Analytical Essay
Digital deception refers to a kind of deceptions human do online such as why they lie about their personality, true identity and their location in order to remain anonymous. According to Miller and Stiff (1993), deception can be seen as one of the most significant and pervasive social phenomena of our age. It is so common because it is reported that every day a human tells one or two lies in his daily work life and personal life. Similarly, when it comes to the online world, people also lie about their identity on email, social media platforms and instant messaging. People can present themselves as other individuals online, and it’s extremely hard to detect their lies due to text-based interaction. In face-to-face interaction, it is possible to detect a lie; however, in text-based interaction allows people to do deception more often and easily. It is interesting to mention here that online deception is so easy. However, no one likes to be deceived, and thus no one deserves it. Deception is wrong because it leads to feelings of betrayal and creates a sensation of distrust among two individuals in the communication process. It violates relational rules and is regarded as the negative abuse of expectations. This essay will discuss the fact that although deception is a fundamental part of human’s life, it is immoral to do so.
According to Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology, digital deception can be defined as a type of deception that refers to the intentional control of information in a technology-mediated message to create a false belief in the receiver of the message (Hancock). For example, someone creates a profile of Facebook with a false name and upload a profile picture that does not belong to him; he is deceiving others by using a fake indemnity, and if he commits any crime using this fake profile, he cannot be traced back since the profile is made-up. This implies that deception must have a motive or intention because unintentional misleading is considered as mistakes. Also, as evident from the example of a fake profile on Facebook, the motive of deception is to create a false belief or mislead people for some nefarious purpose. Furthermore, another characteristic of digital deception is the requirement of an online medium of communication technology to deliver the deceptive message instead of using face-to-face interaction medium. Some of the communication technologies are emails, telephones, instant messaging, newsgroups, public forums, weblogs, chat room and even online video games (Hancock).
Identity-based digital deception allows the people to obscure their identities, hiding who they are. The most important issue concerned with digital deception is that technologies of communication have made it so simpler for people to manipulate others using fake or made-up identities. The Internet offers unlimited opportunities for people wanting to present themselves in a way that desire. For example, old people can try to present themselves as a teenage girl or boy. They can change their gender, profession and ethnicity, and the person you are communicating may never know that you are just a fifteen years old boy. This implies digital deception is easy because there is no face-to-face interaction involved.
In addition to enabling users to obscure their identities, identity-based digital deception uses conventional signals for manipulating people online. For example, trolling, category deception and identity concealment are some of the types of identity-based manipulation that are very popular in the community and very hard to track as well. Trolling can be seen as a form of manipulation where someone poses as an authentic person belonging to a specific community fighting over a controversial topic. Furthermore, category deception refers to the manipulation of genders, where one person poses as a man or woman in order to manipulate the perception of others in a community. (Hancock). Additionally, identity concealment refers to hiding one’s identity for posting something by using a made-up name or pseudonym. The motives behind identity concealment differ for various sexes. For example, women hide their true identities in order to protect themselves from being harassed, whereas men create pseudonym in order to be more expressive.
There are various deception tactics that people can employ in order to seek financial advantages. For example, they can mask important information about a certain product, i.e. receiving advertisement money from stocks. People do ‘dazzling’ in order to obscure main information about an item. For example, if someone signs up for a free trial, he automatically gets enrolled in a subscription service without any notification. Similarly, decoying, mimicking, relabeling, double play and inventing are some of the tactics used by people for securing financial gains due to highly flexible environment of the internet.
There is another form of online deception other than identity-based deception that is more common and immoral. Message-based digital deception is the type of deception where a person uses a mobile phone or messaging app to send a message to his friend, colleague, or a spouse to lie. In their daily lives, besides chat rooms and internet spaces, people rely on messaging in order to communicate with the people they already know as compared to meeting strangers online. For example, a person is watching a movie in a theatre while he sends a text to his wife that he is at work relates to message-based digital deception. This form of deception is a betrayal to the people you know, and it’s clearly immoral. Also, it is important to mention here that emailing or sending a message does not involve voice so if we are lying, and we may not care about tremor or sharpness in our voice because we are not using voice to send a text; instead we are typing a lie that cannot be detected due to lack of face-to-face medium. However, the more recordable a medium is, the users are less likely to use it for communication and deception. This implies that people may use recordless media the most in order to prevent themselves from being caught.
To conclude, digital deception has pervaded various aspects of our lives. It is immoral to deceive others by using fake identities in order to gain some financial advantage or personal gain. Both forms of digital deception, either identity-based or message-based, are wrong since they involve the betrayal of trust between the communicating parties and stakeholders.
References
Hancock, J. T. (n.d.). Digital Deception. In Oxford Handbook of Internet psychology Jeffrey T Hancock.
Miller, G. R., & Stiff, J. B. (1993). Deceptive communication. Sage Publications, Inc.