Cyberdating: Misinformation and (Dis)trust in Online Interactions

Abstract

Introduction With exponential boom and prevalence of Internet, virtual space has become an alternative and additional venue for romantic ventures. Cyberdating, as it is called, promises to proffer new possibilities and creativities not found in real-life world. The multi-billion dollar industry in dating and matching services attests to popularity of cyberdating. This popularity may be attributable to Internet's flexible accessibility, creative opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, anonymity and new freedoms attending that anonymity. These freedoms remove and disentangle netizens from moral and social qualms in face-to-face world and facilitate a free play with identity and imagination. However, with new possibilities of cyberdating come new problems characteristic of this new arena for romance. Misinformation, for instance, has been proved a troubling phenomenon in cyberdating, whose dangers and treacherous nature have been plentifully covered in popular press. Take a quick a look at following titles: spouses go astray online; Man with over 200 online wives; Internet romance ends with man jailed in Wales; and French woman dies after an romance sours. More dramatic tragedies in cyberdating involve kidnapping, abuse, and even murder. Therefore, of great practicality are studies of unique features of medium of Internet, which engender and implicate new issues and problems for human interaction in mediated space. This paper begins with an analysis of media characteristics of cyber space that tend to render information more malleable and incidence of misinformation more likely. Second, examination will be given of dual nature of online interaction: misinformation at Sender's end and (dis)trust at Receiver's end. Third, this work investigates how trust is gained and lost in cyberdating. What principles and behaviors affect operation of trust in cyberdating? Do online encounters commence with assumed trust or must trust be acquired in process of deepened interactions? With citation of a reported case of fraud in cyberdating, fourth section of this work illustrates and analyzes process of misinformation detection. The paper ends with practical implications for cyberdaters and their relational development. The as a Unique Medium for Dating Based on fundamental premise of McLuhan's (1964) postulate that the medium is message, this section discusses media characteristics of Internet. Specifically, following factors of as a medium will be examined: immediacy of feedback, multiple cues, language variety, and personal focus. This examination reveals that media characteristics of facilitate easier manipulation of information and increase incidence of misinformation. Medium as Message When a new technology emerges, its form merits careful study, for the medium is message, as admonished by McLuhan (1964). A medium exerts influence on society by not only playing a role in its delivered content, but by way of very mechanism of its media characteristics. McLuhan illustrated this point with invention of light bulb. A light bulb does not possess or deliver content in way of a newspaper article or television program. It has no content, but it creates space. The space created by light bulb offers new possibilities; for instance, it enables people to work in what otherwise would be complete darkness. In this sense, a light bulb, by its mere presence, creates a new environment or medium, with new possibilities and new influences (McLuhan, 1964, p. 8). Similarly, invention of does not merely give a new tool for information collection and circulation; it creates a virtual world that awakens and develops new dimensions of human interactions, revises sense of authenticity, and excites new imaginations. …