Digital Deception

Assignment 5: Anatomy of Facebook

A facebook profile has many different components, but only a few seem to be used deceptively in order to portray a certain image. I found ten different things that I think people could use to deceive others with their facebook profile. These ten parts include the picture, number of friends, mini-feed, information, wall, photo albums, groups, notes, and relationship status. The first part of a facebook profile that people can manipulate, is the picture. It might seem strange that a person would manipulate their picture on facebook since many people on facebook probably have seen the person in real life. Even so, most people will pick a picture that will portray him or her in the best light. There are also ways to crop a photo, so that a certain body part is left out of the picture, or even another person in the picture might be cropped out. The next part of the facebook profile that can be deceptive is the number of friends a person has. There are some people on thefacebook who request the friendship of any person they have ever come into contact with, whereas other people only request the friendship of close acquaintances or people they are actually friends with. When I see a person with 500 friends, I usually think that there is no way that this person is friends with all of those people. It is usually more reasonable when a person has between 100-250 friends. A person might request the friendship of people they barely know just to increase his or her friend count in order to appear popular. The next feature of a facebook profile that somewhat prevents deception, is the mini-feed. The mini-feed displays a person’s activity on facebook, so it shows when a person writes on someone else’s wall, joins a group, displays pictures, etc. There are now controls, however, that allow people to hide their actions, so that nothing shows up on their mini-feed. The part of the facebook profile that has the most ability to be deceptive is the information section. This includes interests, favorite movies, television shows, and music. I do not think that the facebook wall or photo albums are particularly deceptive. Groups are another part of the facebook profile that could be deceptive, since most groups are open for anyone to join. It could look like a person is a member of a lot of different groups, when in fact, they are not. Relationship status is another tricky component, because a lot of people play around with it for fun. There was an instance, however, when someone I knew had his status as “married” on facebook in order to lure people to his profile. Then once, a person scrolls down on the page, it said that he was not actually married but just put that there to lure people.

I chose one of my best friend's facebook profile when doing this assignment. I have known him since highschool, and he also goes to Cornell, so I have been able to see how his attitudes on certain subjects have changed. That is why I thought it would be interesting to see what he had to say, and then to do my own verification. When I printed out my friend’s facebook profile, and had him rate the different components, he said overall that each component was accurate. He did rate his picture on not being very accurate because he has his hands up in the picture, and appears taller and leaner than he is in real life. When I independently verified his profile, I mainly agreed with all of his ratings on the different portions. I would say activities, interests, and favorite music was somewhat exaggerated, but movies and books were accurate. His friends were also very accurate because he recently joined facebook, and is only really facebook friends with his real life friends.

The implications for the Hyperpersonal model say that selective self-presentation is key, and I think this is true with regard to thefacebook. People on facebook select certain elements of their personality to display, or certain pictures that make them look more attractive. I think Catalina was correct when she noted that the anticipation of future interaction would decrease deception online (Walther, 1994). Joinson and Dietz-Uhler discussed the in-group, out-group phenomenon, in which people will portray themselves in order to appear as part of a certain group. After browsing profile of a few of my friends, I can say that this appears true, as most of us have the same interests. Thefacebook does not have as many outlets to deceive as myspace.com, or some other dating websites, but it is still possible for the user to portray his or herself in a particular way, without warranting suspicion from most people.

posted by Nicole @ 5:33 PM