Assignement #4 FACEBOOK :)

This week I have put some thought and work into taking a closer look at the creation of a facebook profile. I have interviewed my roommate, Leah, and asked her about what she has chosen to put up and why. For starters, Leah feels like she has got a fairly standard facebook profile for a female college student. Her favorite part of facebook is looking at people's tagged pictures. I feel like this is an assessment signal because a photo of yourself is not really something you can lie easily about. If an image is altered it is generally very obvious, in addition there are many photos of Leah tagged of her so if she tagged herself as someone else in one it would be clear from the others that it was not actually her. The photos on facebook also tell a lot about a person but Leah said that after thinking about it for a minute maybe her pictures gave off a false impression of her life because most of her pictures are taken at night when she goes out with friends and to parties. So it may come across that she is a crazy partier all the time when in fact she has many other dimensions of her life that are not shown in her pictures. I agree with this and think that this is a common situation on facebook, so being familiar with the psychological space I think I take it into account that most people don’t show all aspects of their life in their pictures but mainly their party mode. This goes along with the hyperpersonal model and the over-attribution process because on facebook you don’t have a lot of cues to take from but pictures is one of the main cues and because people have less to look at but a lot of pictures you judge a person by their pictures and get an exaggerated impression of their partying as shown with Leah's profile.
Next, Leah looks at her wall as the second most important part of facebook. Her wall is a place where people will write messages to her that everyone can see. This is a conventional assignment in my opinion because generally the wall is not taken as a place to write serious messages but more of jokes or references to things that have happened, and often people write things that aren't true just as a joke. Therefore this is a low cost display that is changed often when it is replaced by new posts and isn't held accountable by most people. This goes along with the hyperpersonal model as well because of selective self-presentation. A wall is a place where people can write anything they want and then the owner of the page can choose to delete or keep the message therefore, deciding how they would like to present themselves. Facebook pictures are also an example of selective self-presentation because these pictures too have the option of being kept as tagged or untagged if the owner does not like how the message portrays them. Additionally, the wall posts can be seen as re-allocation of cognitive resources because Leah explained to me that a lot of times when she’s just browsing facebook she will go and look on other people’s walls and see what people have posted. Because it's not her wall she won't necessarily know what all the posts are talking about but with re-allocation of cognitive resources she will analyze the post and see if she can figure out what it could be referring too and this is definitely a close analysis of the text, including reading between the lines.
I next asked Leah, about the messaging aspect of facebook because there is another way to message people other than publicly on their wall and that is by sending them an individual message as if they have a mail box. This is a conventional assessment because the messaging is a lean environment and therefore being a deceptive media. She said that she doesn’t use this feature very often but the person she uses it the most with is her cousin Alek who is the same age as her. She said it's been really nice in college having facebook to talk to Alek because when they were younger they lived very far apart and she really only talked to him on holidays over the phone. Now that they can message each other she says it's a nice way that they can talk without having to devote a lot of time on the phone and she has really kept in touch with him more. This shows that in the hyperpersonal model the developmental aspect is really true. That people can get to know each other over CMC like Leah and Alek have become closer over time now that they are in college. The whole idea is that in CMC there is a time delay so it does take longer for people to get to know each other better in a CMC environment because of the fewer cues but the relationship will develop eventually.
Lastly, Leah talked about how when she meets someone briefly either in a class or at a party she likes to go back on facebook later on and look that persons profile up so that she can get a better idea of what they are like. Due to the fact that I do not think facebook profiles truly show all aspects of a person’s life and can exaggerate some aspects I do not feel like Leah is getting an accurate impression of others lives. This is like behavioral confirmation because when Leah looks at their profile she often sees the person in high party mode and then will take that exaggerated cue impression and when she may see them next, think and treat them as the high life partier that their profile portrayed them as.