Creating charisma online: the role of digital presence in the formation of religious identity

This article investigates the construction and transmission of charisma through online channels and its role in the formation of religious identities. Mindful of Max Weber’s observation that charisma inhabits the relationship between a leader and his/her followers, I argue for a critical reappraisal of the theoretical model in the light of the ubiquity in the twenty-first century of new, virtual forms of social encounter. I focus my analysis on the Christian creationist movement in the United States and particularly on an influential leader called Ken Ham. Using digital ethnographic methods, I show how Ham constructs charisma online and how a virtual community forms itself around his charismatic claims. I illustrate how this virtual community intersects with offline worlds and suggest that the theme park attractions that Ham’s organisation runs (Creation Museum, Ark Encounter) are imbued with deflected charisma by virtue of their association with his online avatar.     

Virtual killing

Debates that revolve around the topic of morality and fiction rarely explicitly treat virtual worlds like, for example, Second Life. The reason for this disregard cannot be that all users of virtual worlds only do the right thing while online—for they sometimes even virtually kill each other. Is it wrong to kill other people in a virtual world? It depends. This essay analyzes on what it depends, why it is that killing people in a virtual world sometimes is wrong, and how different virtual killings are wrong in different ways. I argue that killing people online is wrong if it is an instance of deliberately and non-consensually evoking disagreeable emotions in others. Establishing this conclusion requires substantial conceptual work, as virtual worlds feature new kinds of fictional agency, particular emotional responses to fiction, and unique ways in which the fiction of the virtual world relates to the wrongness of the killing.     

Visual and haptic feedback contribute to tuning and online control during object manipulation

The authors employed a virtual environment to investigate how humans use haptic and visual feedback in a simple, rhythmic object-manipulation task. The authors hypothesized that feedback would help participants identify the appropriate resonant frequency and perform online control adjustments. The 1st test was whether sensory feedback is needed at all; the 2nd was whether the motor system combines visual and haptic feedback to improve performance. Task performance was quantified in terms of work performed on the virtual inertia, ability to identify the correct rhythm, and variability of movement. Strict feedforward control was found to be ineffective for this task, even when participants had previous knowledge of the rhythm. Participants (N = 11) performed far better when feedback was available (11 times more work, 2.2 times more precise frequency, 30% less variability; p < .05 for all 3 performance measures). Using sensory feedback, participants were able to rapidly identify 4 different spring-inertia systems without foreknowledge of the corresponding resonant frequencies. They performed over 20% more work with 24% less variability when provided with both visual and haptic feedback than they did with either feedback channel alone (p < .05), providing evidence that they integrated online sensory channels. Whereas feedforward control alone led to poor performance, feedback control led to fast tuning or calibration of control according to the resonant frequency of the object, and to better control of the rhythmic movement itself.     

Virtual social environments as a tool for psychological assessment: dynamics of interaction with a virtual spouse

Computer games are advocated as a promising tool bridging the gap between the controllability of a lab experiment and the mundane realism of a field experiment. At the same time, many authors stress the importance of observing real behavior instead of asking participants about possible or intended behaviors. In this article, the authors introduce an online virtual social environment, which is inhabited by autonomous agents including the virtual spouse of the participant. Participants can freely explore the virtual world and interact with any other inhabitant, allowing the expression of spontaneous and unprompted behavior. The authors investigated the usefulness of this game for the assessment of interactions with a virtual spouse and their relations to intimacy and autonomy motivation as well as relationship satisfaction with the real-life partner. Both the intimacy motive and the satisfaction with the real-world relationship showed significant correlations with aggregated in-game behavior, which shows that some sort of transference between the real world and the virtual world took place. In addition, a process analysis of interaction quality revealed that relationship satisfaction and intimacy motive had different effects on the initial status and the time course of the interaction quality. Implications for psychological assessment using virtual social environments are discussed.     

Gender and sexuality online on Australian Muslim forums

This paper examines the e-religious discourse that Australian Muslims produce on the internet. The study of two online discussions on MuslimVillage forums—one of Australia’s largest online Muslim communities—about polygamy and homosexuality will illustrate how online interaction within virtual Islamic environments provides both greater and lesser fluidity to e-Islamic normative discourses associated with gender and sexuality. Muslim forums provide opportunities for members to display a variety of views and opinions: on the one hand, they allow Muslims to post views that may challenge, contest, or even transgress Islamic gender and sexuality norms, while equally allowing members, on the other hand, to reaffirm more authoritative normative Islamic views. The various voices that inhabit Australia’s Islamicyberspace’s new Muslim social and networked environments thus need to negotiate virtual normative representations.     

Lifestyles of virtual world residents: living in the on-line game "lineage".

This study was conducted to explore the lifestyles of online game players who have adopted the virtual world as part of their life. An online survey was conducted on players of an Internet-based game, Lineage. Lineage is the largest online game where people assume new identities and play various roles in a virtual environment, accommodating over 6 million users worldwide. A total of 4,786 game players participated in this survey, and their lifestyles were compared with their values and attitudes in the virtual world. Upon classification of their real-world lifestyles, their tendencies and desires were compared to lifestyles in the virtual world. This study showed that game players have developed their own distinctive lifestyles, and their lifestyles were a strong criterion for explaining behavior patterns and desires in the virtual world. Lifestyles were classified into three general categories: (1) single-oriented player, (2) community-oriented player, and (3) off-Real world player. Each group displayed distinct differences in their values and game activities, as well as in their anti-social behavior tendencies. The differences reflected not only their personality but also their socio-economic status within the virtual world, which is constructed through game activities. This study serves as a model to understand how players from different real-life backgrounds will behave in various game features and how they adopt the virtual world for their new social identities.     

Virtual Empathy? Anxieties and Connections Teaching and Learning Pastoral Care Online

Is it possible to teach pastoral care online? McGarrah Sharp and Morris describe their process of transforming a residential on‐campus pastoral care course into the first online offering of the course at their seminary. They begin by describing a series of pedagogical choices made with the intent of facilitating dynamic movement between peer‐to‐peer, small group, and whole class discussions throughout the semester. Before and during the course, anxieties arose at many levels of instruction for the professor, teaching assistant, and students. Anecdotes and examples from the online course show how the online course design and facilitation was able to name and respond to anxieties as part of integrating pastoral care course content and practice – a key learning goal for the course. The authors are persuaded that online pedagogy can help identify how anxieties create space for developing empathy as much, if not more than, a traditional on‐campus format.     

网络心理咨询的疗效与展望

心理学家预测,通过互联网开展的心理咨询,在未来的10年里将成为第二大快速增长的服务领域。该文综述了近期国外有关网络心理咨询的概念和种类,有关网络心理咨询疗效的实证研究以及确保网络心理咨询疗效所采取的措施等。在此基础上作者指出网络心理咨询研究中存在的问题,相信随着这些问题的改进,网络心理咨询必将迈向规范、标准和科学的轨道     

Physical interpersonal relationships and social anxiety among online game players.

Many online game players spend inordinate amounts of time in their favorite virtual worlds. A large percentage of these players are teenagers who show behaviors normally associated with physical addiction. Parents, educators, and social scientists are therefore saying that online games are sources of social problems. The authors surveyed 174 Taiwanese college-age online players to collect data on the potential effects of online games on the quality of interpersonal relationships and levels of social anxiety. According to the results, the quality of interpersonal relationships decreased and the amount of social anxiety increased as the amount of time spent playing online games increased.     

虚拟社会心理学：现实, 探索及意义

虚拟世界成为人类日常生活的一个重要组成部分, 对人的思想、感情和行为产生不同程度的影响, 对这些问题的研究逐渐成为社会心理学领域一个新的研究范式。我们认为, 虚拟社会心理学研究的热点问题和重要结论主要关注人在虚拟世界中的自我表现, 虚拟的人际关系、虚拟团体表现, 及虚拟世界中的创造性合作。研究发现, 虚拟社会心理学既有与现实世界一致的地方, 也有很多独特的现象, 有必要成为中国心理学家关注的一个新研究领域。     

Normal/Deserving Citizens and the Transabled Other: A Sociological Analysis of Online Commenters Reactions to Transability

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the authors explore the ways that online commenters on the National Post’s website articulate their opinions, understandings, and feelings about a news story on the topic of transability. By conducting a content analysis of the online data, the authors examine how the commenters demonstrate that dominant forms of power, knowledge, and discourse permeate common-sense understandings of the healthy, normal citizen through their acting incredulous towards, pathologizing, shaming, and sometimes reacting violently towards transabled people.     

Using Expressive Arts in Online Education to Identify Feelings

The authors of this article present two creative teaching activities to illustrate how online counselor education can use expressive arts to promote awareness of how one feels. Included is a discussion of this awareness of feelings, the downside of expressing feelings, creative arts in counselor education, and how counselor education can promote feeling experiences. Two examples of expressive arts are offered with a brief discussion.     

The Internet is a scary place: How does evidence source and examinee race or ethnicity influence determinations of threat?

Violent rhetoric online is becoming increasingly relevant to the practice of forensic mental health assessment as examinee's virtual lives may transform into real-world acts of violence. With the rise of a diverse subculture of violent online communities, the aim of the present study was to inform how concerns with online sources of collateral data and racial/ethnic biases may influence determinations of violence potential. Using an experimental design, jury-eligible participants (N = 278) and forensic mental health experts (N = 78) were presented with mock Twitter (now referred to as X) posts that varied by data source (i.e., how information was accessed) and the examinee's race/ethnicity. Results showed no differences in participants' ratings of data credibility, how much weight they would place on the posts in a threat assessment, or how likely the examinee was to act violently against his intended target. Implications regarding the interpretation of social media evidence, relevant limitations, and future research are discussed.     

Managing team interpersonal processes through technology: a task-technology fit perspective

This article addresses the broad question, How can virtual teams that manage a majority of their interactions through information and communication technologies (ICTs) be made more effective? Focusing specifically on interpersonal interactions, the task-technology fit paradigm is used as the foundation for a theoretical model that seeks to identify how such teams can match available communication technologies to the different types of interpersonal interactions in which they engage. The authors draw on media synchronicity theory to identify the functionalities of the wide range of ICTs available today, and map these functionalities onto the salient communication needs of 3 key interpersonal processes: (a) conflict management, (b) motivation and confidence building, and (c) affect management. The model also incorporates a temporal dimension examining how the communication needs, and hence, the need for ICT functionality, varies depending on the virtual team's developmental stage. Opportunities for future research arising from the theoretical model are discussed.     

Creating Computer-Mediated Communities of Practice in Special Education

Summary

The convergence of theory and research on socially shared cognition represents a promising new direction for understanding how to enhance the intellectual growth of individuals. In this article, we draw upon the metaphor of “apprenticeship” to explain how individual cognitive development of children and adults alike can be enhanced by mentoring relationships within a particular educational “culture.” The view advanced here is that computers and related technologies can be instrumental in creating socially interactive and reflective learning communities. Within these communities there is active transmission of knowledge between individuals as they are guided from the periphery through to the center of the learning enterprise. Examples of communities of learners are provided to illustrate the process of socially shared cognition and development of knowledge networks. Principles for the creation of sustainable learning communities apply equally to traditional educational settings and on-line communities. The concept of the “collective zone of proximal development” is advanced here to explain how cognitive growth progressively occurs for community members who are operating within a socially interactive and reflective learning environment. Finally, principles and recommendations are offered on how to design communities so that all individuals can achieve their optimal functioning level through guided social participation.     

A generally robust approach for testing hypotheses and setting confidence intervals for effect sizes

Standard least squares analysis of variance methods suffer from poor power under arbitrarily small departures from normality and fail to control the probability of a Type I error when standard assumptions are violated. This article describes a framework for robust estimation and testing that uses trimmed means with an approximate degrees of freedom heteroscedastic statistic for independent and correlated groups designs in order to achieve robustness to the biasing effects of nonnormality and variance heterogeneity. The authors describe a nonparametric bootstrap methodology that can provide improved Type I error control. In addition, the authors indicate how researchers can set robust confidence intervals around a robust effect size parameter estimate. In an online supplement, the authors use several examples to illustrate the application of an SAS program to implement these statistical methods.     

Measuring the Evolution of Radical Right-Wing Posting Behaviors Online

ABSTRACT

Researchers have previously explored how right-wing extremists build a collective identity online by targeting their perceived “threat,” but little is known about how this “us” versus “them” dynamic evolves over time. This study uses a sentiment analysis-based algorithm that adapts criminal career measures, as well as semi-parametric group-based modeling, to evaluate how users’ anti-Semitic, anti-Black, and anti-LGBTQ posting behaviors develop on a sub-forum of the most conspicuous white supremacy forum. The results highlight the extent to which authors target their key adversaries over time, as well as the applicability of a criminal career approach in measuring radical posting trajectories online.     

Converting virtual community members into online buyers

Although many online vendors have sponsored virtual communities (VCs) in the hope of reaping commercial benefits from it, not many have been successful in reaping commercial benefits from their VC. Online vendors can benefit greatly from having a VC, if the VC members can be converted into online buyers. This study examines the conversion of a VC member into an online buyer. Using a classical-conditioning approach, this study finds that members' committed participation in the VC is the springboard for online vendors to convert VC members into online buyers.     

网络游戏中化身参照的加工优势：来自行为与ERPs的证据

采用R/K范式和事件相关电位技术(ERPs)分别从加工结果和加工过程考察网络游戏中化身参照的加工优势。实验1采用R/K范式比较40名玩家在不同参照条件下的记忆成绩。结果发现：化身参照的总再认正确率、R反应再认正确率和辨别力d'都显著优于他人参照, 初步证实化身参照的记忆加工优势。实验2借助ERPs内隐地考察网络游戏中20名玩家的化身参照在加工时间进程上的神经机制。结果发现：加工化身名字比熟悉他人名字诱发更大的P2 (160~260 ms)和P3 (370~600 ms)波幅, 比外国熟悉他人名字的P3潜伏期更短。结果表明, 相比较其他信息, 玩家不仅能够迅速注意到化身相关信息, 还对化身相关信息进行了更加精细和深入地加工。综上所述, 无论是记忆结果还是加工时间进程, 都存在网络游戏中的化身参照加工优势。     

The unbearable likeness of being digital: the persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments.

Every day, millions of users interact in real-time via avatars in online environments, such as massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). These online environments could potentially be unique research platforms for the social sciences and clinical therapy, but it is crucial to first establish that social behavior and norms in virtual environments are comparable to those in the physical world. In an observational study of Second Life, a virtual community, we collected data from avatars in order to explore whether social norms of gender, interpersonal distance (IPD), and eye gaze transfer into virtual environments even though the modality of movement is entirely different (i.e., via keyboard and mouse as opposed to eyes and legs). Our results showed that established findings of IPD and eye gaze transfer into virtual environments: (1) male-male dyads have larger IPDs than female-female dyads, (2) male-male dyads maintain less eye contact than female-female dyads, and (3) decreases in IPD are compensated with gaze avoidance as predicted by the Equilibrium Theory. We discuss implications for users of online games as well as for social scientists who seek to conduct research in virtual environments.