70's Show, and Grey's Anatomy.

Overall, these findings went against Depaulo'sSocial Distance Theory which states that lying and deceiving is done most in a more distant and lean media. I believe this is because of the small network in which facebook allows its members to create. Of course, members are allowed to(and often do) have as many "friends" as possible, but most people only allow people they know to view their page. This fact creates less of a motive to deceive, because most of the people with whom you are interacting in facebook you are also interacting with them face to face. Knowing that your close friends can view your page diminishes the motive to create a falsified image.

4 Facebook As Filter

I couldn’t say “no” to the chance to evaluate one of my roommates’ Facebook profiles, and so the only really hard part of this assignment was choosing which one. She rates her profile a 5 in accuracy across the board except in one category: her address. According to her, the address is her old apartment building because she is “too much of a lazy bum” to change it. I would agree with her assessment that her Facebook profile is, for the most part, very accurate and representative of her personality. However, she is notorious among our mutual friends as someone who refuses to be tagged in photographs where she believes she looks anything less than perfect. So I would have to rate her as a 1 to a 1.5 in terms of accuracy in what her photos reflect of her true self. Because of her vigilant monitoring of what pictures of her get published, she is greatly altering the identity-based assessment signals of her Facebook persona. These pictures are assessment signals because most people believe what they can see for themselves over what they read or hear about, and hers give an impression that is more false than true. It is interesting to me that she chooses to exert such attention to an assessment signal, in order to create a skewed impression, but does not bother to alter anything about the conventional signals of her personal information of Facebook. While her pictures tell one story, her lists of what she finds interesting, her favorite music and movies, and even her favorite quotes represent a person that exactly matches the real deal.

This makes sense when we consider that assessment signals are much more strongly considered in terms of personality evaluation, so altering them takes much more vigilance and perseverance, but also has a higher value. Lastly, I think that this careful scrutiny of self-presentation seen in my roommate’s online photos is going to very quickly (and very soon) expand to encompass all aspects of Facebook for most, if not all of its users. This is due to the increased use of Facebook by prospective employers to research their applicants’ personal lives outside of the résumé. I won’t get into the ethics of this for this blog, but it would be fun to examine at a later date. Facebook was named after the college tradition of a paper reference book with students’ names and pictures, intended to help people get to know one another. The variety of ways in which to express oneself in the online version of this concept takes the experience to a new place, where one is not just saying “Hi, here I am," but rather, "Hi, here is how I want you to see me."

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Assignment #4: Option 1

There I was all ready to throw both a lie and a truth at someone through the lean media of instant messaging. Fortunately, my target did not respond for quite some time, giving me a chance to impeccably formulate my lie. I decided to choose someone that has been a friend since last semester but doesn’t really know that much depth about me, especially what I did this summer. When he finally responded to my “hey there” 13 minutes later, I was ready. We made small chat for a while until the discussion rolled into what we did in our summers. I told him that I had a traveled to three countries in Europe, one being France, with my mother for 10 days. I then added that since I was in the French Alps region, I had to partake in two of their most well-known activities, paragliding and downhill snow skiing. To make an uncommon activity sound more believable, I made sure to explain that paragliding is when you run off a mountain with a parachute and that I specifically flew over Lake Annecy. Then I hastily stated that I went skiing at Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France.

I then asked him which activity he believed. Just as I had planned, he thought that I had gone skiing in the Alps since it is a “legit” and a “more common” activity that people partake in when visiting the Alps. Additionally, he said that I could have searched for paragliding online to make it sound more believable when I did not expand on skiing in the Alps. Thus, I was trying too hard to lie about paragliding versus the way I mentioned skiing sounded very “matter-of-factly” and more realistic. I had successfully deceived my friend in this lean media because I actually did go paragliding over Lake Annecy but never skied in the Alps, I only took a self-guided tour of Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France.

I chose instant messaging because I have always had a hard time lying to others, thus aligning with the Social Distance Theory—people choose the most “socially distant” media to deceive others when lying is uncomfortable. The synchronicity (simultaneously exchanging messages in real-time) of instant messaging allowed me the chance to thoroughly think out both activities and then type them in the same entry so I would not show any hesitation with separate entries. Had this interaction been face to face, my inability to successfully lie would have been apparent because of my tendency to display “faulty” nonverbal cues when I lie, such as hesitating, stumbling on my words, or speeding up my speech.

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Assignment #4: Lie to my Face

I found my opportunity to experiment in deception on Friday afternoon, after a coworker and I started talking about a trip that I took this summer. I told an unlikely story about my wife and I being invited to a deep sea fishing excursion with local old-timer fishermen. I lied to my target in a face-to-face encounter, and then elaborated about another incident on the same trip in a more truthful manner via email.
Because the lie was trivial and I had no attachment to the story that I was telling, I found it quite easy to get comfortable and sound completely believable. I was not concerned about the motivational impairment effect, which is the phenomena of highly motivated deception producers being more likely to be detected. I had no motivation to lie and I really didn't care if he found out. Indeed, my fraudulence remained undiscovered.
I believe that my experience contradicts the Social Distance Theory. This theory suggests that because lying is uncomfortable we tend to use as socially distance (lean) media as we can to tell a lie. This school of thought would consider a face-to-face encounter to be an unsatisfactory channel for deception. So many non-verbal cues and opportunities for detection could be dangerous for the deceiver. A leaner channel, such as email, would be a more productive (or at least, preferred) approach according to this theory.
On the other hand, the Media Richness Theory asserts that we require richer media for quivocal tasks such as lying. A richer medium provides us with a multiplicity of cues to help facilitate ambiguous encounters. Feedback from each communicator assists the process. According to this theory, a face-to-face encounter would be my best opportunity to deceive. However, despite my successes in lying FTF, my guess is that I would have done much better on the telephone.
Hancock's feature-based approach to deception finds the telephone as the preferred medium for deception. Both FtF and telephone communications share a couple of features, namely the synchronicity of the communication and the lack of persistence (recordlessness.) The distributed nature of the telephone makes it my preferred mode of deception. It provides the benefit of immediate verbal feedback, and subtle non-verbal cues with which I can reinforce the veracity of my statements. My findings in this assignment lead me towards Hancock's study which supports the idea that certain features of a medium will make the channel more or less conducive to deception.
I realized after I sent the follow-up email (describing truthful events of a particularly amazing restaurant in Portland,) that email would have been a substantially more difficult medium for me to deceive my target. In e-mail, I could take all the time that I need in order to craft my dishonesty. However, lacking any feedback would make it hard to know exactly how to describe my lie. Was he buying it? Do I need to elaborate on a specific suspicious detail? Again, we see more support for Hancock's approach to deception.
There are surely other factors which must be considered in this sort of test. If my target and I knew each other better, it would probably be much more difficult to get away with the lying. Also, we must consider that the adeptness of using and manipulating a particular mode of communication will add to the "richness" of the medium. If I am particularly experienced at using IM, for example, I might have a better shot at using such a lean channel for deception.

4 Of Nuns and Fish

For the assignment, I decided to lie about an experience I had in Japan and tell the truth about an experience I had in Hawaii. The former took place in the psychological space of instant messaging, while the latter took place in a face to face conversation. In both cases, I was able to convince my two friends that I was telling the truth.

I told my friend about visiting a nun cafe (waitresses dressing up as nuns) in Japan. I decided on instant messaging because the near synchronous aspect of it provided a medium which appears believable. He can message me questions and it'll feel like I'm answering them in real-time. However, since it is only near synchronous, I also had an opportunity to go on websites to confirm my own lies and to help answer any questions that might reveal my deception. For example, I was able to link him to websites describing the cafe. According to Hancock's theory, this near synchronous medium would allow for more unplanned lies to occur. Although this lie was planned, the medium still provided enough synchronicity for unplanned fabricated details. These details supported my lie and made myself seem more credible. This level of tailorability and the aforementioned time to edit decreased the likelihood of deception detection, as predicted by Carlson and confirmed by my friend. This media was highly recordable and the other party lived in the adjacent room, so it was especially believable. Hancock's theory predicts that I would not be lying under these conditions (high recordability and close distance), but I used that prediction to my advantage when I choose instant messaging. In addition, I choose a particularly close (relationship-wise) friend to test my deception. I already had his trust, as well as knowledge of his experience with Japan. He knew I went to Japan, but I never disclosed my supposed visit to the cafe before our conversation.

I talked to my other friend about snorkeling in Hawaii. I choose to perform this interaction face to face because it allowed me more freedom to add cues. I was able to gesture a swimming motion to describe the fish I've seen. It also allowed me to sound more excited and confident in my description. Additionally, it allowed me to carry on without pausing, resulting in additional confidence. I noticed that the details I used were a lot more vivid than during my lie about Japan. As I was only providing superficial details in my instant message conversation, I was describing feelings in face to face. According to my friend, these feelings were detected in my tone of voice and I seemed more genuine. At first, he seemed a bit skeptical of my even going to Hawaii, which seems to go against the truth bias characteristic of ftf, but he finally believed me.

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Assignment #4: Facebook Deception

My friend has a very honest Facebook profile. Both her assessment and conventional signals are all surprisingly truthful. I don’t know why I was expecting there to be false information in her profile, but apparently I thought that the more “socially distant” Facebook media would encourage my friend to somewhat alter the truth. When I interviewed my friend, she rated each element of her profile as a 5 for completely accurate. Later when I analyzed her profile to verify the actual accuracy level, I found that she had not deceived me. The conventional features of her profile, including Activities, Interests, Favorite Music, TV Shows, Movies, Books, and Quotes, were exactly how I would define my friend and her selections. Her education and work information were also straightforward and factual. She had even honestly listed Jessica Simpson as one of her favorite artists and “Newlyweds” as a favorite television show, even though she is somewhat embarrassed by it since she is a junior in college. Though her Facebook profile picture and the other album pictures could be examples of conventional signals because they can be so easily changed, she uses actual pictures of herself. She doesn’t de-tag pictures often, so her albums are filled with many candid shots that actually represent her. These actual pictures therefore portray biologically derived assessment signals. As would be expected, her cornell.edu email address is listed on her profile, which is also an example of an assessment signal because it is difficult to alter.

My friend’s relationship status was the only aspect of her profile that was a lie. While she is actually single, it says on Facebook that she is married to another girl, which is just a joke between friends. I would have to rate the frequency of her deception as very low because the only lie in her entire profile was just a joke about her relationship status. The magnitude of her deception was also extremely low because being jokingly married on Facebook tends to be a common lie, which is not severely deceiving anyone. Though it seems that many people selectively choose what and how to present themselves on Facebook for self-enhancement purposes, my friend has not fallen into that category. I think she has chosen to follow an extremely honest route because of the high likelihood of actually meeting and interacting with other Facebook members in real life at Cornell. While appearing attractive is important, appearing honest due to anticipated real life future interactions is also important according to Walther. In terms of lying predictions, my friend’s minimal deception is not indicative of the Social Distance theory. According to this theory, deception is most predominant in distant forms of media because lying is uncomfortable. Facebook is considered a more distant form of communication because when viewing someone’s profile or communicating through messages there is a great space and an asynchronicity factor between those who are interacting. Despite the distance between my friend and those who view her profile, she maintains her honesty instead of lying about her personal characteristics as the Social Distance Theory suggests would have been more common.

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4: Option 1 - Deception Detection

I used face to face interaction to lie to my friend about a summer traveling trip and instant messaging to tell her a truthful summer travel. Since I knew I would have to focus on nonverbal and physiological cues, I tried to prepare myself by forming a rough outline of what I would describe and I also made sure that the lengths of the stories were about equal so she wouldn’t suspect anything. However, these preparations did not help because my friend was still able to discern that the lie was told ftf. I was slightly disappointed because I thought I can usually get away with lies.

The synchronicity definitely played a huge part in her detection because as I was telling the story, I was overly aware of my gestures, tone, eye-contact, and her reaction to my lie. I had to observe how she perceived the story and be prepared to make changes to sway her into believing it. I thought maybe there were too many physiological cues that gave my story away so I tried the same experiment on another friend, but I used the phone as the rich media. Thus, by focusing on fewer cues, I would surely be able to fool her. However, that was not the case either because she detected that the lie was told over the phone.

As described in the Social Distance Theory, lying to my friends was very uncomfortable for me and when I discussed their opinions on the issue, they both seemed to think that it would be easier to lie in CMC because there wouldn’t be an issue of confrontation or nonverbal and physiological cues (gaze, eye-contact, etc.). This contrasts from the Media Richness Theory which says that a rich media would be chosen for more equivocal and complex communications to receive immediate feedback and have more control. In my experiment, it seems that I had less control because there were too many cues that distracted me.

In addition, other factors, like people lying differently to different types of people, played a role in how my friends were able to decipher which story was a lie. Since I am close to these friends, I rarely lie to them so they could tell I was lying because they noticed that I sounded more stiff and hesitant than usual. I also don’t think I was successful because of the higher levels of cue multiplicity from the rich media. This decreased the levels of reprocessability, causing me to focus less on the deception. I believe I would have had more potential in deception had the lie been told in an ongoing conversation and had I been talking to more casual friends/acquaintances.

4: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lie

I consider myself a pretty good liar. To me, a good lie is like winning a game of rock paper scissors. I honestly believe that there is a substantial amount of skill in RPS, and when I lose I don’t fee like I lost a coin flip, I feel like I was mentally dominated. Crafting a good lie is the same way; you have to know your target and carefully choose the words that will give you the best chance to achieve deception. In this case, I was not looking for just the best words, but rather the best medium that was conducive to slipping a lie past my best friend. It is not enough to simply make the two stories equal in my targets perception of truthfulness. In that case he would have a 50% chance of choosing the lie. In order to execute a good fib, I have to intentionally mislead my friend into choosing the real story.

I told my lie about taking a road trip to New York to see a Yankees-Blue Jays game. This was easy to talk about because in fact I did take a road trip with friends from home, but we went to Toronto and not New York. I chose to use the phone during my lie. My choice could aptly be explained using Media Richness Theory. Lying is an ambiguous and an equivocal task-therefore I chose to lie using the richest media possible. The more cues and the richer my media during the exchange that I had with my friend would give me the most opportunities to tell a convincing lie. I could use both details and tone of voice in my effort of deception rather than rely on my friend to take me at my word in a text message. I then went online and had an instant message conversation with my friend, who just happened to be in the room next door. I talked about how I had gone to Wales and turned 18 on the plane to visit my sister who was abroad. I chose this vacation story because it seemed pretty outlandish and perhaps could cause my friend to be persuaded to choose that one as a lie. I still told stories and used detail in my conversation, and primarily relied on the convincingness of my lie rather than making my truth appear to be false. Talking about a vacation experience with a friend is a very simple task, and thus Media Richness Theory also supports my choice to use a lean communication media in order to make a fairly unequivocal exchange with a close friend. As the theory dictates, in unambiguous tasks, the most efficient way to communicate is through lean media.

In the end, despite my best efforts, my friend prevailed, and I felt as mentally used as when my opponent throws double paper in a best out of three match of RPS for the sweep. He explained to me that he could tell I had thought a lot about both stories, and there was no obvious answer. He said he made his decision based on the fact that I insisted on telling one story over the phone during the day and the other story on instant message. In the end, he asked himself if he were trying to convince someone of a lie would he tell him or her over the phone or via instant message? Essentially, he used my logic against me. (He knew I thought he was going to throw paper, and I would throw scissors, so he threw rock instead). While sitting down to write this assignment, I thought about my failure. I decided that people that are good liars would obviously choose the richer media as the medium for their lie in order to have the opportunity to convince, whereas people that are not good liars would choose the leaner medium in order to avoid the opportunity of detection. There is a fine distinction between these two different types of lies. Sometimes when I lie, I am less trying to fool, but rather trying to not be embarrassed. While they are connected, as whenever you make a lie you are inherently trying to mislead, there is a subtle difference that I never identified before.


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Assignment 4: I'm Friends with a Digital Deceiver

My friend is a digital deceiver. The items she chooses to list in the conventional portions of her Facebook profile (Interests, Favorite Music, Favorite TV Shows, Favorite Books, and Favorite Quotes) are deceptive of who she really is. Although when interviewed she claimed that all of the conventional signals she has listed are completely accurate (she gave them all 5’s), she did go on to mention that she left a few things out (making the true accuracy assessment more like 3’s and 4s).

She told me what she has listed as her Interests are completely accurate, but that as an English major, she also loves to read obscure books, but she won’t list that in her profile, because she wants to seem as though she’s very outgoing, and doesn’t like to be alone reading. She’s selecting her self-presentation. So my friend didn’t seem lame she selectively presented her favorite music, TV shows, books and quotes, in her Facebook profile. While the conventional signals she has listed in her profile are accurate (she definitely didn’t lie), they are not completely accurate. She has selectively left out some of her interests that she is embarrassed to admit to her online community of friends that she enjoys.

As far as her Assessment signals go, she was not a deceiver. She was truthful. The aspects of her true real-life identity, like her name, birthday, hometown, e-mail, screen name, majors, political views and university are all the truth. All of these signals, except her relationship status are honest. Her status says she’s married to another girl, which all of her friends should know is not true. This one aspect is also an act of deception. She doesn’t like to admit openly that she’s single, so to cover it up, she has made a joke and married her best girlfriend on facebook. This lie is another, less revealing way to selectively present oneself as single.

My friend has also chosen to selectively self-present herself through her pictures. Although the hundred some-odd pictures that are on her Facebook profile appear to be of her, she has untagged at least hundreds of other images of herself. The lack of certain information, and untagged pictures is all so she can create her ideal self on her Facebook profile. As I have mentioned, my friend only lied once, about her relationship status, which wasn’t so much a lie as a joke. So, her frequency is rather low (on a scale of 1 to 5 I’d say it was a 1). But, her magnitude pertaining to how much she has deceived people is relatively high (on a scale of 1 to 5 I’d say it was a 3). Overall, my friend selectively self-represented herself to create a desired impression that people in the online world would get of her.