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Two disciplines chosen: sociology and psychology.
Title: Looking inside online social networks.

I intend to undertake a period of interdisciplinary study into the social structures, both past and present, on the Internet, with particular focus on communities existing on the Web. I intend to present ideas as to why unique groups and large online communities have formed, by bringing together knowledge from two areas, chiefly sociology and psychology.
The groups that form online can have unique creative outputs – such as Wikipedia or Open Source Software, and I would like to look at how disciplines such as sociology and psychology could offer insight into online group formation and group dynamics. The discipline of sociology will provide grounding in human society, and social activity, and psychology will help make sense of individual motivations for engaging in group activities.

Our knowledge of collective consciousness, the shared beliefs and moral attitudes of society, may not translate to online society. As such the unifying forces within online communities may be different to real world counterparts, and worthy of discussion.

• Do online communities have any effect on a society’s language or culture?

• Identify any shared beliefs and moral attitudes that act as unifying values within online communities.

• Parallels and differences between online and offline groups and associated activities.

• The advantages or disadvantages of being part of an online group

• How online social activities are made possible by identifying Internet and Web technologies that facilitate forming groups and maintaining communication between members.

• Describe and present reasons for features of different online communities, such as network graph, how they are distributed geographically, presence of weak ties, different roles of various group members.

• Parallels and differences between online and offline groups and associated activities.

• The advantages or disadvantages of being part of an online group

• How online social activities are made possible by identifying Internet and Web technologies that facilitate forming groups and maintaining communication between members.

• Describe and present reasons for features of different online communities, such as network graph, how they are distributed geographically, presence of weak ties, different roles of various group members.

• If there exists any hierarchies in communities or if it is a flat graph structure, and comparing this to knowledge from sociology about physical world communities.

• The psychology of why people want to form groups online, become part of certain groups or break off from groups.

• Do online communities have any effect on a society’s language or culture?

• Identify any shared beliefs and moral attitudes that act as unifying values within online communities.

Resources identified as being useful for proposed work

Sociology:

• Introductory sociology, 4th ed. Bilton, Tony

• Sociology, 5th ed. Giddens, Anthony

• Sociology : themes and perspectives 4th ed. Haralambos Michael.

• Social identity and social cognition : an introduction, Abrams, Domi

• The rise of the network society 2nd ed. Castells, Manuel.

Psychology:

• Psychology, 2nd European ed. Carlson, Neil R

• Psychology: the science of mind and behaviour, 5th ed. Gross, Richa
• Introduction to social psychology, 2nd ed. Lippa, Richard A