Facebook profiles contain many more assessment signals than you might initially expect. The primary reason for this is familiarity, which is to say that most of the people who come into contact with someone’s profile have a previous relationship with that person and know at least a little bit about them. Sure, you could post a picture of some gorgeous model or super athletic person as yourself and even provide a fake name, but the majority of facebook users utilize it to interact with their friends. Any misrepresentation of such a nature will usually be seen simply as a joke or possibly a way to mask your actual self. For the rest of us who seek to honestly communicate with our friends, details regarding basic personal information should and generally are assessment signals. Your friends know your name, what you look like, where your from, how old you are, what your gender is, where you work or go to school, and so on. These aspects of yourself are pretty straightforward and deception is easily detected by people who are close to the deceiver. However, the majority of facebook use centers around conventional signals such as our interests, political/religious views or affiliations, favorite music/movies/books/quotes, activities, groups we join, and posts on other people’s walls. These areas are where we would expect to see the most inaccuracies as users will represent themselves in a way that fosters the kinds of impressions they want others to hold of them and lead to a greater social acceptance.
I selected a good friend whom I have known for about a year and half now, and we had a long conversation about his facebook profile. He is someone I feel I know well and therefore would be able to assess how legitimate his analysis of his profile was. I should note that he is someone who is always open and outgoing, so going in I did not expect to find much deception or misrepresentation. Looking at conventional signals my friend was remarkably accurate in his self-portrayal as he scored 4.81 (mean) in terms of accuracy. Oddly enough some of his assessment signals were low (1 for AIM screen name, 3 for phone #’s) but he explained that he simply had neglected to update this information. Overall, my friend assessed himself accurately, but I think his ratings were slightly off because he did not give enough weight to things that he decide not to include on his profile.
When we discussed his strategies for managing impressions of him he did indicate that he omitted certain things on purpose, which in actuality play a big role in his life. These appeared to hinge on his concern with the audience’s potential impression of him and generally steered him towards his “ought” self in line with Goffman (1959) and Jung’s (1953) thinking on “possible selves.” My friend explained that he had already had an instance where a teacher commented in a disapproving manner on a picture of him from facebook that showed him doing something illegal. He seems to take what certain people, namely parents and other authority figures, think he should or more appropriately should not be doing into careful consideration when he uses his profile. He admits that if he did not have to worry about repercussions his profile page would not be markedly different. I agree with his assertion that his actual self is represented the most often as the components of his profile truly give you an accurate idea of who he is in real life. Clearly, as my friend also observed, self-description is the predominant self-presentational tactic employed when creating and using a facebook profile. The nature of the site lends itself to describing yourself through your interests, activities, favorites, and posts on other people’s profiles.
The impression management model (O’Sullivan 2000) is applicable here as my friend used self-presentational tactics to influence how people would perceive him and the information he displayed tended to be more equivocal. His use of ambiguous phrases or posts is ideal for a public arena where he only wants some people to understand the meaning of his message and he can keep the rest out of the loop. Keeping with this, he only provides things with a positive valence on his profile, which is conducive to positive impression formations as he feels if he were to include too many negative attitudes (i.e. disinterests), people would have less positive reactions to him as a person (think Debbie Downer). I found my friend’s profile to be extremely honest and accurate, with the only deception arising out of a fear of getting into trouble with parents, professors, or potential employers (and that is something I am sure we all worry about).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I feel like just the fact that your friend has pictures on there that he didn't mind putting up shows that he is quite honest in the fact that he presents his "true self" to others in CMC. However, it could also mean that he is only showing his "fun side" which lots of people choose to do especially on Facebook. Either way the reduced social cues from his profile might come off to someone on the outside, such as his mom or teacher, in the wrong way proving the hyperpersonal model's beleve of exaggerated impressions.
When I was interviewing my friend about his profile, he also made a point to mention that some of the aspects that could be viewed as inaccurate weren’t done intentionally, or even subconsciously - they were simply added to the profile at a time when they were true, and later forgotten about. It seems that a fair amount of inconsistencies in facebook profiles stem from this issue, so it might not necessarily be that selective self-presentation is dominating.
From my experience, facebook is most used to augment real life ftf relationships, so it makes sense that a majority of "deception" would be unintentional, or done in a protective manner (as you mentioned), as people really don't need to try to impress people who already like them. While theoretically someone could pose as another person and fool someone who might only know them by an e-mail address, for instance, which would no longer make the photo/basic info valid assessment signals, the real questions are 1) when would that situation occur and 2) why would anyone bother?
I found similar omission when I interviewed my friend. I always felt that people were very strategic with their facebook profiles, but I think it goes much deeper than I initially expected. It would be interesting to observe a group of high school kids who have had this outlet while developing in their early teens and see how they enter new social settings like going to college. Would they rely heaver on face to face or CMC?
Post a Comment