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Social media provides a new environment that makes it possible to carefully edit the image you want to project of yourself. A study from Lund University in Sweden suggests that many people are prepared to pay to "filter out" unfavorable information.
Economists Håkan Holm and Margaret Samahita have investigated how we curate our social image on the web using game theory.
Previous studies have been conducted on, for example, how anonymity affects our willingness to act pro-socially, and thus our concern for social image. However, the internet and social media now make it possible to edit the image we want to project of ourselves retroactively. One can therefore expect other, -- less impulsive, mechanisms to control this behavior. The purpose of the study was therefore to better understand online behavior.
Each subject participated in a cooperative situation with an anonymous person, and the participants earned real money during the experiment. They could be "good" and cooperate a lot, which is costly, or be less cooperative, which costs less. They then found out that information about how much they actually cooperated could be published online along with their name, but that they could avoid this publication if they paid to censor the information. It turned out that those who cooperated less, valued the censorship highest which meant that information about this group's actions tended to be filtered out.
"That the image people share of themselves is 'softened' on the internet is perhaps not that surprising. What is new is that this is shown under experimental control and that the will to 'filter out' is so strong that one is prepared to pay for it," explains Håkan Holm.
Hakan J. Holm, Margaret Samahita. Curating social image: Experimental evidence on the value of actions and selfies. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2018; 148: 83 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.02.008
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 27 2018, @02:11AM (3 children)
> "Rights are what we call freedoms that we refuse to allow any person or group to take from us"
Okay, so according to you, these things are basically just feelz, defended if necessary by force. ...wow.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 27 2018, @10:36AM (2 children)
Nope, complete freedom is the baseline. Go out in the middle of the woods all by your lonesome. Call a tree all the names you can think of at the top of your lungs, then shoot it, then run around naked for a while, then flop a turd wherever you like and wipe your ass with a convenient rabbit. Liberty isn't what's given to you, it's what you have by default until you surrender bits of it in order to get along with others. It is our natural state.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 27 2018, @02:46PM (1 child)
Excellent. Please re-read what you wrote a few times, specifically that "in order to get along with others" part, and ponder than not only we but our ancestral primate cousins are social animals. You'll get this eventually...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 28 2018, @10:30AM
I'm quite aware of what I said and its implications. Not harming others or violating their rights without reason is quite sufficient for social interaction on any scale. Anyone demanding more than that I have no desire to interact with except with a weapon in my hand.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.