{"id":2179,"date":"2013-10-13T22:52:32","date_gmt":"2013-10-13T22:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/?p=2179"},"modified":"2013-10-13T22:52:32","modified_gmt":"2013-10-13T22:52:32","slug":"does-the-web-make-us-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/2013\/10\/13\/does-the-web-make-us-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the Web make us evil?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"google_morality\"<\/p>\n

The Web provides a unique set of contexts and questions to study a variety of topics.\u00a0One area where this is particularly evident is our online presence.\u00a0It is well documented that people’s behaviours are different in an online situation, for instance trolling and hactivism.\u00a0Whilst these differences are often attributed to the anonymity that the web offers, there are many examples of them manifesting in identifiable circumstances, such as on social networking sites.\u00a0As a means to focus my research, I will likely concentrate on the activities of people on social networking sites with a view to understanding the behaviour behind them.<\/p>\n

This issue of a difference between our online selves and ‘real’ selves can be examined through many different lenses.\u00a0There are legal aspects to this such as if and how laws are applied on the Web. Economically we can look at the differences between shopping on- and offline.\u00a0Broadly speaking, these deal with practical concerns relating to online personas.\u00a0From a more abstract perspective, and underpinning the practical approach, we can question the\u00a0way we think.<\/p>\n

Considering how much of it I purportedly do for a living, until recently I had never given much consideration to understanding the processes behind.\u00a0A fascinating idea I have come across is the difference between how we think and how we think we think.\u00a0This is something where psychology and philosophy intertwine.<\/p>\n

Psychology<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Psychology has always been associated with analysing social issues and behaviours.\u00a0The psychology of online behaviour is a very broad subject with a great deal of conflicting conclusions.\u00a0In recent months, an area that has unfortunately come to the fore is the phenomenon of depression and bullying that exists on and via social networking sites<\/a>, and one of the areas I will look at is the ethics of online behaviour. In particular I am keen on looking into how our morals, or perception of morals, are formed.\u00a0The reasons behind any disparity between offline and online ethics will provide an insight into this.<\/p>\n

Philosophy<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Morality is an issue that has been extensively studied from a philosophical perspective.\u00a0Whilst psychology is useful in examining the reasoning behind a code of conduct, philosophy concerns itself more with the actual code.\u00a0Various philosophers have attempted to explain what morality is and this provides a more direct approach to understanding its formation.\u00a0The vast majority of these theories have been developed in the absence of the Web which hence provides a rigorous testing ground for them.<\/p>\n

Naively speaking, psychology is the study of how we think whilst philosophy is the study of what we think.\u00a0Of course, each of these fields can claim to subsume the other ipso facto.\u00a0Rather than trying to combine these two fields in a hierarchical relation, I will attempt to unite them in a more balanced manner.<\/p>\n

The topic of ethics can be viewed as a part of a larger debate into our attitude to socialising on the Web. Depending on the scope of the topic, this is something I will hope to extend to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Web provides a unique set of contexts and questions to study a variety of topics.\u00a0One area where this is particularly evident is our online presence.\u00a0It is well documented that people’s behaviours are different in an online situation, for instance trolling and hactivism.\u00a0Whilst these differences are often attributed to the anonymity that the web offers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55853,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2204,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions\/2204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}