"Selections for the Report on Psychology of Online Virtual Relationships" portrayed different views and aspects on the following topics: False Identity, Online Communitcation and their Expectations.
In the first section
of this article, the person believes that "false" identities that people
presume, are very desturctive. He thinks that role reversal is very
disturbing and that there is a double standard. This person also
believes that taking on another persona is desturctive in some cases.
He believes that all peole taking communication classes of the sort are
all learning how to manipulate other people online and they have destructive
goals in mind.
Another perspective on this topic is that
if you don't expect or want to meet the person that you are talking to
online, then it doesn't really matter if the person you're talking to has
a false identity.
One person shared their experience with having a "false" identity. A person that they were talking to actually fell in love with their fantasy persona. As that person communitcated online, it felt more like she was in a story book with fictional characters. After awhile, she loosened up and started to be more of herself and found that her relationships online feeling realistic. She didn't have to pretend anymore.
My Reaction:
I have mixed feelings about portraying "false" identities. On one hand I feel that people want to portray these false identities because it gives them the chance to fulfill a fantasy. Maybe they express themselves in a different way online.
I think that the
problem with communication online, you never know if the person you're
talking to is whom they say they are. I think when you choose to
converse online, you are putting trust into the other person. As
for myself, sometimes I feel insecure disclosing personal information when
I am conversing online so sometimes I spice the truth up a little or I
don't answer them at all.
BACK
The controversy of online communication is an interesting topic to read about and think about. The first person in this selection believes that you can effectively communicate with a person online as if you were face to face. Sometimes, he believes that he is "touched" online more than in real face to face interactions.
Another person believes that we talk the same way online as we do in face to face situations. "Verifying the intent of someone is done by talking to the same person over time, same as is done in person".
Some people prefer to express themselves through print rather than verbal. There are many forms of communication available through the computer and a person made it clear that we are learning right now by interacting with this article. There's a lot of good that comes out of online communication.
My reaction:
I think that online communication is a wonderful thing. It gives me a chance to communicate with people around the world. I think that I communicate more effeciently through writing than I do in real conversations.
Last semester I took an english class that incorporated a discussion online. We all logged into the same system and could converse with each other in a big chatroom. I really enjoyed that experience because I didn't feel the embarrassment like I would have if we were in the classroom. I think for some people, it is just easier to express themselves online.
I also think that in certain cases, you may find someone online that you connect with. If you are lucky enough to find that right person, it can be easy to disclose personal information and not feel uncomfortable about. I also think that under certain circumstances, one can find a compatible mate.
Expectation plays an important role when it comes to online communication. Reaction to situation can be drastically altered depending on the person's expectations of the other person. The person's expectations may either be realistic or fantasy. We need to be able to distinguish the differences between being in the real or fantasy world.
People with high expectations, may get suckered into scams. They don't know if the person is authentic or not. It's really hard to tell. The main point is to be aware of who you are talking to and to be aware of the environjment that you are in.
The numbers of internet users are on the rise. The Chilton Research Services conducted a study of 1,012 adults and of those people, 39.7% of them were avide internet users. It increased over 10% in about 6 months. Only time will tell and the internet will be flocked with new users. The expectation of the internet is definetly on the rise.
My reaction:
I think that expectations are an important part of the online communication world. The expectations that people hold can alter their perceptions and change the way that they see things. Situations can be mixed up and someone can easily be taken advantage of.
I think that it is difficult to tell if a person is truthful or not. That goes back to the class presentation topic verification issue of supposed "psychologists" online that offer their services. You do not know for sure if the person is accredited or not. They could easily say that they are not be. Users may expect that people are telling them the truth and they can easily get suckered into con-artists pranks.
The increase in users of the internet is very impressive. I think that it is important for everyone to have access and experience the internet. There is so much information out there that can teach us so much. Hopefully the internet can keep up with the technological time.
"Virtual Communities, Virtual Settlements & Cyber-Archaeology: A Theoretical Outline" was written by Quetin Jones, a Business student from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There are three sections in his paper: Coming to Terms with Virtual-Communities, Defining & Characterizing virtual settlements & Cyber-Archaeology.
In this section, Mr. Jones defines the term "virtual-communities". He has come across many different versions but prefers Rheingold's definition: "vitual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace".(p.5)
The definition of community has pondered the sociological world. For hundreds of years, they couldn't come up with a satisfactory definition of community. Till this day, there are no specific definition of community that includes CMC ( computer mediated communication). They also debated about the physical space and community.
Even though there is no specific definition of community, there is no doubt that there is a virtual community. There are associations made that can verify the existance of these communities online.
My reaction:
I think that it is interesting that there is no specific definition of what a community is. I always thought a community was a place where there is a section of people that live in one geographical area. So, I assumed that a virtual community would be a place where people interact and identify with. I would guess that chatrooms and forums could be considered as a community. People are constantly reacting and inegrating with the people around them.
Another aspect of Virtual Communities are Virtual Settlements. This section gives the four guidelines that classify a virtual settlement. These four conditions include: 1) a minimum level of interactivity; 2) a variety of communicators; 3) a minimum level of sustained membership. and 4) a virtual common-public-space where a significant portion of interactive group-CMCs occur.
A minimum level of interactivity requires less face to face interaction and it is open to more people.
Variety of communicators involves more than one communicator. With this, they are able to exclude database queries and interactions.
A minimum level of sustained membership will help the CMC to be considered as a virtual community.
A virtual common-public-space where a significant portion of interactive group-CMCs occur. A virtual settlement needs to be a symbolically delineated place with thousands of individual places.
My reaction:
In my opinion, I am just lost with the concept of virtual communities and settlements. I hope that one day they will be able to figure out what these concepts are and make them easy to understand in lamans terms. I think that the whole online commnuities are a complex situations. It's a little harder to talk about a term that I am unclear about.
"Archaeology is the study of humanity's past by scientific analysis of the material remains of cultures"(p.11). It would be ideal if archaeology can be related to virtual communities and virtual settlements. Even though they don't study communities and cultures as a whole, it would be interesting to study the human habitation online.
The type of cyber-archaeology that they want to incorporate will focus on certain changes which include: " the replacement of technological determinism with the notion of bounded hierarchies and an analysis of material behavior" (p.12).
My reaction:
I think that it will
be interesting to study to archaeology of the virtual setting. Many
advances are going to be on the rise and I think that it important that
we take interest in this. This may help us in future endeavors of
technology.
Chat rooms seem to be a place for people to interact with other people
that have common interests. The few chat rooms that I have visited
made me feel uneasy. I first visited Excite
People & Chat which I thought would have been a fun place to talk
to other people around the country. I was wrong. I entered
one chat room entitled "fishbowl" and no one in the room even boethered
to say "hello". The first reply that I got was "****... get off of
my man". I thought that was rather rude and obnoxious. However,
I thought I'd give it a second chance and asked them what they were talking
about so that I could understand what they were talking about and include
myself into their conversation. No one even bothered to talk to me
so I immediately left the room. They were talking about what age
they were and where they were from and when their birthdays are.
It seemed like they were talking to each other for the first time.
My initial reaction to the people that were chatting was that they were
not socialable and that they were very tacky in responses.
I entered the chatroom, World
Wide Collector's Digest. The room was called the Collectors center
and there were about 10 people in the room. We talked about all kinds
of stuff; like our interests, where we're from, what age we were, basically
nonsense. We also talked about our favorite television shows and
what we do on the weekends for fun.
I
noticed that these people were online basically to meet and talk to other
people. The only reason why I hesitate to communicate through this
medium is because you never know who you're talking to and there are people
who are out there just causing trouble. There were several instances
were I got bad remarks from users when i logged in. I think that
I was invading their space. That made me feel uncomfortable but I
just ignored them.
From personal experiences in different chat rooms, I find it to be more
beneficial to talk to actual friends then to just jump onto any chat room.
I guess too because I heard so many bad stories about chat rooms, I didn't
want to subject myself to that kind of humiliation.
I also felt very hesistant to enter chat room that required me to put my
real name. I think that they should just ask for a nickname and a
password. I do not think that it is necessary for them to know my
real name. E-mail addresses I can understand. I guess I am
not trusting of the internet services.
If you would like to experience the chat room excitement here are some
chat rooms that you can check out:
In my opinion, I
prefer to communicate through chatrooms because of the interactive setting.
Forums are more informal in communication because you are posting messages
that can be read at anytime. It's all up to your own prefernce.
The different forums that I have found and experienced were Epicurious
Forums and The Nature.Net
Forums. Forums are a form of communication that informally interacts
with the people that have the same interests or dislikes. Instead
of having the interactive communitcation screen by screen, people have
the option of posting their messages on bulletin boards for all interested
readers.
A difference between chatrooms and forums that I have noticed was the fact
that you don't really get to know the person you are talking to through
forums. You don't really have the chance to ask personal questions.
The good thing about forums is the fact that if you have a specific interest
with something you can send messages to the bulletin board and people who
have the same interests will respond back to you.
The first forum that I participated in was The
Nature.Net Forums. This forum gave me the chance to practice
and test the forum format.
I was unfamiliar with the instructions and strategies when it came to forums.
However, with this page, I was able to learn how to properly use them.
I suggest that all new comers and users of forums to come to this site
to practice and test out the forums. This Forum is about nature animals
and the sort. These people whom have posted messages are intereted
in nature and the animals that they associate with. I noticed that
the people involved in this forum had a lot of interesting things to say.
I learned some interesting concepts of frogs, turtles and sae creatures.
In Epicurious
Forums, there are many different categories in which you may
participate in. These categories include eating, food, your favorite
drinking hole etc. I thought that it was very interesting when I
finally got a hang of it. I participated in the "your favorite drinking
hole" and it was very interesting to read what everyone had to say.
This forum was quite different from the The
Nature.Net Forums.
There are thousands of forums out there that have your name on them.
I bet that there are forums for everything.
BACK
Another world wide page that I found was NetCafés World Wide . This listing includes cafes that can be found world wide. This page also includes links to different coffee product pages and it gives you an opportunity to buy their coffee.
Internet Cafes are one of the many ways
that the internet are made accessible.
I think that it is important for us to take precautions and be advised that you enter the chat rooms upon your own risk. The internet is going to be the most fastest growing technological device today. It will be interesting to see what our future hold for us.
While doing this research for this report, I learned many interesting tools and components of the internet and virtual communities. I didn't realize how complex the internet world really is.
In Marini's homepage, she focused on the relationship between cyberspace and the human mind. She also talks about hypertext technology, interactivity and virtual reality. She also comments on becoming a netizen which is an internet citizen.
Ms. Singh included an article written by Dr. Driving: Cyberpsychology's Approach To Virtual Reality and Its Relation To Mind. This article talks the implementation of hypertext to further our advances of the internet. Through hypertext, we are able to link to different homepages and broaden the availability.
Interactivity is an important concept to further our knowledge of the search engines which boosts interpersonal communication. She also talks about the importance of virtual communities and how they are very helpful and useful. There are so many options of communications that it is widespread.
Marini also referred to previous generation pages for assistance and information.
My comments:
I found Marini's page to be very informative and helpful. I think that she had a good understanding of what she was talking about. I was able to relate to virtual communities and the importance of communication.
I agree that hypertext has played a big part in the internet. It gives us a chance to have the links and other features that makes our lives easier and more convenient.
Asako Shinaga also focused her report on virtual relationships and cyber-space. Due to her research for this report, Ms. Shinaga was able to broaden her knowledge of the internet. She now considers herself to be a netizen.
From Dr. Driving's article, cyber space can be considered to be computer space because there is unlimited in thoughts and space. Through cyber space, a person is also capable of expressing thoughts and feelings and individuality.
Ms. Shinaga also focused on her fears and
her overcoming them. By combating these fears, she has become a netizen.
She also explains that your personality changes when you enter cyber-space.
It's almost as if you are not the same person as you were before.
It's like you go through a transformation.
My comments:
It was interesting to read Asako's perspecitves and to learn her views of cyberspace and becoming a netizen. I think that people with the fear of entering cyber-space should at least experience it once because it may not be as bad as they think it to be.
By reading Asako's page, it helped me to understand the concept of cyber-space. I wanted to agree with her when she said that our personality's change when we enter cyber-space. I think that through cyber-space we are able to experiment and learn about ourselves as well as others.
Ryan Shintani's page is another variation of the explanation of cyberpsychology and use of virtual relationships with the virtual community. Ryan was a newbie that didn't have faith in the internet. He didn't feel like it was worth the time. Now that he is a netizen, he has a better understanding and interest in the internet.
He explains that a lot of interaction goes on. Whether it be with your computer or with other users. The use of hypertext helps us expand our use of interactivity. There are all sorts of interactions that are available; chat rooms, forums, telnet etc.
There is more out there than just the typical communication tools. the internet is a world of adventure.
My comments:
I felt that Ryand did a great job with his page. I learned a lot about cyer-psychology and the effect that it has on us. In the past couple of years, the internet had increased and expanded. There are so many things that need to be learned about the internet and that it should not be taken for granted. I would suggest everyone to take a whirl on the internet and experience yourself.
Cyber-psychology is a very interesting concept. It was intriguing to know that cyberspace and the mind can exist without any physical form due to the theory of dualism.
I think that everyone learned a lot from doing research on this page.
*Everyone deserves five gold stars!!!!
It will be important to have knowledge of them topics because this is just the beginning of cyber-space. There are going to be so many advances that it is important to keep up.
I think that this is the beginning of the concepts and an introuctory level. These words are so complex, I just got a general idea of the them. Feel free to explore these topics and have fun with them.
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