Signals in Social Supernets

Social network sites (SNSs) provide a new way to organize and navigate an egocentric social network. Are they a fad, briefly popular but ultimately useless? Or are they the harbingers of a new and more powerful social world, where the ability to maintain an immense network—a social "supernet"—fundamentally changes the scale of human society? This article presents signaling theory as a conceptual framework with which to assess the transformative potential of SNSs and to guide their design to make them into more effective social tools. It shows how the costs associated with adding friends and evaluating profiles affect the reliability of users' self-presentation; examines strategies such as information fashion and risk-taking; and shows how these costs and strategies affect how the publicly-displayed social network aids the establishment of trust, identity, and cooperation—the essential foundations for an expanded social world. Grooming, Gossip, and Online Friending Social ties provide many benefits, including companionship, access to information, and emotional and material support (Granovetter, 1983; Wellman, Garton, & Haythornthwaite, 1997; Wellman & Gulia, 1999). Increasing the number of ties increases access to these benefits, although time and cognitive constraints preclude indefinite expansions of one's personal network. Yet if maintaining ties were to become more temporally efficient and cognitively effective, it should be possible to increase the scale of one's social world—to create a "supernet" with many more ties than is feasible without socially assistive tools. The question this article addresses is whether social network sites (SNSs) are a technology that can bring this about. In the wild, apes groom each other, picking through fur to remove parasitic bugs. This behavior helps with hygiene and is relaxing and pleasant for the recipient. Perhaps most importantly, it establishes social bonds: Apes who groom each other are more likely to help each other and not fight. Long grooming sessions are time consuming, however. Since the ape must also spend many hours finding food, sleeping, etc., it is clear that grooming can sustain only a limited number of relationships (Dunbar, 1996). In Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, Robin Dunbar (1996) argued eloquently that in human societies, language, especially gossip, has taken over the social function of grooming. Instead of removing lice from each other's hair, people check in with friends and colleagues, ask how they are doing, and exchange a few words about common acquaintances, the news, or the local sports team (Dunbar, 1996, 2004). Language is much more efficient than physical grooming, for one can talk to several people at once. Language also helps people learn about cultural norms, evaluate others' behavior, and keep up with the news and shifting opinions of their surrounding community. It makes reputation possible—individuals benefit from the experience of others in determining who is nice, who does good Signals in Social Supernets http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donath.html 2 of 19 4/7/2008 6:26 PM work, and who should be shunned for their dishonest ways. Using language to maintain ties and manage trust, people can form and manage more complex and extensive social networks.1 Communication technologies expand human social reach (Horrigan, Boase, Rainie, & Wellman, 2006). Email makes communication more efficient: Sending a message to numerous recipients is as easy as sending it to one, and its asynchrony means that there is little need to coordinate interaction. Contact management tools, from paper Rolodexes to complex software systems, increase one's ability to remember large numbers of people (Whittaker, Jones, & Terveen 2002). While these technologies provide some of the support an expanded social world needs, they alone are not sufficient. People need to be able to keep track of ever-changing relationships (Dunbar, 1996; Nardi, Whittaker, Isaacs, Creech, Johnson, & Hainsworth, 2002), to see people within the context of their social relationships (Raub & Weesie, 1990), and, most fundamentally, to know whom to trust (Bacharach & Gambetti, 2001; Good, 2000). Email and contact tools help maintain an expanded collection of individual relationships. Are social network sites the solution for placing these relationships into the greater social context? A page on MySpace, filled with flashing logos, obscure comments, poorly focused yet revealing photos, and laced with twinkling animated gifs, may not look to the casual observer like the harbinger of the next stage in human social evolution. But perhaps it is. SNSs locate people in the context of their acquaintances, provide a framework for maintaining an extensive array of friends and other contacts, and allow for the public display of interpersonal commentary (boyd & Ellison, this issue). At the same time, SNSs are still primitive; it is too early in their development to observe clear evidence that they have transformed society. The goal of this article is to present a theoretical framework with which to a) assess the transformative potential of SNSs and b) develop design guidelines for making them into more effective social tools. The foundation for this analysis is signaling theory, which models why some communications are reliably honest and others are not. The argument begins with an introduction to signaling theory. The next section uses this theory to examine how the fundamental structure of SNSs can bring greater trust and reliability to online self-presentations, how specific site design decisions enhance or weaken their trust-conferring ability, and how seemingly pointless or irrational behaviors, such as online fashion and risk taking, actually signal social information. The final section examines the transformative possibilities of social supernets—not only whether SNSs may bring them about, but if so, in what ways they might change our society. An emphasis of this article is on ways of achieving reliable information about identity and affiliations. There are situations where ephemeral, hidden, or multiple identities are desirable. However, minimal online identity has been easy to create, while it is harder to establish more grounded identities in a fluid and nuanced way. A primary goal of this article is to understand how reliability is encouraged or enforced. For designers of future systems such knowledge is a tool, not a blueprint. Depending on the situation, they should choose the appropriate space between anonymous and whimsical and verified and trustworthy identities and communication.