Thank you very much to J. for sending me a link to extensive work by John Suler of the Department of Psychology at Rider University about individual and group behaviour online. His work is called The Psychology of Cyberspace (read it here). It examines how the mentality of people is changing as they interact on the internet, which he calls cyberpsychology; he investigates how cyberpsychology is altering our whole society, starting with the way computers have split the already-fractured self. He covers topics such as anonymity, disinhibition, the psychology of avatars, cyberspace as dream worlds, addiction to computers, online gender-switching, apocalyptic thinking, integrating online and offline living, in-person versus cyberspace relationships, virtual communities, and the ethics of cyberspace research.
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A different J then me, I assume, heh.
ReplyDeleteThe net certainly strips away many rules of civility. Perhaps that's where the issues we've discussed in fandom come from.