The importance of being Earnest in social media: juxtaposing Oscar Wilde’s script with an empirical case study to examine digital deceit from the blogger’s perspective

Deceit in social media by independent bloggers is a topic of concern for brand managers and for consumers. Empirical research has focussed on the consumer or the brand rather than on the perspective of the online source. This paper elucidates the blogger’s motivations for and the contexts in which she is most likely to publish deceitful content. The methodology is an analogical problem-solving process juxtaposing Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” with an empirical case study. We use the analogy to reverse the perspective of the revisited study from the consumer to the blogger. The results support direct, differentiated, brand management of bloggers according to their level of expertise and to the adopted social or trade norm. A model is proposed.