This week, I chose to examine and assess someone’s Facebook profile, specifically my friend Georgina’s* profile (*name has been changed), to see how accurately she displayed herself. Georgina has been one of my best friends for five years now through high school and through college, so I would have to say that I know her extremely well.
There are many elements to the Facebook profile, as I’m sure you all know. In case you don’t though, here are most of the elements that I had Georgina examine on her profile: sex (gender), interested in (sexual preference), relationship status, looking for (friendship, relationship, random play), birthday, profile picture, contact information, interests, favorite music, favorite television shows, favorite movies, about me, education information, and actual friends listed. This is certainly a lengthy list, but Facebook is a complex web arena. Georgina ranked how accurate each element she displayed was on a scale from one to five, five being completely honest, one being a complete lie. To compare results in an efficient way, I decided to rank her profile on the same objectives before she was given the questionnaire. I then compared the two sets of data on her profile.
I found that for the most part, Georgina was honest. When I say honest, I mean pretty honest, but not completely. In my opinion, her profile would get somewhere between a three and a four overall. I believe she used selective self-presentation tactics to portray herself in a specific way than she is most of the time. For example, her profile picture is certainly of her, but it is of her striking a ridiculous pose, one which I have never seen her do (and I’m with her a lot) and is certainly atypical. Her relationship status is that she has a boyfriend. I know this is not exactly the case, as the two are on a break, yet it is on her Facebook profile for the world to see. Her interests include being the captain of a kickline squad, but her participation in that was over a year ago when she was in high school. Georgina’s friend count at Cornell is currently at 201. While she is an outgoing person, I am with her most weekends and know that she does not know this many people here. Other than these slight discrepancies, I would say that Georgina’s profile is mostly representative of her. I maintain that the information on her profile, along with everybody else’s, is put there to portray her in a certain light.
2 comments:
Nice post Rachel,
I think it is interesting that you can go through your friend's profile and easily be able to tell all the things that she is exaggerating on. I am curious though if she just does this online or if this is how she typically tries to represent herself. Although Facebook has a lot of information, I would not call it a rich media. It is easy to bend the truth assuming not too many people know you that well. However, even though I don’t know who your friend is, I feel that a lot of people lie by omission and exaggeration in everyday life and it would be interesting to know if your friend is only showing selective self presentation due to the fact that she is not close to many of 201 friends or if she would do this also in a richer media.
Post a Comment