Link for this Post: The Psychology of Cyberspace Blog Companion.
John Suler has had an online book The Psychology of Cyberspace since the early days of the Web. I wrote about it in a post earlier this year.
Now he is publishing a weblog companion. Here is an excerpt from the blog about the "academic" study of cyberspace psychology:
What has changed dramatically since the first publication of this online book is the academic study of cyberspace. A decade ago there were only a handful of us doing what we called “cyberpsychology.” Now there are hundreds, with researchers specializing in particular aspects of online behavior. New journals devoted to Internet research have been created, while mainstream psychology journals are accepting more articles about online behavior. Azy Barak’s reference list is an excellent portal into this world of cyberpsychology.
With this boom in research comes a variety of important questions. When can our traditional psychological theories explain online behavior? Under what circumstances do we need new theories? As is always the case in the history of any topic area within psychology, new theories will compete with each other. Only time and research will reveal which ones apply best to which phenomena. We must be on the lookout for concepts that are new and good, while remembering that what’s new isn’t necessarily good, and what’s good isn’t necessarily new.
Unfortunately, the seriousness psychology now pays to Internet research isn’t always matched by the seriousness it pays to online scholarly publications. Such publications too often are considered second class citizens, or they are not considered “publications” at all. An odd kind of double-standard seems to have evolved. Whereas cyberspace is considered a rich social/informational environment for gathering scholarly social science data, it often is not regarded as a rich environment for publishing scholarly research.
You can read the rest of this post and follow the blog at the link above.
