Cyberpsychology,Behavior,and Social Networking

This article discusses the theoretical foundations of Internet-mediated communities (IMCs), i.e., groups of people who share interests and make use at some time of the same Internet tools (for instance, a web site—the special concern of this study) in order to exchange information about the shared interests. From November 1999 to February 2001 a rationale was developed and validated for such communities and their web sites, due to the lack of theory unification in the field. The authors carried out five case studies of widely known IMCs, seven action researches with established groups of people who were given customized web sites to mediate their interaction, and an exploratory research supported by open-ended interviews with those groups. Additional empirical research is now needed to apply the theoretical grounds here developed to varying IMC contexts and to different communication technologies.

At the end of the 20th century, telework appears as one of the modalities of flexible work, which is related to new organizational structures as well as to increasing use of technology. It revolutionizes the traditional ways of performing work. Its implementation creates a number of questions to be answered by the organizations and the individuals involved. This article presents a case study on the viability of implementing telework at Procempa (The Data Processing Company of the City of Porto Alegre). The case study analyzes the technical, organizational, psychological, legal, and labor union dimensions. As a result of this study, we can identify the organization's stage of readiness for telework, the conditions under which it would be implemented, and the specific issues of an implementation.

Since the 1980s, the strengthening and dissemination of telework has motivated studies to verify its advantages and disadvantages to enterprises and workers, specially focusing on economy, quality, and productivity performances. This paper developed from a master's thesis research which analyzed the subjective impact of telework concerning workers' personal satisfaction, their perception about suffering and pleasure when developing their work activities and social interrelationships, and, particularly, the influence it could have in their maximum experiences, the flow. Considering that the press media represents a historical telework, it was chosen as the research focus, selecting columnists from a large newspaper, located in the Brazilian south region.

Man and work histories are interlaced to tell us how the interaction among different human groups have helped in the development of intellectual capacities of our species. Creativity is mostly seen as a gift or an individual quality, for whose bloom and exercise there are internal and external factors, understood as stimulants of the creative process. Research for a master's thesis had, as its principal aim, the analysis of the subjective impact of telework on the workers personal satisfaction. Our second category authenticates the importance of interpersonal communication among fellow workers as incentive to personal creativity. The study was developed with columnists of a great newspaper with a big circulation in the south of Brazil, because telework is a tool of the press media, and creativity is a requirement for journalistic employment.

This article, the last of a trilogy, presents general reflections about technological advances, especially considering cyberspace as a way of information transmission and exchange, and on telework forms. Based on research for an administration masters' thesis, the derivation process that resulted in the last final analysis category illustrates the feelings of the interviewed journalists about telework effects on their professional and personal lives.

This paper proposes a research strategy based on a social ecological analysis of the Internet and its psychological impact as an option to generate original research to answer the following question: What is the psycho-environmental meaning of the Internet? This paper has two objectives: first, to analyze Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) linked to the use of the Internet from a social ecological approach, and second, to propose some relationships among variables from a social ecological perspective, which can help to clarify the variability and magnitude of the psychosocial effect associated with the Internet. This article is divided into three sections. The first briefly describes the origins and development of the Internet. It identifies some technological features and specifies some of the cutting-edge breakthroughs that have facilitated its expansion. The second section proposes a conceptual scheme from the social ecological perspective, which analyzes the subject–environmental binomial associated with the Internet. It identifies the basic assumption, the conceptual richness, and possibilities for research on the Internet, using a social ecological approach. Finally, the last section describes the scope and limitations of this perspective, and discusses its heuristic utility for the development and consolidation of a new area in psychological research: "digital psychology or cyber psychology."

The Internet can be an effective medium for the posting, exchange, and collection of information in psychology-related research and data. The relative ease and inexpensiveness of creating and maintaining Web-based applications, associated with the simplicity of use via the graphic-user interface format of form-based surveys, can establish a new research frontier for the social and behavioral sciences. To explore the possible use of Internet tools in psychological research, this study compared Web-based assessment techniques with traditional paper-based methods of different measures of Internet attitudes and behaviors in an Italian sample. The collected data were analyzed to identify both differences between the two samples and in the psychometric characteristics of the questionnaires. Even if we found significant differences between the two samples in the Internet attitudes and behaviors, no relevant differences were found in the psychometric properties of the different questionnaires. This result, similar to the ones previously obtained in Web-based assessments of personality constructs, is even more interesting given the lack of control on the characteristics of the online sample. These finding suggests that, if sampling control and validity assessment is provided, Internet-based questionnaires can be a suitable alternative to more traditional paper-based measures.

Despite the rise of computer games as a leisure phenomenon, there has been relatively little research into this area. Furthermore, almost all of the research to date has concentrated on arcade or console games. More recently, the Internet has become a new medium in which players can play videogames. Since there is no published research in this area, some "benchmark" data on which future research can build was collected from two online gaming fan sites. Sociodemographics showed that the majority of players were male (approximately 85%). Over 60% of players were older than 19 years. The data provide clear evidence that the game clientele is very much an adult profile and suggest a different picture to the stereotypical image of an adolescent online gamer. The stereotype of the typical online player being a socially withdrawn young male with limited sex role identity appears to be misplaced.

Agencies working with sex offenders are starting to see the emergence of people with a sexual interest in children who meet some of their needs through the use of child pornography, or the seduction of children, through the Internet. While CBT models dominate our understanding of sex offenders, there has been little research into the role that such new technologies may play in offending behavior. Data from the COPINE project has been used to generate a model of such offending behavior that emphasizes the role of cognitions in both the etiology, engagement with and problematic use of the Internet for those with a sexual interest in children. Such a model seeks to incorporate contemporary thinking about the role of cognitions in Pathological Internet Use, but applies this from a nonpathological perspective. This model is a first step towards providing a conceptual framework for such offending that will help inform both assessment and therapy.