Link
July 07, 2012
3 notes
EU Kids Online

Livingstone, S., Hadon, L, Gorzif, A & Olafsson, K. (2011). EU Kids Online. London School of Economics and Political Science.

full text pdf

Six years on from a first report about how kids in the UK  use the web (some harrowing accounts about their not-so-critical consumption of content - intel on this is covered here by a long-time-ago-self: notes from the project director’s keynote address at the Association of Internet Researcher’s conference in Chicago in 2005), this is a cross-national study based out of the London School of Economics. It’s not just Europe: also includes comparisons w USA, Russia, Australia & Brazil.

aims:

…to enhance knowledge of the experiences and practices of European children and parents regarding risky and safer use of the internet and new online technologies, in order to inform the promotion of a safer online environment for children.

Here are notes & quotes:

big overall sample: 25,000 European children and their parents in 25 countries (1K each).

Internet use is increasingly individualised, privatised an mobile: 9-16 yo internet users spend 88 minutes per day online, on average.. 49% go online in their bedroom, 33% go online via a mobile phone or handheld device.

don’t be afraid of risk:

risky opportunities allow children to experiment online with relationships, intimacy and identity. This is vital for growing up if children are to learn to cope with the adult world

the UK falls into the “higher use, some risk”: 

HIgh internet use in a country is rarely associated with low risk; and high risk is rarely associated with low use; rather, across countries, the more use, the more risk

…risk must be distinguished from harm

Children often tell a friend, followed by a parent, when something online upsets them, and they try a range of pro-active strategies online, thought these don’t always work and some children are more fatalistic in their responses to online harm

interes stats associated w “risky behaviours” (NOTE - ALL LESS THAN 50%):

  • 40% have looked for new friends on the internet
  • 34% have added people to my friends list or address book that i have never met face-to-face
  • 16% have pretended to be a different kind of person on the internet from what i really am
  • 15% have sent personal information to someone that i have never met face to face
  • 14% have sent a photo or video of myself to someone that I have never met face to face

And with regards to social networking sites like Facebook:

  • 38% 9-12 yo and 77% 13-16yo have a profile on a social networking site (SNS)
  • 20% 9-12yo and 46% 13-16yo use Facebook as their main SNS
  • 27% 9-12yo display an incorrect age on their SNS profile
and more:
Children surely have the right to use services where many social activities – for governmental, artistic, citizen groups, news, 
educational offerings and more – take place. But to enable these opportunities, some risks should be further mitigated.
  • 29 per cent of 9-12 year olds and 27 per cent of 13-16 year olds have their profile “public”, though this varies according to the country and the SNS used.
  • A quarter of SNS users communicate online with people unconnected to their daily lives, including one fifth of 9-12 year olds. 
  • One fifth of children whose profile is public display their address and/or phone number, twice as many as for those with private profiles.
  • One in six 9-12 year olds and one in three 13-16 year olds have more than 100 contacts on their SNS profile.
  • Compared with those who do not use SNSs, SNS users are significantly more likely to report seeing sexual images, receiving sexual or bullying messages or meeting online 
  • contacts offline – though for each risk, the overall incidence is fairly low

Tags: LSE academic guardian observer research untangling the web untanglingtheweb uttw uttwthebook youth Youth Culture

Link
July 06, 2012
2 notes
Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search

White, R. W. & Horvitz, E. (2008). Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search. Microsoft Research.

full text pdf

abstract:

The World Wide Web provides an abundant source of medical information. This information can assist people who are not healthcare professionals to better understand health and illness, and to provide them with feasible explanations for symptoms. However, the Web has the potential to increase the anxieties of people who have little or no medical training, especially when Web search is employed as a diagnostic procedure. We use the term cyberchondria to refer to the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the Web. We performed a large-scale, longitudinal, log-based study of how people search for medical information online, supported by a survey of 515 individuals’ healthrelated search experiences. We focused on the extent to which common,  likely  innocuous symptoms can escalate into the review of content on serious, rare conditions that are linked to the common symptoms. Our results show that Web search engines have the potential to escalate medical concerns. We show that escalation is associated with the amount and distribution of medical content viewed by users, the presence of escalatory terminology in pages visited, and a user’s predisposition to escalate versus to seek more reasonable explanations for ailments. We also demonstrate the persistence of post-session anxiety following escalations and the effect that such anxieties can have on interrupting user’s activities across multiple sessions. Our findings underscore the potential costs and  challenges of cyberchondria and suggest actionable design implications that hold opportunity for improving the search and navigation experience for people turning to the Web to interpret common symptoms.

emphasis added

notes and quotes:

great table that breaks down symptom searched for and the likelihood of various causes to come up in search results. In the Health chapter, I write this up like this:

a search for “headache” is as likely to point to “caffeine withdrawal” as “brain tumour” as its cause. The annual incidence rate of brain tumours in the US, where this study was based (although it used the global web as its data pool) is one in ten thousand. And a search for “chest pain”? You’ll more likely discover you’re going to have a heart attack than either indigestion or heartburn.

Of the 515 people they surveyed, they found that the mean number of health related searches their participants performed every month was 10.22. They mostly search for info on symptoms, but almost half search for info on serious medical conditions. 41.7% search for medial diagnoses and 38.1% look for communities with similar conditions.

Most people in their study were pretty balanced about the web. They took what it offered with a grain of salt and didn’t put all their faith into it.

their conclusions:

escalation of medical concerns is potentially related to the amount and distribution of medical content viewed by users, the presence of escalatory terminology in pages visited, and a user’s predisposition to escalate or seek more reasonable explanations for ailments

and a recommendation…

Search engine architects have a responsibility  to ensure that searchers do not experience unnecessary concern generated by the  definitions of relevance and the  ranking algorithms their engines use. They must be cognizant of the potential  challenges of cyberchondria, and focus on serving medical search results that are reliable, complete, and timely, as well as topically relevant.

hmm.. difficult…

Tags: untangling the web untanglingtheweb uttw uttwthebook guardian observer health research google search information

Quote
July 06, 2012
35 notes
"The experience of losing our ‘net connection becomes more & more like losing a friend"

—

Sparrow, B., Liu, J., and Wegner, D. M. (2011, 5 Aug). Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Science, 333(6043): 776-778.

abstract only, tho I have access via LSE.

The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can “Google” the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

emphasis added

Here are my notes & quotes:

Storing information externally is nothing particularly novel, even before the advent of computers. In any long-term relationship, a teamwork environment, or other ongoing group, people typically develop a group or transactive memory, a combination of memory stores held directly by individuals and the memory stores they can access because they know someone who knows that information… The present research explores whether having online access to search engines, databases, and the like, has become a primary transactive memory source in itself.

results from experiment 1: when asked difficult trivia questions, do people think about computers more quickly?

Although the concept of knowledge in general seems to prime thoughts of computers, even when answers are known, not knowing the answer to general-knowledge questions primes the need to search for the answer, and subsequently computer interference is particularly acute.

results of experiment 2: will people only remember keywords when they think they’ll have access to a computer to look up information int he future?

Participants apparently did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statements they had read. Because search engines are  continually available to us, we may often be in a state of not feeling we need to encode the information internally. When we need it, we will look it up.

they were more affected about whether they’d be able to look something up later than whether they had to remember it at all.

results of experiment 3: do people remember things better when they know if/where info is saved?

…believing that one won’t have access to the information in the future enhances memory for the information itself, whereas believing the information was saved externally enhances memory for the fact that the information could be accessed, at least in general.

having a search function - on the web or on a computer - means that you won’t use cognitive capacity to remember  where you saw it, but knowing something’s been erased will use “memory demands”.

finally, results of experiment 4: do people remember where saved information can be found?

“where” was prioritized in memory, with the advantage going to “where” when “what” was forgotten…This is preliminary evidence that when people expect information to remain continuously available (such as we expect with Internet access), they are more likely to remember where to find it than to remember the details of the item. One could argue that this is an adaptive use of memory—to include the computer and online search engines as an external memory system that can be accessed at will.

and their conclusions:

..processes of human memory are adapting to  the advent of new computing and communication technology.

we are learning what the computer “knows” and when we should attend to where we have stored information in our computer based memories. We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into  interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found.

and the kicker:

We have become dependent on [our gadgets] to the same degree we are dependent on all the knowledge we gain from our friends and co-workers—and lose if they are out of touch. The experience of losing our Internet connection becomes more and more like losing a friend.

Tags: untangling the web untanglingtheweb uttw uttwthebook guardian observer attention research Science Google relevance

Quote
July 06, 2012
3 notes
"What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention."

—

Goldhaber, M. (1997). Attention economy and the Net. First Monday, 2(4).

full text pdf

abstract:

If the Web and the Net can be viewed as spaces in which we will increasingly live our lives, the economic laws we will live under have to be natural to this new space. These laws turn out to be quite different from what the old economics teaches, or what rubrics such as “the information age” suggest. What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality.

Making a model out of information overload. Conference presentation. Overview, position document, starting point.

a quote:

economies are governed by what is scarce, and information, especially on the Net, is not only abundant, but overflowing.

therefore, he argues, we’re not dealing in an information economy, but an attention economy.

for more, here’s the Wikipedia article about the Attention Economy.

Tags: untangling the web UTTW uttw untanglingtheweb guardian observer attention research

Text
July 03, 2012
5 notes

falling in love online: the difference between text & face to face

Two more papers from Monica Whitty, both of which are over a decade old, but are still v interes to consider, particularly as the rules of the game in even the leanest of media (text-only) are still the same as the richest (f2f).

First: what relationships mean

Whitty, M. & Gavin, J. (2001). Age/Sex/Location: Uncovering the Social Cues in the Development of Online Relationships. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 4(5).

full text pdf

abstract:

Past research on online relationships has predominantly been concerned with how the quality of online relationships compares with offline relationships. This research has been more concerned with the medium itself than with the meanings that users construct around their interpersonal interactions within this medium. The current paper seeks to redress this imbalance by exploring the ways that available social cues are used to shape the meanings of online relationships. Sixty Internet users, ranging in age from 19–51 years, were interviewed about their online relationships. It was found that ideals that are important in traditional relationships, such as trust, honesty, and commitment are just as important in online relationships; however, the cues that signify these ideals vary.

emphasis added

Next: how we flirt

Whitty, M.T. (2003). Cyber-flirting: Playing at love on the Internet. Theory and Psychology, 13(3), 339-357.

full text pdf

abstract:

While there exists some research on offline flirting, there is currently little in the way of conceptual theory or empirical research on flirting in cyberspace. This paper attempts to help redress this balance. The paper initially presents a summary of the behaviour of offline flirting and particularly identifies what constitutes offline flirting signals. Given this background context, suggestions are made as to how we might better conceptualize online flirting. The prevailing wisdom has been that we should focus on the absence of the body in cyberspace. This view is challenged here. Instead,it is argued that researchers should re-orient their focus to how the body is reconstructed online. Winnicott’s notions of ‘potential space’ and ‘transitional objects’ are drawn upon in this paper to advance an argument that online flirting should be considered as a form of play. In making this argument, it is contended that online flirting has unique aspects in comparison to offline flirting. In particular, while realistic elements are present in online flirting, there is a blurring between what is reality and fantasy when one engages in flirtatious behaviour on the Internet.

note & quote:

almost a decade old (and situated in text-based communications, Whitty readily admits), this is still an inters paper. Nice summary of courtship rituals and gender roles and how they’ve changed, and a provocative proposal about how women still make the first move even in a world when it’s expected that men should: through non-verbal flirting language. I like her description of how people cyberflirt here:

Demure glances and eyebrow flashes are not easily replicated online. However, there are some alternatives to these non-verbal gestures. For example, emoticons, which are drawings made from grammatical symbols, might be a useful alternative. We can use facial expressions such as smiley faces, winks and kisses as a substitute for body language. Moreover, rather than use audible laughing and giggling, individuals can use acronyms, such as LOL (laugh out loud or lots of laughs) and < BG> (Big Grin). Screen names are another device people can add to their repertoire of online flirting behaviours.

Tags: untanglingtheweb untangling the web UTTW uttwthebook guardian observer research academic love

Text
July 02, 2012
2 notes

cyber-infidelity. some research.

Monica Whitty (@cyberpsy on twitter) is a prolific online relationship researcher. But rather than overwhelm this blog with post after post after post summarising her extensive work on cyber-infidelity, I thought I’d consolidate her work here. Read on for links, notes and quotes from three papers, including what kinds of relationships people develop online, why they cheat, and what online affairs mean for offline partnerships.

or go here for an interview with Monica for the original Untangling the Web column on love from last year.

Read More

Tags: untangling the web untanglingtheweb UTTW uttwthebook guardian observer love dating infidelity cheating research whitty academic

Text
July 02, 2012
2 notes

LoveGeist: Love Landscape (a 2009 report for Match.com)

Whitty, M., Buchanan, T. & Watson, A. (2009). LoveGeist: Love Landscape. Match International.

full text pdf

note and quote:

We found that 43.3% of men and 61.9% of women had become fussier about who they date over the last year.

I wonder to what extent this is because of the process of dating via technology. As Bernie Hogan says in the OII report Me, My Spouse and the Internet, 

in the past 15 years people have not only gotten more individualistic about their relationship strategies, but also more instrumen tally focused. Individuals are increasingly considering the practice of finding a mate as a distinct and intentional activity with its own set of contexts and conventions, rather than something that just happens’ as one goes about other activities.

They date the beginning of the inexorable rise and rise of online dating as 1997.

Tags: untangling the web untanglingtheweb UTTW uttwthebook guardian observer research love dating

Text
July 02, 2012

From 1966: Sex differences in dating aspirations & satisfaction w computer-selected partners

Coombs, R. H. & Kenkel, W.F. (1966). Sex differences in dating aspirations and satisfaction with computer-selected partners. Journal of Marriage & Family, Vol 1: 62-66.

firewall. Abstract:

The structural-functional views of Talcott Parsons are used as the rationale for predicting sex differences in dating aspirations and partner satisfaction. Blind dates were arranged for 300 male and 300 female students by an LB.M. computer. Evidence was found to support the hypotheses that 1) women would have higher aspirations for a dating partner, in the sense of more socially desired characteristics, than would men; and that 2) women would register a high degree of satisfaction less frequently than men following the first date. The findings are compared with popular notions of male-female tendencies for romantic love at first acquaintance.

I have access to full text. Here are my notes and quotes. First, some context:

Since family status is largely determined by the income and prestige level of the husband’s occupation, the masculine role is firmly anchored in this occupational structure. A boy soon learns that the only way to become a real man in our society is to have a good job and to earn an adequate living. However, the dominant adult female role, particularly among middle-class families, is that of housewife and mother. Structurally, the importance of this sex role differentiation, aside from providing household and children care, is the shielding of the wife from competition in the occupational sphere, thus fostering a feeling of self-respect for the breadwinner and harmony for the family unit.

emphasis added

priceless. thank god for women’s liberation.

here’s where the computer comes in:

This was a special campus dance in which students were paired by use of an I.B.M. 7074 computer. Prior to the dance, 500 college men and 500 college women completed a questionnaire giving background information on themselves and stating the qualities they desired in a dating partner.

and those results:

In general, the girls had more rigid standards for their computer-arranged partners than did the men…on seven of the eight measures utilized, the female participants specified higher hopes for their partners than did their male counterparts…The only factor that was not rated higher by girls than by men was physical attractiveness; men were much more enthusiastic about having a “good looking” partner than were women.

doesn’t deconstruct the efficacy of the computer matching system at all.

Tags: untangling the web untanglingtheweb UTTW uttwthebook guardian observer love research academic dating

Text
July 02, 2012
4 notes

Looking for Love in so many Places: Characteristics of Online Daters and Speed Daters

Whitty, M. & Buchanan, T. (2009). Looking for Love in so many Places: Characteristics of Online Daters and Speed Daters. Interpersona 3(2).

full text pdf

abstract:

This study examined the characteristics of individuals who are more likely to engage in speed dating and online dating, and the types of people who are more likely to prefer these forms of dating. Older individuals and those who scored high on shyness were more likely to have tried online dating. Older individuals, those who scored high on shyness, and those who had tried online dating were more likely to consider using it in the future. Younger individuals were more likely to have tried speed dating. Those who had already tried speed dating were more likely to consider using it in the future. We argue here that online dating offers some advantages for shy individuals.

notes & quotes:

Madden and Lenhart (2006) have reported that 74% of single Americans searching for partners have used the internet to facilitate their romantic pursuits.

oh my goodness. this is depressing:

Previous theorists have devised the SMI model (Searching, Matching, Interacting model) to characterise formal matchmaking services, such as personal ads, video dating, and computer matchmaking (Ahuvia & Adelman, 1992). They parallel matchmaking services with basic market functions. For instance, in the market place initially „searching‟ is required; that is, gaining information essential for exchange (in regards to matchmaking this means searching for information about a potential other). „Matching‟ is required to bring together compatible exchange partners (in regards to matchmaking this would mean bringing together two singles that seem well matched). Transactions take place in the third phase in the market place. This phase requires an exchange of goods. Ahuvia and Adelman (1992), however, prefer the term „interacting‟ to described the third phase of matchmaking, given that the goodsexchanged when it comes to relationship development are the self-disclosures revealed in conversations by both individuals.

in this study (both online daters and speed daters):

The majority of participants (69%, 188 people) were looking for a long-term romantic partner, while only 2% (6 people) were looking specifically for a short-term encounter. Twenty-three percent (63) had no clear goal as to what they were looking for, and the remainder either said they were not looking for a partner (12 people) or did not answer the question (2 people). The majority were either single (63%, 170 people) or divorced (21%, 57 people). A total of 21 said they were married, cohabiting, or in a girlfriend/boyfriend type relationship. Of these 21, 6 fell into the group saying they were not looking for a partner, and 10 indicated they were looking for a relationship of some sort.
shy individuals are more likely than non-shy to use the internet to initiate relationships and that shy people are more likely to prefer to use the internet to develop relationships than non-shy individuals
older individuals were more likely to have tried online dating and were more likely to want to use it as a method of dating in the future…Many of the individuals she interviewed said they felt too old to go about dating via more traditional methods and had it not been for the internet they would not have considered even hoping to find romance again in their lives.
We did not find that those low in relationship competence were more drawn to online dating
21% of our sample claimed that speed dating and/or online dating were the only methods they had used to find partners. It seems unlikely that these people had never met potential partners in other ways

emphasis added

Tags: untangling the web untanglingtheweb UTTW uttwthebook research guardian observer love dating

Link
June 30, 2012
2 notes
Online Dating Romance Scam (report)

Whitty, M. T. & Buchanan, T. (2012). The Online Dating Romance Scam: A Serious Crime. CyberPsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15(3), 181-183.

full text pdf

abstract

The Online Romance Scam is a relatively new form of fraud that became apparent in about 2008. In this crime, criminals pretend to initiate a relationship through online dating sites then defraud their victims of large sums of money. This paper presents some descriptive statistics about knowledge and victimization of the online dating romance scam in the Great Britain. Our study found that despite its newness, an estimated 230,000 British citizens may have fallen victim to this crime. We conclude that there needs to be some re-thinking about providing avenues for victims to report the crime or at least making them more comfortable when doing so.

this pdf reports initial findings: how many, who’s heard of it, where they’ve heard of it. Sets the baseline for future research.

here’s the final report

i like the description of the scammer’s profile…

• 29% described the profile as physically attractive. • Fake male profile: often described as someone who was widowed, with a child, in a professional job or a businessman. • Fake female profile: often described as someone extremely attractive (looking like a model), a student or someone in a low-paying job (e.g., nurse, teacher).

Tags: uttw uttwthebook untangling the web untanglingtheweb guardian observer research love