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Currently reading:  Introduction to social psychology: a European perspective, Hewstone and Stroebe.

I have found loads of information on behaviour within small groups but need to find more about why people join these groups in the first place.

Reasons for Joining:

• Family influence / peer pressure (nuture not nature).
• Prosocial behaviour and influence.
• Modelling – “The tendency for individuals to acquire new (and more complex) forms of behaviour by observing this behaviour and its consequences in real-life or symbolic models.”

Social Influence in Small Groups:

• Autokinetic Effect – “Where confronted with an unstructured and ambiguous stimulus, people nevertheless develop a stable internal frame of reference against which to judge the stimulus. However, as soon as they are confronted with the different judgements of others, they quickly abandon this frame of reference so as to adjust it to that of others.”
• After-Image – Experiment showing that people’s perceptions will change in order to maintain their position in the majority.
• Conversion – “A change in covert behaviour after exposure to others’ opinions (internalised change)”
• Compliance – “A change in overt behaviour after exposure to others’ opinions”
• Innovation – “Social influence resulting from exposure to the opinions of a minority group.”
• Conformity – “Social influence resulting from exposure to the opinions of a majority group, or the majority of one’s group”
• Group Polarisation – “A change in the average position of a group, following group discussion, in the direction of the initially dominant pole.”
• Groupthink – “A group decision process, strongly oriented towards consensus, among like-minded and cohesive individuals, emanating in one-sided and incorrect conclusions.”
• Informational Influence – “Influence based on the informational value of opinions expressed by others, on what they tell a person about an aspect of reality.”
• Normative Influence – “Influence based on the need to be accepted and approved by others.”
• Self-categorisation – “Group behaviour emphasizing the impact of self-definitions at different levels of abstraction (individual, group, humanity) on judgement and behaviour.”
• Social Comparison – “comparing one’s own behaviour to others’ in order to evaluate the correctness and adequacy of own behaviour”
• Social Influence – “A change in the judgments, opinions and attitudes of an individual as a result of being exposed to the views of others”

Still to research: people’s need to be accepted and conformism in extremist groups.

Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively (as defined in Wikipedia). In other words, the individual has the ability to decide what is private, i.e. belongs only to him and what is public, i.e. is open to others as well.
However, in practice preserving one’s privacy or private information is not an easy task. In addition to this, in many cases the boundaries between private and public are obscure; especially on the Web, privacy is an area of controversy.
Nowadays, as people post their personal data online for various reasons (in social networking sites, blogs, electronic purchases etc.), many are concerned about who can control/access their data after these are exposed online. On the other hand, a significant number of people, especially younger people, are quite confident about posting their data online and feel no threats regarding their privacy; some of them are also ignorant of the possible threats. A privacy paradox emerges, as many people talk about intrusion of their privacy online, yet nobody actually takes action against it.
Numerous questions regarding privacy arise, such as which are the boundaries of privacy, how important is online privacy, how much information should people post online, how much information do organisations and governments actually need etc.
From a social standpoint, the Web is a “global village”, a very large social network, where anyone has the ability to access a great deal of information. This “global village” is beyond the boundaries of a specific group or nation, but extends itself worldwide. That means that each individual does not anymore belong to a small town or village; instead the Web contributes to bringing people from different backgrounds closer.
Since invasion of privacy is a common phenomenon on the Web, it affects global society directly.
However, different nations and cultures may have different opinions on what is public and what is private. Especially, eastern societies, which are more conservative, may have more strict opinions on certain privacy matters. Significantly, people who belong to some social/religious groups or are socially isolated for some reason, may be more vulnerable in terms of privacy.
Many are of the opinion that with the appearance of social networking sites, privacy is not anymore a social norm. Is this actually true? Should we stop believing that some information just belongs to us, but is open to the public instead?

From a psychological standpoint, people behave differently during their online interactions than during their offline interactions and something that they would consider public in the offline world, they may regard it as private in the offline world or vice versa. Of great interest are also topics such as the reasons why some people post their intimate thoughts or experiences online without thinking about the consequences and the way people manage or experiment with their online identities. Many people adopt an online persona, which might be very different than their actual self. This online role playing game, may be helpful to some (for instance to teenagers, who are at the stage of establishing their identity), but it might provoke privacy breaches, when malicious users try to hide themselves behind a mask. In the past, there have been many cases where people with malicious motives have approached others online (especially younger people).
To sum up, all the above mentioned are some initial thoughts on approaching the matter of privacy on the World Wide Web and are definitely going to be enriched and altered after thorough research. The list given below contains a number of books taken from these two disciplines that may be helpful in the analysis of the concept of privacy.

Reading List:

A. Sociology
• Global Sociology by R. Cohen, P. Kennedy 2nd Edition (2007)
• Social Divisions by G. Payne 2nd Edition (2007)
• Introductory Sociology by T.Bilton et al. 4th Edition (2002)
• Sociology by A. Giddens 6th Edition (2009)
• Sociology, Themes and Perspectives by Haralambos and Holborn 7th Edition (2008)
• The rise of the network society by M. Castells Volume 1 2nd Edition (2000)
• The power of Identity by M. Castells Volume 2 2nd Edition (2004)
• The Internet Galaxy by M. Castells (2001)
• Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices by R. Kling 2nd Edition
(1996)
• Social Identity and Social Cognition by D. Abrams (1999)
• Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives by J. Palfrey (2008)
• Understanding Social Problems: Issues on Social Policy by M. May (2001)

B. Psychology
• Psychology by G. Martin et al. 3rd European Edition (2007)
• The Psychology of the Internet by P. Wallace (1999)
• Introduction to Social Psychology by R. Lippa (1999)
• Psychology – The Science of Mind and Behaviour by P. Gross 5th Edition (2005)

To give me some ideas of what chapters to focus on when studying the very large introductory texts on my chosen topics – sociology and psychology I scanned over two books for current ideas into online societies.

1. Reputation in Online Societies, Roasari Conte and Mario Paolucci.

Subject of the book was an investigation into a set of intertwined phenomena: image, reputation and gossip, that play a vital role in societies. The books main conviction is that this same or analogous set is likely to promote the development of information and technology societies.

I found this book difficult to read, very technical and I believe it was just a phD thesis that had just been dumped into book form, with little care for layout of chapters, themes and conclusions.

Also the book is more concerned about user-agents rather than actual physical people as authors wanted to test their hypotheses about behaviour using computer user-agents. This book was not as useful to my review as its title had originally suggested.

2.The Rise of the Network society, Manuell Castells

This book was better structured and had some good insights into why individuals sometimes join societies. One of the ideas put forward is that it is part of the search for new connectedness around shared, reconstructed identity. Also that shift from mechanical to information technologies has subverted our notions of sovereignty and self-sufficiency that had provided us with some anchoring for individual identity since two millennia ago. This search for new connectedness was found not only to exist in West but also in East where in Japan in 1995, the young highly educated generation exhibited an almost desperate need to build a new collective self, significantly mixing spirituality and global business relations.

Also I have been reading World Brain by HG Wells, to see how ideas for highly connected societies with collective outputs occupied the thoughts of a famous science fiction writer, who was writing in age before the information technology society of late 1900s even existed. My initial conclusions is that HG Wells was an unwavering optimist, and that part of reasons that many of his predictions and hopes have never been realised is that humans and human societies are imperfect, and due to their large population size the voices of a few luminaries often gets drowned out in the crowd.

Actions decided for next week:

Find most useful key themes for society’s values, cultures and norms from core textbooks and  start to find links to further related material

Next week I will do a more controlled approach, instead of looking for proof of how online communities are found to be similar or else unlike traditional physical communities, I will look at case studies or examples of each and do my own comparing and contrasting. This is because after an initial search of library there is little or no material about this particular theme. While this makes it harder to back up and verify any conclusions it will at least mean I will be adding new knowledge to an interesting Web Science related theme.

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

The Introduction

Trust is hugely important. In our everyday lives we put a  huge amount of trust in other people as we simply cannot do all of the things that we have to do to be able to get by. We depend on doctors to help us out with medical issues because we do not know everything about medicine to be able to treat ourselves; we put our trust in them. The same happens in the case of teaching, our finances and basically everything that we do. As we now begin to spend more and more of our time online; from shopping to socialising with friends to the rest, the trust that we have in the physical world now has to move with us into the virtual one.

In the real world we can however at least see the person we are interacting with and whilst we put our trust in that person who claims to be a gas inspector and let them into our house on the basis of no more than a badge, we have a security blanket in place in that we are at least there to monitor. In the online world however  you cannot see that person and so trust takes on a different perception. What drives the trust that we put in others when online is really interesting and something that I am going to be examining from sociological and psychological points of view.

Sociology is the study of society; refinement of the body of knowledge in respect of human activity. Psychology by contract looks at the human and his mental functions and operations. The two really work well with one another and complement one another as one hand you have the stud of the individual and his perceptions and what drive him and then subsequently an examination of society as a whole and what drives it.

The core texts in the disciplines will allow me to understand how the two view the issue of trust and in turn allow me to explore how these relate to the Web; why we adopt the notions that we do in respect of trusting people online as an individual and as a society.

References

Sociology

• ‘Introductory Sociology’ – Bilton, Bonnett, Jones, Lawson, Skinner, Stanworth & Webster
• ‘Thinking Sociologically’ – Bauman
• ‘A New Introduction to Sociology’ – O’Donnell.
• ‘An Introduction to Political Sociology’ – Rush

Psychology

• ‘Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology’ – Kolb & Whishaw
• ‘ Psychology: The Science of the Mind and Behaviour’ – Gross
• ‘Psychology: An Introduction’ – Hayes & Orrell

Title:

Core Sociological and Psychological views of Extremism on the Web.

Brief:

Recent articles such as Gerstenfeld’s “Hate Online: A Content Analysis of Extremist Internet Sites” have shown that extremist groups are using the web as a communication and promotion tool, uniting people with a common cause that is not necessarily tolerated in the offline world.  Some of the core themes of psychology and sociology explain why extremism is becoming more prevelant on the web than ever before, for example: the anonymity, security and community offered by online communications allows people to express feelings that they may have otherwise kept to themselves; the location-independent online world allows disparate groups, united by religious or political ideals, to come together and share their views.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee envisaged an ‘open’ web when he created WorldWideWeb in 1989.  The ideal that the web should be free to use and edit by anyone is open to abuse, but are extremist or hate websites abuse of this or part of the openness of the web?  As such should these types of online communities be allowed to exist freely or should they be censored?

Looking at the core textbooks in psychology and sociology allows an insight into the reasons for the prevalence of extremist web sites and discussion groups, from the point of view of a pre-web world, or at least looking at the core reasons for this behaviour.

The core sociological and psychological views on extremist behaviour will be translated to the online world in an effort to explain why hate groups and extremist websites are prevalent on the web, as well as providing an insight into the impact of censorship of such sites.

References:
Core:

• Introduction to social psychology: a European perspective. Miles Hewstone, Wolfgang Stroebe
• Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior. Dennis Coon, John O. Mitterer
• Sociology: a global introduction. John J. Macionis, Kenneth Plummer
• Thinking sociologically. Zygmunt Bauman, Tim May

Relevant / Recent:

• Sociology in the Age of the Internet (Sociology and Social Change). Cavanagh
• The Social Net: Human behavior in cyberspace. Amichai-Hamburger
• The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Peter C. Hill, Bernard Spilka