Advancing Warranting Theory

Abstract

Since its introduction by Walther and Parks (2002), warranting has emerged in the literature as a prominent construct that offers insight for understanding how online self-presentations are produced and evaluated. This manuscript outlines limitations that exist in the literature on warranting and provides suggestions for how the construct can be advanced theoretically and tested empirically. Notably, testable theoretical propositions are derived that specify how various factors are anticipated to affect perceptions of warranting value. In addition, warranting theory is compared and contrasted to Donath's (2007) adaptation of signaling theory and previous work on impression management.It has been over a decade since Walther and Parks (2002) first outlined how the construct of warranting value could be used to understand the production and evaluation of online self-presentations. Warranting value refers to perceptions about the extent to which information is immune to manipulation by the source it describes. To date, many studies have applied the construct of warranting value to make sense of a variety of communication processes that occur through new media (see Walther, 2011). Despite the widespread application of warranting in communication research, few studies have sought to (a) conceptually clarify the construct of warranting value, (b) develop a cohesive theory that specifies how a range of antecedents affect perceptions of the construct, and (c) detail how qualities of warranting as a theory compare and contrast to other related theoretical approaches. This manuscript seeks to address these limitations by explicating the construct of warranting and deriving novel theoretical propositions that extend warranting as a theory. Explicating warrantingWalther and Parks (2002) discuss how there are often greater disconnections between the self and self-presentations online than in the physical world due to the affordances of media. For instance, it is much easier for an adult to pose as a child online where complete anonymity is afforded than in person. Although online self-presentations can be viewed as genuine, people often meet them with suspicion because they are

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Enhancing Evaluation of Potential Dates Online Through Paired Collaborative Activities

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Impression formation in online peer production

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