Social influence

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

The In-SIDE story: Social psychological processes affecting on-line groups

CMC provides a new paradigm for research into general deindividuation phenomena that can usefully clarify some of the complexities in earlier deindividuation research as well as test the intervening processes that deindividuating contexts supposedly activate. For example, it enables one to manipulate anonymity and identifiability independently from physical isolation and co-presence. Conceptual distinctions between different … Read more