An Exploratory Study into Deception Detection in Text-based Computer-Mediated Communication

Deception is an everyday occurrence across all communication media. The expansion of the Internet has significantly increased the amount of textual communication received and stored by individuals and organizations. Inundated with massive amounts of textual information transmitted through Computer-mediated Communication, CMC, people remain largely unsuccessful and inefficient in detecting those messages that may be deceptive. Creating an automated tool that could help people flag the possible deceptive messages in CMC is desirable, but first it is necessary to understand cues used to deceive in textual instances. This study focuses on the identification of deceptive cues deceivers use in a textual CMC environment. 30 dyads (n =14 truthful, n = 16 deceptive) were able to complete the Desert Survival Problem. Findings have demonstrated significant differences between the content within truthful and deceptive messages. Several cues were also found to be significantly more present when deceivers write messages.