Wood and Smith (2001) mention various reasons for creating fake identities known as sockpuppets. The first reason is that sockpuppets might provide a place for observation and experiment to understand human nature like psychiatrists who want to investigate different people's psyches. The second purpose is military use. For instance, the U.S. military has purchased sockpuppet software to counter enemy propaganda in social media and other websites; via software, they enter an online discussion, impose ideas, and discredit their opponents. Thirdly, on the Internet, only the perception of others creates the identity, so it provides an ability to manipulate online identity upon wishes. However, in real life, it is more complex, we create it by actual choices to some extent, and there are predetermined characteristics and paralinguistic cues about us. The fourth drive is experimenting with a different self that could not be manifested in real life. This might enable people to gain a new perspective on their lives and to discover living as a different person. Lastly, changing identities provide moratorium that proffers safer time-out space for experience while the present dangerous world allows little safe areas.
In the article "Sockpuppets," three reasons are emphasized (Delwiche, & Herring, 2018). Firstly, when someone wants to participate in a new online community, fake accounts are needed to conceal. For example, for a high school student interested in doctors and their lifestyles, an easier way to accomplish it is by creating a fake doctor profile for online doctors community with some tricks to disguise. Besides, there are also malicious sockpuppets in grassroots online communities; they seem to advise people but manipulate them with the trust they have gained. Secondly, sockpuppets might be used to generate money and popularity. Writers can give deceptive reviews about their books or corporations purchase reviews to promote their products. Thirdly, in politics, propagandists use it as a tool to discredit and demoralize opponents by introducing new components to social media and influencing public opinion. Moreover, they create illusory consensus and sway online discussions. One puppetmaster admits that in Russia, some organizations pay workers for comment posts in the government's interest as like in many countries such as China, the U.S., and the Philippines.
In my opinion, the two most significant reasons among them are the political purpose and adopting a new online identity. Firstly, the present has reformed conventional weapon type and carried it outside the battlefield; today, objects in life that have a power to influence people might be considered as a potential tool by politics like the Internet. Research (Rainie, 2017) shows its enormous impact, 62% of Americans follow news via social media, and 64% of them affirm fake news on the Internet creates great confusion about the basic facts of current issues. Therefore, the Internet might be a strong option that simulates politicians' urges. Secondly, the intensity of power is reflected in its representation; namely, powerful agents use tools and means intensely. Because organizations have broader capacities and opportunities than individuals and possess different instruments and sources to support their actions, they more possibly dominate the Internet by sockpuppets. One research agrees with this (Kumar, 2017); it shows the most active topics in which sockpuppet accounts are strongly related to politics. Thirdly, individuals' goals are unstable and can change over time, and there are no common but diverse purposes of individuals as a whole. This irregularity offsets the impact of sockpuppets that belong to individuals. However, in politics, governments or organizations have more united and steady goals that boost efficiency, and they tend to make more effort since their objectives worth more. Hence, politics have an essential portion of the impact of sockpuppets.
I believe, adopting a new online identity is another crucial reason. Psychological and social factors can a cause for it. Firstly, society brings some expectations and restrictions while satisfying needs. Unfortunately, sometimes interactions cause psychological problems. For instance, if the oppression of society increases overwhelmingly, the person would want to escape. Likewise, if a person is not accepted by society, to elude loneliness, he will want to present an acceptable self. Severe and unfortunate circumstances or dissatisfaction from usual situations also might cause searching for the exciting ambiance of a new identity. Obviously, mentioned distresses might lead people to solve their obstacles by entering the online world and create a new identity. Secondly, character immaturity or having a gap between the real self and desired self might create a wish for self-deception with a superior self-image. Thirdly, in real life, people change their manners and adopt new personalities in different groups and environments such as school, family, or entourage. We take various masks; for example, no one talks with a father akin to a friend. However, social media do not allow it; everybody sees the same content about the sharing of a user. Consequently, real-life multi-personality transfers into social media by sockpuppets. These factors comprise importance due to the constant and profound inducement of internal drives while outer motives occasionally and secondarily urge people.
To conclude, Sockpuppets' popularity increase is explained by the articles of Wood and Smith (2001) and Delwiche and Herring (2018). We investigated why two of them are prominent. As a precaution, users should regard the existence of fake identities while surfing on the Internet.
References
https://propagandacritic.com/index.php/coreconcepts/sockpuppets/
Kumar, S., & Leskovec, J. (2017, April). An army of me: sockpuppets in online discussion communities [Paper presentation]. WWW '17: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web. International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee, Republic and Canton of Geneva, CHE, 857–866. https://doi.org/10.1145/3038912.3052677
Rainie, L., & Anderson, J., & Albright, J. (2017, March 29). The future of free speech, trolls, anonymity and fake news online. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/03/29/the-future-of-free-speech-trolls-anonymity-and-fake-news-online/
Smith, M. J., & Wood, A. F. (2001). Online Communication: linking technology, identity and culture. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
