Monday, March 31, 2008
Online Deviance to the Nth Degree
Sometimes, stories are just too shocking, like this one where trolls caused real physical harm to epilepsy patients.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Networking Never Ends....
I think I started this semester saying that the next big Internet app is the social networking sites like Facebook. I believe this because it challenges some of my earlier work and suggests it's time for new theorizing. (Sort of like how we've been arguing that the SIDE model best applies to synchronous chat in one-time groups)
Well, here is another networking site for people with serious illnesses in their family. Care Pages helps link people together with illnesses. Caring Bridges is another one I've used to keep up with friends who have family members who are dying.
The "facebook" type applications never end.
And as we talked about last week, Facebook's privacy features are changing. Here is an article that explains why old folks might find that more attractive than young folks do.
Well, here is another networking site for people with serious illnesses in their family. Care Pages helps link people together with illnesses. Caring Bridges is another one I've used to keep up with friends who have family members who are dying.
The "facebook" type applications never end.
And as we talked about last week, Facebook's privacy features are changing. Here is an article that explains why old folks might find that more attractive than young folks do.
Want to Make Money Doing What You Like to Do?
Start a blog! If it's funny enough and/or gets enough hits, you'll end up with a lucrative deal.
One of the first blogs I've studied, the Julie/Julia project, was first made into a book and is now being made into a movie. Meryl Streep is playing Julia Child and Amy Adams is playing Julie Powell.
Nice work if you can get it!
One of the first blogs I've studied, the Julie/Julia project, was first made into a book and is now being made into a movie. Meryl Streep is playing Julia Child and Amy Adams is playing Julie Powell.
Nice work if you can get it!
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Politics and Youth
This is the first campaign season with YouTube, and it is apparently attracting the attention of younger and younger voters. Are you finding yourself more involved in this campaign?
Anti-Social networking sites
Continuing in the vein of the gossip sites, there are these "anti-social" networking sites:
- EnemyBook--which allows you to manage your "enemies" on facebook.
- Hatebook.com--apparently, facebook for haters.
- Snubster.com--Another enemy application for facebook.
What do you think?
Online High School
Following on our discussion on Saturday, this is an interesting article. Students could have the option of attending school completely online from K through 12. Will these students have an advantage as more college courses go online? More importantly, will they have a disadvantage when they attend FtF college classes---if they've never really "practiced" discussing issues in class or asking/answering questions?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Dooce Redux
We mentined DOOCE at the beginning of the semester, but you may have forgotten about her. Dooce was the first person fired from her job for blogging, and hence, has become a verb as in "to be dooced." She has also been ranked one of the top 5 most influential bloggers in the world today.
However, I still don't think I've impressed upon you just how entertaining she is. This entry from Tuesday might help. She could even help us talk about Twittering, the new way of blogging from your cell phone. At the very least, she has done a great deal to destigmatize depression.
However, I still don't think I've impressed upon you just how entertaining she is. This entry from Tuesday might help. She could even help us talk about Twittering, the new way of blogging from your cell phone. At the very least, she has done a great deal to destigmatize depression.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Social Identity Article
One of the points is this article is that children will learn through online communication once their identification within the group is established. This statement goes along with the older material that we have discussed concerning the fact that people will develop a sense of belonging and will open up and feel free to share in the topics or assignments online. The desire to share information could also be contributed to the fact that everyone will have equality and no one will should feel left out. Once a person is in a group, they tend to take on the identity of the group which can lead to deindividuation. The person will communicate using plural pronouns such as "we" instead of singular pronouns. They identify with the group and somewhat lose themselves along the way. This would be easy for someone to do if she/he feels lonely or don't fit into any off line groups. Online groups gives them the social identity they always wanted so when they finally achieve social status, they totally become part of the group.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
RateMyCop.com
This was sent to me and after reading it I thought about this class esp. since the last two post were about similar sites with the same concept! Here is the site ... hope it works!
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/godaddy-silence.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/godaddy-silence.html
Friday, March 21, 2008
hurray for easter. hurray for blogs.
So, it's Easter weekend..Hurray! I am about to head to the Lake (fun times) but realized I've yet to leave a blog for this week. I missed class on Tuesday :( but I really enjoyed class on Thursday and the discussions we got into. I have been thinking about Common Identity and Common Bonds in ftf groups and online groups, and trying to think which I have more of. I definitely think they are both important groups, and one needs to have both in their life. When you are dealing with the common identity, it is easier for one to open up about their interest (of that particular group) or their struggles (of that particular group i.e- addictions). However, I think the common bonds group is something that you can get an overall satisfaction. In a bond group you may not be as prone to open up fully about your obsession with cheese, addiction with coffee (that's mine), weight issues, etc... but I think it is an overall satisfaction of yourself. These are the people you interact best with and enjoy spending time with, and from the article you are more attracted to. Again, I think it is a positive to keep both common identity groups and common bond groups in one's life!
Happy Easter :)
Happy Easter :)
New Campus Based Applications
First, how much do you really want to know about your professors? Does it help you as a student to have more connections to your professors? What happens when the "backstage" starts moving closer to the "frontstage" in college? I'd argue that students' lives are already moving from the back to the front. This story is about the professors' lives moving from the back to the front!
Second, Wow! This game, GoCrossCampus, essentially Risk applied to the Internet, sounds like a completely new way of playing games on the internet. It's more social and relies much more heavily on FtF interactions. They are even thinking of applying this to work to help team building in organizations!! Who knows? I always doubt that technologies spread the way we think they are going to! But this is really interesting!
Your thoughts?
Second, Wow! This game, GoCrossCampus, essentially Risk applied to the Internet, sounds like a completely new way of playing games on the internet. It's more social and relies much more heavily on FtF interactions. They are even thinking of applying this to work to help team building in organizations!! Who knows? I always doubt that technologies spread the way we think they are going to! But this is really interesting!
Your thoughts?
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Online Gossip Sites
Yikes!!!
This is the evil cousin of facebook, a site in which people can anonymously gossip about their peers.
What do you think of it!?
This is the evil cousin of facebook, a site in which people can anonymously gossip about their peers.
What do you think of it!?
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Internet Addiction Poll Part 1
Please explain why you thought someone could be addicted to the internet before you read these articles. (Essentially this is your “layperson” perspective)
Internet “Addiction”
There are a couple of distinctions to be made about internet “addiction”.
· First, clinical psychologists don’t like the term “addiction”. Other words like abuse or dependence are more in favored.
· Second, internet abuse is a behavioral problem and not a physiological dependence. Therefore, more like pathological gambling than alcohol or cocaine dependence.
However, the popular media and the average “layperson” doe not make this sort of distinction. How does that affect the way psychologists study internet addiction and more importantly, how they present their results to the public?
· First, clinical psychologists don’t like the term “addiction”. Other words like abuse or dependence are more in favored.
· Second, internet abuse is a behavioral problem and not a physiological dependence. Therefore, more like pathological gambling than alcohol or cocaine dependence.
However, the popular media and the average “layperson” doe not make this sort of distinction. How does that affect the way psychologists study internet addiction and more importantly, how they present their results to the public?
Loneliness
Hello loneliness as a reason for CMC behavior! We’ve missed you over the last week or two! At least identity/true self isn’t as much in the forefront here.
OK! So Morahan-Martin says that there are two alternative hypotheses: 1) loneliness leads to IA and 2) IA leads to loneliness.
How would you study which one of this would be the “correct” hypothesis? Is it possible that there are certain individual characteristics that might make one hypothesis valid for a certain group of people versus others? What might those characteristics be?
OK! So Morahan-Martin says that there are two alternative hypotheses: 1) loneliness leads to IA and 2) IA leads to loneliness.
How would you study which one of this would be the “correct” hypothesis? Is it possible that there are certain individual characteristics that might make one hypothesis valid for a certain group of people versus others? What might those characteristics be?
Generalized or Specific Internet Abuse
There is some criticism that when researchers discuss Internet Abuse (or addiction), they are referring to every application on the internet (generalized internet abuse) or abuse of a specific application (e.g., online gambling or gaming referred to as specific internet abuse). Some argue that specific internet abuse should be considered as “technologically enabled variants of other pathologies” such as pathological gambling or sexual compulsivity whereas generalized internet abuse is using the internet as a whole in ways that disrupt the person’s life and social relationships.
The issue here, as I see it, is that most researchers do not distinguish between these two very different forms of internet addiction. If researchers do NOT distinguish between these two forms of internet addiction, how might that affect how good their research findings are? Research is supposed to get at the “truth” of a relationship. But if they are not even studying the same “problem,” how might that affect the results of their studies. You might want to start by defining for yourself what Specific vs. Generalized Internet Abuse is and how the “abusers” could be different.
The issue here, as I see it, is that most researchers do not distinguish between these two very different forms of internet addiction. If researchers do NOT distinguish between these two forms of internet addiction, how might that affect how good their research findings are? Research is supposed to get at the “truth” of a relationship. But if they are not even studying the same “problem,” how might that affect the results of their studies. You might want to start by defining for yourself what Specific vs. Generalized Internet Abuse is and how the “abusers” could be different.
Adolescents and Internet Abuse
Why are adolescents so vulnerable to internet addiction or abuse? Should we have policies in place that limit the use of particular forms of the CMC/ICT to certain age groups? That is, like alcohol use, should we limit the use of online gaming and chatrooms to people over the age of 21?
Factor Analysis
We quickly talked about factor analysis in class. Let me review using the salad spinner analogy. Factor analysis allows us to understand how different groups of variables “hang together” (that is, people respond similarly) to explain some construct, in this case, internet addiction versus high internet engagement. Essentially, we put all the survey items in a big salad bowl and we spin them around. We believe that the contents of our salad spinner have similar shapes (like marbles or cubes) and if we spin them around, all the marbles will go down a marble shaped tube and the cubes will go down the cube shaped tube. Then after we’ve finished spinning, we can see which items “hang together” and thus, which behaviors/cognitions people report as being very similar.
In the Charlton and Danforth study, the internet addiction items and the high internet engagement items went “down different tubes.” This means that they reflect different psychological constructs. Thus, internet addiction and high engagement are not the same thing (according to this paper). They are related (there was a correlation between the two of .38), but they are not the same thing. (Note: they actually measured “low” engagement so the correlation is -.38, but we are interested in the relationship between high engagement and addiction, so I reversed the correlation sign.)
This seems pretty interesting to me! I’d love for us to have a good chat about this article tomorrow, so be sure and read this article!
In the Charlton and Danforth study, the internet addiction items and the high internet engagement items went “down different tubes.” This means that they reflect different psychological constructs. Thus, internet addiction and high engagement are not the same thing (according to this paper). They are related (there was a correlation between the two of .38), but they are not the same thing. (Note: they actually measured “low” engagement so the correlation is -.38, but we are interested in the relationship between high engagement and addiction, so I reversed the correlation sign.)
This seems pretty interesting to me! I’d love for us to have a good chat about this article tomorrow, so be sure and read this article!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Testing the Use of Polls
In preparation for this week's class, I'm testing out polls. How does this one work?
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Internet Addiction
You'd think the NY Times was following my syllabus with how these stories keep coming up just in time.
A little background on the author, Mark Bittman is a very respected cookbook writer and food columnist for the NY Times. I think this story is so interesting because it's not about some pasty faced loser who can't stop gaming. It's about a real person with a real job and a real life that is trying to figure out how to break free from his electronic ties. CMC and ICT are like chains. They connect us, free us, and tie us down.
It's only going to get worse for your generation!! Trust me, we are not at the end of the beginning of ICT at work.
A little background on the author, Mark Bittman is a very respected cookbook writer and food columnist for the NY Times. I think this story is so interesting because it's not about some pasty faced loser who can't stop gaming. It's about a real person with a real job and a real life that is trying to figure out how to break free from his electronic ties. CMC and ICT are like chains. They connect us, free us, and tie us down.
It's only going to get worse for your generation!! Trust me, we are not at the end of the beginning of ICT at work.
New Ways to Goof Off at Work
As we've discussed, Facebook is becoming more common at work. And in many ways this is a good thing as people increase their social network ties.
However, Facebook isn't all "networking" as you well know. There are tons of applications on there and some of them are really catching on. Superpoke was the first one to get attention, and make the creators freaky rich. Now Scrabulous is getting a lot of attention---with 700,000 players a day!!! Personally, I love Scrabulous but have to limit myself to one move a day or it eats into work time. (OK, I *try* to limit myself).
The issues I see with Scrabulous is that we really don't know when technology is going to take off, we just can see when it has. We have a poor ability to predict the future. Second, who knew it would become such an active game/problem for employees! That's well beyond the educational group. Finally, how are traditional media supposed to deal with Facebook applications? Should the Hasbro shut down the site for copyright infringement? Or should they try to tap into the $25,000 A MONTH the game is bringing in. I, like one of the people in the story, actually bought a Scrabble game for my husband and me to play at home.
Your thoughts??
However, Facebook isn't all "networking" as you well know. There are tons of applications on there and some of them are really catching on. Superpoke was the first one to get attention, and make the creators freaky rich. Now Scrabulous is getting a lot of attention---with 700,000 players a day!!! Personally, I love Scrabulous but have to limit myself to one move a day or it eats into work time. (OK, I *try* to limit myself).
The issues I see with Scrabulous is that we really don't know when technology is going to take off, we just can see when it has. We have a poor ability to predict the future. Second, who knew it would become such an active game/problem for employees! That's well beyond the educational group. Finally, how are traditional media supposed to deal with Facebook applications? Should the Hasbro shut down the site for copyright infringement? Or should they try to tap into the $25,000 A MONTH the game is bringing in. I, like one of the people in the story, actually bought a Scrabble game for my husband and me to play at home.
Your thoughts??
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