Dr. Martin Lea

I was an academic researcher before starting my Academic Web Design business in 2013. I build WordPress websites exclusively for researchers, authors, educators, and therapists. View my Portolio or read my Guides to creating an academic website.

Rationalist assumptions in cross-media comparisons of computer-mediated communication

Users’ comparisons between computer-mediated communication (CMC) and other forms of communication are of theoretical interest and have important implications for system design and implementation. This paper outlines the prevalent systems rationalist perspective on CMC, which sees the medium primarily as an efficient channel for information transfer in specific organizational tasks, and critically reviews the evidence … Read more

Personal Academic Websites Versus Faculty Web Pages

Four reasons why a faculty profile page is no substitute for your own personal academic website. Almost every academic has an institutional or faculty web page that briefly summarises their career, interests, and publications. So should you rely on that for your academic web presence? Here are 4 reasons why I think that’s problematic.

Deindividuation and group polarization in computer-mediated communication

A computer-mediated communication system (CMCS) was used to explore the effects of de-individuation on group polarization. Reicher (1984) argued that de-individuating members of a group should increase the salience of group identity and hence normative behaviour, while de-individuating subjects treated as individuals should have the reverse effect. We extended this idea to the group-polarization paradigm … Read more

Investigating personal constructs of emotions

Forty-two first-year psychology students took part in an exploratory study of conceptions of emotions using Kelly’s (1955) Repertory Grid technique. Each participant generated eight different personal constructs for comparing and contrasting eight different emotional states then rated these emotions on the basis of their own constructs. Analysis of the group data revealed five significant principal … Read more

Computer-mediated communication and social identity

The reader is asked to tolerate a degree of egocentrism if this chapter appears to be written from an “ingroup” point of view, particularly with an emphasis on our own theoretical slant, and to some extent research. This is after all meant to be a general overview chapter on social identity and CMC. Our excuse … Read more

Facing the future: Emotion communication and the presence of others in video communications

Video-mediated communication is becoming a ubiquitous feature of everyday life. This chapter considers the differences between face-to-face and video-mediated communication in terms of co-presence and considers the implications for the communication of emotion, self-disclosure, and relationship rapport. Following initial consideration of the concepts of physical presence and social presence, we describe recent studies of the … Read more

Social processes in electronic teamwork: The central issue of identity.

In this chapter we argue that issues of identity are central to understanding how communication technologies affect organizational practice. We develop this argument by first reviewing some of the dominant approaches to understanding the social psychological processes implied or held responsible for CMC effects. We highlight the common themes underpinning these approaches, and trace their … Read more

Love at first byte: Building personal relationships over computer networks

Our discussion of personal relationships and computer networks focuses on three issues of central concern in this volume. The first issue is to do with how relationship research currently privileges certain kinds of relationships while neglecting others. We describe relationships that have been observed in this new medium and identify a number of assumptions and … Read more

Video-linking emotions

How does video mediation influence communication of affective information? In the present chapter, we review the range of possible constraints associated with the video medium and consider their potential impact on transmission and co-ordination of emotions. In particular, we focus on the effects of transmission delays on interpersonal attunement. Results of a preliminary investigation of … Read more

Social Psychology of the Internet

Social psychology has a long history of researching the effects of communication technologies, such as the telephone and television, on individuals and groups. Social psychological research on the Internet has focused predominantly on text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as e-mail, bulletin boards, newsgroups, conferencing, and chat. These have been compared both theoretically and empirically with … Read more

Cohesion in Online Groups

Groups are traditionally defined in terms of the interpersonal bonds that exist between group members and thus cohesion is based on the strength of those bonds. The transition of this definition of the group onto online groups leads to attempts to emulate face to face behaviour through presentation of group member pictures, video and detailed personal descriptions. However, … Read more

A SIDE view of social influence

Researchers from the field of intergroup relations, and notably self-categorization theorists, have investigated how our group memberships impinge on the social influence process. Much progress has been made in showing how ingroup and outgroup information is processed differently and can have different impacts. Within this tradition, the way in which we categorize the source is … Read more

Power and gender in computer-mediated communication: A SIDE look

The new communications technologies are developing at such a fast pace that it is difficult for research and theorizing to keep up. Although exploring the range of applications and instantiations of the latest forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC), texting, and video-based phone systems provides many useful insights, research and theorizing that lags behind the technological … Read more

How social is Internet communication? A reappraisal of bandwidth and anonymity effects

The use of Internet communications has increasingly become part of our lives both at work and at home, for business and for recreation. Internet communications are augmenting and substituting for many of the interpersonal and group interactions that were previously conducted face-to-face. Surveys have repeatedly shown that electronic mail benefits business as a replacement for … Read more

Flaming in computer-mediated communication: Observations, explanations, implications

The notion that ‘uninhibited behaviour’ is associated with communicating via computer has gained a great deal of attention. One manifestation, ‘flaming’ (the hostile expression of strong emotions and feelings) has been widely reported in the research literature and commented on in the national press. Indeed, flaming has come to be regarded as symptomatic of the down-side … Read more

Constructing the networked organization: Content and context in the development of electronic communications.

This paper presents a case study of the development of electronic communications in a changing organization with the aim of studying the complex relationship between content and context in the design and implementation of technological change in communications. The development of a computer-mediated communication system was followed over a period of four years during which … Read more