Cyber-Psychopathy: Examining the Relationship between Dark E-Personality and Online Misconduct

Currently, there is a lack of research investigating how the unique structural conditions of cyberspace may influence the expression of ‘dark’ personality and the role of such e-personality in explaining instances of online misconduct. Using a theoretical framework of context-dependent personality, this study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by using self-report survey data to explore whether the internet may decrease, increase, or intensify the expression of psychopathy. Quantitative data analysis in this study shows that when controlling for social context, internet users exhibit higher levels of psychopathy online than offline, which is especially pronounced in male subsamples. Further multivariate models examine the role of this ‘cyber-psychopathy’ in understanding misconduct behaviours on the internet, such as cyber-stalking, trolling, flaming, and digital piracy. Results demonstrate that primary cyber-psychopathy is positively correlated with one’s level of acceptability toward online misconduct behaviours, while both primary and secondary cyber-psychopathy are positively associated with one’s tendency toward engaging in such transgressions. This study serves to highlight the potential impacts of heightened psychopathic personality online, while suggesting practical implications that emphasize the need to foster empathy and close psychological distance between internet users in online communities

Microworld Writing: Making Spaces for Collaboration, Construction, Creativity, and Community in the Composition Classroom

In order to create a 21st century pedagogy of learning experiences that inspire the engaged, constructive, dynamic, and empowering modes of work we see in online creative communities, we need to focus on the platforms, the environments, the microworlds that host, hold, and constitute the work. A good platform can build connections between users, allowing for the creation of a community, giving creative work an engaged and active audience. These platforms will work together to build networks of rhetorical/creative possibilities, wherein students can learn to cultivate their voices, skills, and knowledge bases as they engage across platforms and genres. I call on others to make, mod, or hack other new platforms. In applying this argument to my subject, teaching writing in a college composition class, I describe Microworld Writing as a genre that combines literary language practice with creativity, performativity, play, game mechanics, and coding. The MOO can be an example of one of these platforms and of microworld writing, in that it allows for creativity, user agency, and programmability, if it can be updated to have the needed features (virtual world, community, accessibility, narrativity, compatibility and exportability). I offer the concept of this MOO-IF as inspiration for a collaborative, community-oriented Interactive Fiction platform, and encourage people to extend, find, and build their own platforms. Until then and in addition, students can be brought into Microworld Writing in the composition classroom through interactive-fiction platforms, as part of an ecology of genre experimentation and platform exercise

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis project is an activity-based study of American teens (13-17 years of age) and their material engagement with new media. This study documents the participants' engagement with new media in networked spaces and the everyday practices that surround their participation. Study participants were asked to orally report what they are experiencing as they experience it. Reports and on-screen activities are recorded by a laptop computer. Theoretical findings emerged from the axial coding across four code categories and suggested a leitmotiv pattern of a complex but stable relationship between interpersonal communication channels, the relative immediacy and intimacy of the channel, and the social relationship between participants. This pattern appeared to have a structuring influence on communication practices of youth in networked publics, and led to some tensions, concerns, and strategies relating to controlling the flow of information in those spaces. Overall, 10 code patterns and themes emerged to provide insight into the everyday practices of young people as they negotiate and construct meaning and identity in networked publics. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context; of the research questions. To my wife, Esther, for her love and unwavering support. To my children, who have never known a father who was not in working on a PhD. To my mother and father, who never lost confidence. My family was and is my inspiration

Cultural Polysemy: Exploring Cultural Codes Through Digital and Non-Digital Practices

Culture is a coherent entity we use for describing our cooperative interests with others in political, social, and historical contexts. Culture is functional in that it is defined through individual and collective articulations in time and space. Its representations occur through macro categories of nations, race, habits, practices, and values as embodied in the following models: contexting (Hall, 1976); value orientation (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, 1961); cultural dimension (Hofstede, 1996); Seven-Dimensions of culture (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1997); Seven Value Types (Schwartz, 1999). Culture also gets defined in terms of its situatedness based on specificity of contexts and practices: social constructionist approach (Dohney-Farina, 1986; Porter, 1993; Mirel, 1996); discourse approach (Scollon et al., 1995). In professional and technical communication, the practice of splitting culture into macro and micro categories is influenced by the American linguistic anthropologist Kenneth L. Pike (1954) who theorized cultural distinctions through a linguistic route of tagmemics that looks at the connection between language use and sociocultural behavior (Franklin, 1996) through emic and etic approaches. Emic accounts focus on individual and relative aspects of a culture, while etic elements provide descriptive universals to enable macro comparison between cultures

Keyboard warriors in cyberfights:conflict in online communities of consumption

Nowadays, with the use of social media generalizing, increasingly more people gather online to share their passion for specific consumption activities. Despite this shared passion, conflicts frequently erupt in online communities of consumption (OCC). A systematic review of the literature revealed that a lot of knowledge has developed on OCC conflict. Different types of conflicts unfolding in an OCC context have been distinguished, various drivers of conflict identified and various consequences outlined at the individual level (experiential value) and the community level (collective engagement and community culture). However the specificity of conflicts unfolding in an OCC context has not been conceptualized. Past research is also inconclusive as to where and when does OCC conflict create or destroy value in communities. This research provides a theory of OCC conflict and its impact on value formation by conceptualizing OCC conflict as performances. The theory was developed by conducting a netnography of a clubbing forum. Close to 20,000 forum posts and 250 pages of interview transcript and field notes were collected over 27 months and analysed following the principles of grounded theory. Four different types of conflict performances are distinguished (personal, played, reality show and trolling conflict) based on the clarity of the performance. Each type of conflict performance is positioned with regard to its roots and consequences for value formation. This research develops knowledge on disharmonious interactions in OCCs contributing to the development of a less utopian perspective of OCCs. It indicates how conflict is not only a byproduct of consumption but it is also a phenomenon consumed. It also introduces the concept of performance clarity to the literature on performance consumption. This research provides guidelines to community managers on how to manage conflict and raises ethical issues regarding the management of conflict on social media

Designing a user interface for serious games: Observing differences in user response between gamers and non-gamers within the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service

As entertainment games become an established part of our media, public and private sector companies will look to utilise the benefits of games to train, educate and assess their workforce in engaging ways. This may require a generation unfamiliar with games technology to use them for the first time. As designers we need to consider this, to make sure that the User Interfaces (UI) we create are usable and easily understood to those unfamiliar with the medium. This body of research is a study into the design and testing of a serious game for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (WYFRS). Do players of video games develop an understanding of the convention, knowledge and skills over time, which could be seen as a distinct language? – A kind of ‘game literacy.’ If so, then a serious game, which may have a mixed skill group, cannot solely rely on the conventions that work in entertainment games. Therefore, can a recognised UI design process from another discipline be used to develop a serious games UI? To investigate this, Goal-Directed Design is used as a research methodology with a particular focus on the impact learning domain knowledge has on the designer’s ability to create a suitable product for the client. This includes the author undergoing introductory Incident Command training to see the benefits that had on the project. In response to learning the Fire Service’s domain, a prototype product was developed to help the creation and examination of Incident Commanders for the Fire Service. This was then tested on five Fire Officers, of varying ages, to observe how they used and interacted with software unfamiliar to them. This provided an insight into aspects of UIs gamers and non-gamers have problems with and also to see if there is a technological gap between generations. This research suggests there may be a technology generation gap but it is not as polarised as either ‘native’ or ‘immigrant’ but more gradual. Goal Directed Design appears to set out a suitable approach for serious games developers to conduct user research