Social structural behavior of deception in computer-mediated communication

Abstract

Deception essentially takes place in social interaction. While deception has been studied from the perspective of interpersonal interaction, little is known about social structural characteristics of deceptive communication. To fill the knowledge gap, this research investigates deception behavior in computer mediated communication (CMC) via the lens of social structure by answering the questions of how one deceiver socially interacts with multiple receivers and what structural characteristics can be used to delineate deception in CMC. To this end, we first conceptualize deception in terms of social structure by drawing on the interpersonal deception and social network theories. We then propose a model of structural behaviors of deception in CMC that consists of three components: centrality, cohesion, and similarity, followed by an empirical evaluation of the model with real-world data collected from a game website. The findings of this study provide new evidence that deception is a strategic activity where the deceiver juggles between the dual goals of promoting his or her deceptive agenda and avoiding detection.