Media Appropriateness in the Conduct and Discovery of Deceptive Communication: The Relative Influence of Richness and Synchronicity

We investigate the role that media synchronicity and media richness play in the particular communication context of deception. Hypotheses are developed based on prior models of mediated-deception as well as media richness theory and channel expansion theory. Two survey-based studies were conducted to look at this construct from the separate standpoints of the deceiver and the receiver. Study 1 (the deceiver) provided respondents with a detailed scenario and asked them to select a medium to use to accomplish a specific deceptive act. Results indicate a general preference for highly synchronous (and non-reprocessable) media. Study 2 (the receiver) focused each respondent on a specific medium and used 4 short scenarios to investigate how confidence in their ability to detect deception was affected by synchronicity, media richness, media familiarity, and co-participant (deceiver) familiarity. When making media selections, results indicate that synchronicity and media familiarity are relatively less important to receivers; instead, receivers engaged in deception detection clearly value rich media and co-participants with whom they have more experience and familiarity.