Social Information Processing (theory) - Low Warrant Vs. High Warrant

Low Warrant Vs. High Warrant

With the introduction of many social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn there are many opportunities for people to interact using CMC. There are many factors that set social media apart from the text-only CMC that Walther originally studied. Some of which being the inclusion of pictures, videos, and the ability to build your own profile and help shape someone else’s profile. This creates many contradictions. For example, let’s say you describe yourself as a quiet, reserved person but your friends add pictures of you out at the bar with a bunch of people. These two ideas contradict each other. How you process this contradiction is the main idea of Walther’s Warranting Theory. According to Walther, “if the information we’re reading has warranting value, then it gives us reason to believe It is true”.

There are two types of warranting information: low warrant and high warrant. Low warrant information is easily manipulated and therefore less believable. An example of this is information you yourself put on your profile such as interests and hobbies. High warrant information is more likely to be accepted as true. An example of this is information added to your profile by others because the owner cannot easily change it.

Walther has previously tested warranting values by assigning random participants to view fake Facebook pages. His experiments confirmed that people value high warrant information. In one of his studies it was found that credibility levels and attractiveness were swayed by comments made on the profile by people other than its owner. Another study also confirmed his beliefs by comparing high and low warrant information and finding that friends’ remarks were valued higher than the owner’s claims in regards to physical attractiveness and outgoingness. These studies have found that, unlike email, communication comes from both the owner and other users of social media and viewers do not give these two opinions equal value.