The film Catfish directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman follows Nev Schulman, Ariel's brother, as they document his new friendship with a younger woman online and begin to discover that the person who Nev has been talking to may not be who she portrays herself to be. The film explores many different concepts of communication but some of the main concepts being perception, skepticism, image management, and also credibility. Nev in the film Catfish continuously dismisses the results he receives by the critical listening tool of skepticism, yielding to the constructs of perception and image management as intended by the character Angela.
In the beginning of the film, Angela was someone who had all of their credibility. Yet as the film progressed she very quickly lost any if not all of her credibility online when it comes to upholding her image. Angela used her skill of image management to severely alter any outside perceptions of her, one of those perceptions being altered was Nev's. We see these instances of Angela's image management in her many online profiles in the film. She used these multiple profiles to conjure up a fake story to furthermore prove that she was indeed this alter-ego of herself to try and keep her credibility. After being exposed, we see Angela lay almost all of her cards out when it comes to how far she would go to up hold her image. We see this when she show's Nev the two different phones she used for the two fake profiles as well as when she admits to how many people she made up to add to her very confusing story.
Nev on the other end of the spectrum was someone who truly believed Angela was who she said she was and thought of his online friend as a very credible person. Yet if Nev was tuned into his critical listening skills and had flexed the tool of skepticism he may have been able to save some time and figure out what was really happening much earlier than he originally did. We see Nev's blatant disregard to some of the skepticism he could have implemented when Nev's pen pal can never actually speak over the phone. There was always an excuse to why she wasn't there at that moment but was available every other time it wasn't a phone conversation. Due to Angela's skill of image management it was very difficult for Nev to see through her smoke and mirrors, even with the tool of skepticism.
In the textbook it defines perception as "the process of making meaning from what we experience in the world around us." (p.56) When dealing with the perception of another person it's generally the same process yet we make meaning from others behavior and appearance, especially online. In Nev's case his perception was altered severely from the start of his relationship with Angela. This is slightly due to the primacy effect, which is the concept that our first impressions of someone usually stick around much longer than any further interactions. Not only was the primacy effect working against Nev but it was also Angela's use of image management to keep tight knit on her credibility and how she would be perceived.
In conclusion, the film Catfish shows numerous concepts of communication at play and shows the types of things people can do when highly skilled in these concepts. The main character Nev shows us that even with the ability of skepticism it can be very difficult to figure out a person's true identity once your perception is continuously altered by a master of image management.
