skip to main content
10.1145/1718918.1718920acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagescscwConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

"on my way": deceptive texting and interpersonal awareness narratives

Published:06 February 2010Publication History

ABSTRACT

Managing one's availability for interaction with others is an increasingly complex act, involving multiple media and the sharing of many types of information. In this paper we draw on a field study of 183 SMS users to introduce the idea of the "interpersonal awareness narrative" -- the coherent, plausible and sometimes deceptive stories that people tell each other about their availability and activities. We examine participants' use of deception in these accounts, and focus in particular on "butler lies," those lies told to enter or exit conversations or to arrange other interactions. We argue that participants use this type of deception in SMS strategically, drawing on the inherent ambiguities of SMS while maintaining plausible narratives.

References

  1. Aoki, P. and Woodruff, A., Making space for stories: ambiguity in the design of personal communication systems. In ACM CHI(2005), 181--190. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. Boehner, K. and Hancock, J., Advancing Ambiguity. In ACM CHI(2006), 103--107. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  3. Goffman, E. The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books, New York, 1959.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. Gonzalez, V. and Mark, G., "Constant, constant, multi-tasking craziness": managing multiple working spheres. In ACM CHI (2004), 113--120. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  5. Grinter, R. and Eldridge, M. Wan2tlk?: Everyday Text Messaging. In ACM CHI (2003). 441--448. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. Hancock, J.T., Birnholtz, J., Bazarova, N., Guillory, J., Perlin, J. and Amos, B. Butler lies: awareness, deception and design. In ACM CHI (2009). 517--526. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  7. Taylor, A.S. and Harper, R., Age-old Practices in the 'New World': A study of gift-giving between teenage mobile phone users. In ACM CHI (2002), 439--446. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  8. Taylor, A.S. and Harper, R. Age-old practices in the "new world": A study of gift-giving between teenage mobile phone users. In ACM CHI (2002). 439--446. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  9. Toma, C., Hancock, J.T. and Ellison, N. Separating fact from fiction: an examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, (2008). 1023--1036Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. "on my way": deceptive texting and interpersonal awareness narratives

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Login options

      Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

      Sign in
      • Published in

        cover image ACM Conferences
        CSCW '10: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
        February 2010
        468 pages
        ISBN:9781605587950
        DOI:10.1145/1718918

        Copyright © 2010 ACM

        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

        Publisher

        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 6 February 2010

        Permissions

        Request permissions about this article.

        Request Permissions

        Check for updates

        Qualifiers

        • research-article

        Acceptance Rates

        Overall Acceptance Rate2,235of8,521submissions,26%

        Upcoming Conference

        CSCW '24

      PDF Format

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader