Make a Name for Yourself: Recognizability, Prosociality, and Identity Expression in Online Pseudonymous Contexts

Given the increasing prevalence of social media in people’s social lives, understanding the dynamics of interpersonal interaction online is timely and important, both theoretically and practically. One key element in these dynamics is the way people identify themselves online. Identity can influence how people see themselves and others, as well as how people treat others. One way through which people create or claim an identity online is through the use of a pseudonym: a self-designed identifier that is used in place of one’s actual name. My dissertation investigates how Internet users come to value persistent online identifications, such as pseudonyms, as extensions of self and how this process shapes online behavior. The specific goals of this dissertation are to investigate how (a) pseudonymous settings online influence prosociality relative to anonymous settings, and (b) different features of pseudonyms, such as their persistence and level of expressiveness, can change people’s expectations for their own and others’ identifiability and thereby influence behavior and attitudes. This dissertation also studies how personality factors, social context, and group identity can serve to moderate the effects of pseudonymity on behavior and attitudes. The dissertation pursues these goals across six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the key concepts and objectives in the dissertation. Chapter 2, which contrasts pseudonymity and anonymity, reviews the existing literature and outlines theoretical considerations that inform subsequent study designs. Chapter 2 explains how pseudonymity may make personal and group identities salient, and how personal and situational factors may interact with pseudonymity to influence behavior. Chapter 3 investigates in two studies how prosocial behavior online may be influenced through the use of personal identifiers. These two studies distinguish the effects of anonymity from pseudonymity (Study 1) between temporary and persistent pseudonymity (Studies 1 and 2) in online behavior. The results of Study 1 and Study 2 suggest that the effects of having a pseudonym, compared to being anonymous, or having a persistent versus temporary pseudonym, influence prosocial behavior primarily by affecting perceptions of recognizability. Chapter 4 presents an experiment (Study 3) that investigated how qualities of persistent pseudonyms can affect users’ psychological states and ultimately their online social behavior. It explored the effect of a pseudonym that contained “unique” personally-relevant information or one that was personally relevant but also is designed to be expressive of oneself, compared to a control condition in which participants had a persistent pseudonym that was designed to individuate them (a pseudonym that distorts personal information in an unrecognizable fashion), on online social experiences and behavior. Although, as expected, participants valued unique and expressive pseudonyms more than information pseudonyms and found expressive pseudonyms as being more personally reflective, inconsistent with expectations, unique and expressive pseudonyms did not make participants feel more recognizable to others than did information pseudonyms. Chapter 4 describes Studies 4 and 5 that further considered prosociality and group dynamics. Study 4 included an additional manipulation of others’ recognizability and a measure of participants’ concerns about leaving a good impression on others, and it also investigated participants’ everyday sadism as a moderator of prosociality. Guided by findings from Study 4, Study 5 manipulated the perceived group membership of participants and included other aspects of altruistic punishment (Fehr & Gächter, 2002) as behavioral measures. These two studies indicated that there may be an optimal amount of personal information to receive about another person online—particularly when one does not feel a strong sense of ingroup cohesion with this other person. When individual identities were emphasized, individuating information about others online appeared to be “too much information,” which discouraged prosocial feelings. By contrast, when group identity was salient, receiving personal information about others did not reduce prosociality relative to not receiving such information. Chapter 6 discusses implications, limitations, and future directions of my research. In particular, Chapter 6 compares the results of the studies to existing literature and explains the studies’ novel contributions, while also acknowledging their shortcomings. Chapter 6 then proposes future studies for testing wider implications of the dissertation research. Ultimately, I expect that my work will contribute to the psychological understanding of online social interaction, particularly in the context of identity, and that its implementation will help both website administrators and users to create social spaces that are safer, more collaborative, and more enjoyable to use

“Real men don’t hate women”:Twitter rape threats and group identity

On 24th July 2013, feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez's petition to the Bank of England to have Elizabeth Fry's image on the UK's £5 note replaced with the image of another woman was successful. The petition challenged the Bank of England's original plan to replace Fry with Winston Churchill, which would have meant that no woman aside from the Queen would be represented on any UK banknote. Following this, Criado-Perez was subjected to ongoing misogynistic abuse on Twitter, a microblogging social network, including threats of rape and death. This paper investigates this increasingly prominent phenomenon of rape threats made via social networks. Specifically, we investigate the sustained period of abuse directed towards the Twitter account of feminist campaigner and journalist, Caroline Criado-Perez. We then turn our attention to the formation of online discourse communities as they respond to and participate in forms of extreme online misogyny on Twitter. We take a corpus of 76,275 tweets collected during a three month period in which the events occurred (July to September 2013), which comprises 912,901 words. We then employ an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of language in the context of this social network. Our approach combines quantitative approaches from the fields of corpus linguistics to detect emerging discourse communities, and then qualitative approaches from discourse analysis to analyse how these communities construct their identities

Right to Information Identity, 29 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 539 (2012)

Inspired by the famous Warren and Brandeis conceptualization of the “right to privacy,” this article tries to answer a modern, conceptual lacuna and presents the argument for the need to conceptualize and recognize a new, independent legal principle of a “right to information identity.” This is the right of an individual to the functionality of the information platforms that enable others to identify and know him and to remember who and what he is. Changes in technology and social standards make the very notion of identity increasingly fluid, transforming the way it is treated and opening new and fascinating ways of relating to it. Simultaneously, these changes intensify the dangers threatening identity. The tremendous extent of distortion, impersonation, filtering, deleting and concealing of information-identity demands a legal response grounded in solid conceptual and normative foundations. However, contemporary legal protection for the existence of information identity is partial and insufficient and is provided incidentally by a variety of legal doctrines, lacking any consolidated conceptual and normative foundations

Proteus meets Eris? Understanding the influence of pseudonymous self-representation on instant messenger discussions

This dissertation proposes a novel definition of anonymity, drawing on past definitions as well as psychological theory, to propose that pseudonymous identities can have a complex and nuanced influence in emphasizing certain personality traits when used in online discussion. This dissertation connects this definition to the Proteus Effect — the observation that individuals adopt behavior stereotypical of the avatars they use in virtual worlds (Yee & Bailenson, 2007) — to test how the presence and character of avatars in an online instant messenger influences aggression during political discussions. A 2x2 factorial experiment is used to evaluate participant aggression following small group deliberations between groups of participants assigned aggressive and unaggressive usernames and avatars, as well as accounts displaying an avatar and username vs only a username. A follow-up online experiment is used to show that similar effects of identity on behavior can be achieved simply by assigning participants to participate in similar tasks as moderators or as themselves

Online Comment Moderation Policies for Deliberative Discussion–Seed Comments and Identifiability

Due to the development of media information technologies and the proliferation of mobile devices, the Internet has rapidly moved to the center of news readership. In contrast to traditional media, Internet news is often coupled with commenting platforms that can accommodate readers’ immediate feedback to news stories. However, a side-effect of this feature—malicious comments—is becoming an increasingly serious social problem. To alleviate this problem and increase the likelihood of comments functioning as deliberative discussion, we suggest two moderation policies—a policy of providing high-quality seed comments and a policy of increased identifiability through social networking service accounts—and examine their effects through a longitudinal online experiment. We designed experimental groups according to a 2 x 2 between-subjects factorial design. For our experiment, a total of 137 subjects read news stories and commented on them over 15 days by using a mobile Android application developed specifically for the experiment. We found the following relationships. First, both seed quality and identifiability improve the quality of user comments in terms of deliberative discussion. Second, these effects are comparable in magnitude. Third, there are no significant interaction effects between seeds and identifiability. Fourth, the effects of high-quality seeds disappear early with anonymous users but persist when users are identified by social media accounts. Fifth, the negative effects of low-quality seeds are present and persistent only when combined with anonymity. Otherwise, the negative effects of low-quality seed comments are canceled out by the positive effects of identifiability. Finally, anonymous males are easily provoked to respond to low-quality seed comments, but most females do not respond to such comments even in anonymous situations

Supporting school career education with an online community

This thesisi s an analysisi f a participatory action researchp roject, involving several interventions with school students in a series of iterative stages, exploring ways to take school student career education out of the confines of the schools themselvesa nd into the wider community; to introducep ersonc enterednesas s a core value in careere ducation;a nd to explore the effectivenesso f using online social and community networks to support career education generally. A software probe was developed consisting of a series of career education web pages linked to asynchronous online discussion. In the final data gathering trial, 40 people (including 30 school students from two Edinburgh schools and 10 adult `community' participants) contributed to a six week career education programme involving. cycles of face to face classroom work followed by pseudonymous, asynchronous, online discussion between the school students and the community participants. The data analysis shows that despite the open and relatively unconstrained format of the discussion, topics normally covered in mainstream career education classes were covered spontaneously by the participants. In addition, however, discussion ranged more widely, taking a more holistic perspective in some cases and following the personal interests and issues of concern of the participants (such as balancing occupational and family concerns). The participants went further, problematisingm any of the discourseso f conventionalc areere ducationa nd explicitly challenging received wisdom about the value of early occupational choice and the rational decision making process. The conventional career education curriculum was both extended and contested. There is analysis of the benefits of pseudonymity, the role of the adult contributors, the online forum, and the experience of the student participants. Ultimately the thesis raises questions about the humanist values underpinning careere ducation( such as person-centredneshs,o lism and emancipation)a rguing iv that Career Education and Guidance can be about value creation as much as transmission of dominant values.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Supporting school career education with an online community

This thesisi s an analysisi f a participatory action researchp roject, involving several interventions with school students in a series of iterative stages, exploring ways to take school student career education out of the confines of the schools themselvesa nd into the wider community; to introducep ersonc enterednesas s a core value in careere ducation;a nd to explore the effectivenesso f using online social and community networks to support career education generally. A software probe was developed consisting of a series of career education web pages linked to asynchronous online discussion. In the final data gathering trial, 40 people (including 30 school students from two Edinburgh schools and 10 adult `community' participants) contributed to a six week career education programme involving. cycles of face to face classroom work followed by pseudonymous, asynchronous, online discussion between the school students and the community participants. The data analysis shows that despite the open and relatively unconstrained format of the discussion, topics normally covered in mainstream career education classes were covered spontaneously by the participants. In addition, however, discussion ranged more widely, taking a more holistic perspective in some cases and following the personal interests and issues of concern of the participants (such as balancing occupational and family concerns). The participants went further, problematisingm any of the discourseso f conventionalc areere ducationa nd explicitly challenging received wisdom about the value of early occupational choice and the rational decision making process. The conventional career education curriculum was both extended and contested. There is analysis of the benefits of pseudonymity, the role of the adult contributors, the online forum, and the experience of the student participants. Ultimately the thesis raises questions about the humanist values underpinning careere ducation( such as person-centredneshs,o lism and emancipation)a rguing iv that Career Education and Guidance can be about value creation as much as transmission of dominant values.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Antisemitic Memes and Naïve Teens: Qualitative and Quantitative Impacts of the Internet on Antisemitism, the Evolution of Antisemitism 2.0, and Developing Adaptable Research Methodologies into Online Hate, Abuse, and Misinformation

This thesis posits that the advent of the internet has resulted in qualitative and quantitative changes to antisemitism, particularly in the period since web 2.0. Comparing online antisemitism with other forms of online abuse, this thesis demonstrates limits in the research on broader manifestations of online discrimination due to inconsistent methodologies and quantities of research. A key consideration is how online antisemitism both differs and intersects with broader manifestations, including cyberbullying, cyber-racism, and abusive conspiracy movements. Through consideration of these intersections, the broader history of antisemitism, and the functions of internet technology, profiles of major online sources for antisemitism are presented. Beyond illustrating how the internet has changed antisemitism alongside other manifestations of abuse and discrimination, this thesis also develops and tests a research model that can be adapted to different fields and disciplines. Simulated online conversations between young adults and a Holocaust denier evaluate how effective young adult web users are at recognising, researching, responding to and refuting antisemitism online, and what tools can be designed to assist them. Antisemitism has undergone significant qualitative and quantitative change due to the internet and now reaches more young people who are ill-equipped to resist its online manifestations. While expertise in the specific nature of antisemitism is needed to tackle this problem, the response can involve adaptable methodologies of benefit to the study of online hate more broadly. There is benefit in collaboration across researchers, fields, and disciplines to provide holistic explanations and solutions to some common aspects of online hate, abuse, and misinformation

Networked Publics, Networked Politics: Resisting Gender-Based Violent Speech in Digital Media

This dissertation is a qualitative study of digital media that identifies and analyzes feminist responses to violent speech in networked environments across Canada and the United States between 2011 and 2015. Exploring how verbal violence is constitutive of and constituted by power relations in the feminist blogosphere, I ask the following set of research questions: How do feminist bloggers politicize and problematize instances of violent speech on digital media? In what ways are their networked interactions and self-representations reconfigured as a result of having to face hostile audiences? What modes of agency appear within feminist blogging cultures? This work engages with feminist theory (hooks, 2014; McRobbie, 2009; Stringer 2014), media studies (boyd, 2014; Lovink, 2011; Marwick 2013) and their intersections in the field of feminist media studies (Jane 2014; Keller, 2012). Drawing on interviews with the key players in the feminist blogosphere and providing a discursive reading of selected digital texts, I identify networked resistive strategies including digital archiving, public shaming, strategic silence and institutional transformations. I argue that feminist responses to violent speech are varied and reflect not only long-standing concerns with community building and womens voices in public context, but also emerging anxieties around self-branding, professional identity and a control over one's digital presence. This research underscores the importance of transformative capacities of networked feminist politics and contextualizes agentic modes of participation in response to problematic communication