Angela, Unfortunately, I don't have many good citations of research on lying. I am sure others on this list do. There's work on play and performance of alternative identities online (see Brenda Danet's essay in Steve Jones' Cybersociety 2.0 as an example, or Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen). I've seen other research (no cite off the top of my head, though) that suggests few people actually engage in, for example, gender switching online. Gender switching, one could argue, is not lying, but in essence the performance online is one that is somehow different than is true to one's "nature" (whatever that might be from moment to moment). So, while it is *possible* for people to play and behave in ways different from how they might behave offline, there is a real question regarding whether many people actually take advantage of the textual environment online to behave differently. My own research on why people talk politics online suggests that, at least for the folks I interviewed, they felt more comfortable expressing their true opinions. Because of the online environment, they felt less inhibited to express their real thoughts on political matters, even when others found those opinions to be racist, xenophobic, etc. In other words, they felt less likely to hide their true opinions when debating online than if they were debating offline. Now, this is reported behavior, so people hypothetically could be lying to me, but I don't think so. For one, their statements came spontaneously out of general questions about why they like participating on their chosen discussion space. And, second, a number of my interviewees made similar claims. They can't all be lying to me :-). Now, in this case I'm interested in lying or at least not revealing one's true opinion online in an argumentation sense, and not whether they are masquerading some alternative identity. Which raises the question of in which sense of lying do you mean, performing alternative identities, or arguing something that is an untruth or against what one genuinely believes? ~Jenny Stromer-Galley Assistant Professor Department of Communication, SS 340 University at Albany, SUNY 1400 Washington Avenue Albany, NY 12222 jstromer@albany.edu 518-442-4879