Communication Strategies and Impression Management

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Table of Contents

Self-presentation
Warranting Worth of Information
Importance of physical appearance
The Impact of Communication Medium
Toward New Perspectives
References

Communication between different people from different places is vital in life. People can pass information to one another in several ways. For instance the studies identify face to face communication and computer mediated communication as major ways through which people use to inform their friends about their personal information, whatever they intend to do or what they have done.

There are various advantages and disadvantages of using face to face or computer mediated communications (Catalina and Jeffrey, 2010). Overall, they contribute toward self-presentation and appearance to colleagues. More so CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) and Face-to-Face (FtF) contain specific implications depending on how an individual use them. This paper intends to provide an elaborate and extensive aspect that relates to CMC and FtF as revealed in the previous studies.

Self-presentation

Self-presentation in online dating plays a crucial role in physical attractiveness, although it carries many limitations. Physical attractiveness greatly helps CMC and FtF communicators decide on how they present themselves. Most attractive online daters and in most cases women, are able to manipulate their appearance through computers to add or remove some features on their photographs. Other women and daters use older photographs to convince the other party that they are still in their youthful stages. In this context, they improve their presentation appealing to other CMC user online. This might be contrary to their immediate physical expression.

When individuals form impression on others through the internet, they anticipate for an offline meeting. They are often concerned with their reliability of self-presentation that the other participant put forward. The warranting principle proposes that onlookers place credence on information concerning personal characters together with offline behaviors when the described person cannot manipulate the information.

The testing of the warranting principle provides that the targeted individuals ostensibly generate both positive and negative information about a person. One did not create these targeted individuals. The Facebook can give real examples of such information.

Social networks like Facebook, twitter and e-mail provide a single page where both users can show self-discretion and descriptions generated by other users. The best social network that can provide good examples is the Facebook. It offers better settings that can enable comparison of different types of information on different personal impressions (Jeffrey and Dunham, 2001).

Warranting Worth of Information

Most individuals according to the studies rely on information that has greater warranting value. Warranting in this case means the ability to make reliable conclusions between a presented person online and the real person in the physical world. In this context, when an individual presents himself online, for example, if a character cannot be identified, little justification can exist between the self-presentational statement and the real typist’s offline personality. For that reason, auditors do not trust in claims made in such environment by individuals. In contrast, some information from these sites can be true (Jeffrey and Dunham, 2001).

However, some information can be exchanged where the users consider it authentic depending on their valuations. From the studies, it is true that the receivers determine authenticity of information. The value of the information is derived from individuals who receive it but its content is immune to manipulation by the person to whom it refers. Several information forms can be predicted to hold lesser or greater value basing on specific characteristics.

Importance of physical appearance

Constructing image involves figuring out desires of impression that should come across and then implementing it. According to evolutionary theory, physical attractiveness has a high prize in the dating scenes (Jeffrey and Dunham, 2001). Daters expect to be physically attractive to attract attention of mates and engage in activities that aim at achieving an impression of attractiveness. Less attractive daters attract fewer mates as compared to their counterparts who are physically attractive. The attractive ones engage in strategies, which have intentions of showing off their attractiveness.

The Impact of Communication Medium

Daters have strategies that they employ to achieve their desires of deceiving. Communication medium is a strategy that enables them to prepare self-presentational acts. Interpersonal theory provides that communicative deeds vary accordingly depending on the circumstances in which they occur- for this case, online dating environment (Walhter et al., 2009). The circumstances influence deception through restricting or providing access to certain societal cues.

This may inhibit or facilitate immediacy or alter conversational demands. Self-presentations in dating environment are static. For example, there exist the use of monologue rather than dialogue form and relying virtually on linguistic and visual cues. The affordances modify the nature of deception majorly through enabling less dater to deceive on their physical appearance in ways, which could be possible through FtF meetings.

To be specific, FtF daters have limited chances for improving their physical attractiveness. For example make up, wearing flattering clothes and hair. Online daters have several options for constructing attractive appearance (Catalina and Jeffrey, 2010). They include deciding on flattering photographs, stating verbally that they are attractive and retouching their photographs. This ability enables online daters to engage in choosy self-presentation that is strategic and deliberate kind of self-presentation. It is true from the researches that less attractive people take advantage of the communication medium to conquer their less attractive effects in other ways rather than FtF (Jeffrey and Dunham, 2001).

Toward New Perspectives

The CMC provides cases and opportunities for chances for selective self-presentational idealistic and reciprocation. This provides hyper-personal communication forms of interaction, which exceeds the accomplishments in FtF. This is in terms of relational and impression-generating goals. There arise questions as to why people should embrace CMC? It may be due to the potential that lies in this type of interaction. The researches show that it can be more rewarding than FtF.

Most people believe that pictures and images make interaction lively. This aspect enables the media to enjoy several advantages using CMC. For instance, ABC news has really enjoyed most of the features in the CMC like socializing with fans through twitter, Facebook and e-mail services. This means that the services should develop and reach greatness in the world of journalism.

Attractive and less attractive daters apply different methods through the media to deceive their intended mates. There is inadequate research on this topic thus proposing for more interventions to be enacted through research to control deceiving online (Walther et al., 2009). This is because the behaviors of online daters are intentional and are synchronized consistently for meeting their self-presentation motives. Manipulation of photographs by online daters due to their own hardwired evolutionary objectives for increasing their chances for finding best mate may have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the media. The choice of medium of communication mainly depends on its effectiveness (Walther et al., 2009).

References

Catalina, L. T. & Jeffrey, T. H. (2010). The Role of Physical Attractiveness in Online Dating Self-presentation and Deception, Communication Research. New York: Cornell University press.

Jeffrey, H. & Dunham, P. (2001). Impression Formation in Computermediated Communication, An anasis of the Breadth and Intensity of Impressions, Communication Research. London: Sage Publications Inc.

Walhter, et al. (2009). Warranting Effects on Facebook Impresions. New York: Michigan State University Press.

Walther, J. (2009). Computer-mediated Communication: Impersonal, Interpersonal and Hyperpersonal Interaction, Communication Research. London: Sage Publications Inc.

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