These days technology like the iPhone helps us to track our own personal habits, Twitter gives us an insight into popular topics and analytics give us fascinating web usage statistics. Whilst technology has greatly enhanced our ability to collect interesting data about human behaviour, it’s important to realise that using such data to make conclusions about why we behave in such a way is unwise without investigating the differences between causality and correlation. Take for example the problematic question of whether the Internet is addictive or if addicts use the Internet.

The Relationship Between Psychology and Technology

Only thorough psychological research can investigate the motivations behind our behaviour. All of the modern day branches of psychology are governed by extremely strict rules that ensure that only legitimate and ethical research is conducted and published, and said research employs extensive statistical analyses on data derived from various methods including interviews, questionnaires, experiments, etc.

It is for these reasons that I believe that the relationship between psychology and technology needs to be much stronger. If we use psychology to understand and explain our interactions with technology today, we can help our future selves by using this information to make technology more accessible, usable and helpful for everyone.

There is absolutely no escaping the fact that one day you will be old. Most people regard getting older to be a physical decline, a frailty of the body, without considering the cognitive and social changes that occur as you age. It is for this reason that I take an interest in Irish research centres like the NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology and the CASALA Centre (soon to open in Dundalk IT) who aim to improve future technologies by conducting cognitive and social psychological research with older adults and people with disabilities.

In today’s Irish Times an article describes the recent Business of Ageing conference held in Dublin, highlights some of the fantastic assisted living technologies being developed here in Ireland and suggests this country could be a leader in developing technology for older adults.

Let’s hope this prediction comes true. Not only would I love to work in this area of research and development, I for one would like to continue being an early adopter of new technologies. I would be incredibly angry if, as I got older technology slipped out of my reach, the way the majority of older adults are excluded today.

I’m Mark Siggins – final year Cyberpsychology student in IADT and I’m looking for some volunteers for my MSc. Project. Its a study of Irish mobile phone usage and what happens when people are separated from their mobile phones. I’ve set up an online survey to get suitable participants (You must own a mobile phone, be aged 18-40 and live in Ireland).

A link to the questionnaire can be found here.

The online part takes about ten minutes and of course all replies will be confidential. The second part of the study will involve analysing your phone use for a 12 hour period – it’s explained in more detail in the questionnaire, but if anyone has any questions or concerns them please contact me at this address – siggins.mark@gmail.com

Thank you for your assistance.

Mark is looking for people to fill out his questionnaire and also for anyone willing to participate in an experiment – to go 12 hours without their mobile phone. If you’re up for the challenge I think this would be an eye opening experience. Of course, you can still fill out the survey without taking part in the experiment, as frightening as the thought might be.

I’m very much looking forward to the results of this research and hope to be able to publish a summary here when Mark has submitted his thesis to the college.

My name is Graham and I am doing a thesis on Facebook usage. The following is a link to a secure survey that I have made, asking basic Facebook usage questions and also incorporating a short personality questionnaire.

Open The Survey In A New Window

The whole survey will take no more than five minutes to do and is completely confidential; I can assure you that it is also anonymous. You need only type your initials. I would really appreciate it if you could find the time to do it, as I am struggling to get the required numbers. The only stipulation is that you are Irish, over 24, and have a facebbok profile. Thanking you in advance.

Graham Gilbert
Final Year MSc Cyberpsychology student at IADT

I’m rather interested in the results of this study and hopefully will be able to share the results of Graham’s study with you next year.

Blogs are a highly personalised medium with the ability to involve the reading public in an integral manner, and unlike the traditional media they are not edited or gate kept and for this reason traditional journalists argue about how much trust to place in the content of blogs, however, it is argued that the comments system facilitates peer review.

It has been suggested that there aren’t many bloggers in Ireland and therefore there have been few arguments over the differences between journalists and bloggers in Ireland. Nevertheless, this research found that almost 52% of Irish bloggers consider their blogging as a form of journalism, with over 58% of this group using their real name to publish online.

However, over 10% of bloggers described incidents where content was illegitimately sourced from their blogs by the traditional Irish media. Over 58% of this content was written work and almost 30% was in the form of either photographs or photo-shopped images.

Due to the archiving feature of blogging this could suggest that bloggers are less likely to lie on their blogs in comparison to other online mediums, such as synchronous chat. However, with regard to blogging there are issues of identity concealment to consider, whilst deceptive, they are necessary to preserve the bloggers’ privacy.

Correspondingly, this research found that over 86% of bloggers indicated that they actively attempt to verify information before posting it on their blog, and 87% indicated that they had never published a lie on their blog. Of the small number of bloggers that had posted a lie, the majority done so to either to maintain their anonymity or for the purposes of fiction/satire or to embellish a story.

The majority of both bloggers and non-bloggers indicated that they had at least once attempted to double check information found on both Irish and non-Irish blogs, with only approx. 15% having never done this. However, this doesn’t necessarily indicate low levels of trust in the medium, but does perhaps point toward an awareness of the fact that blog publishing is unregulated.

Interestingly of the approx. 40% that blog using a pseudonym, 23% of this group also blogged using their real name. This suggests that some bloggers are taking advantage of both the benefits of blogging as themselves i.e benefits to reputation, and also anonymously somewhere else online. Anonymity online can help individuals to explore their identity, reduce shyness and encourage interactions with others online.

Though the Internet does help to support strong tie relationships, it is particularity effective for weak tie groups, allowing for the efficient flow of information and facilitating the development of ideas, blogospheres are a particularly good example of how the internet facilitates this.

The blogosphere is a classic social network but its characteristics differentiate it from most social networks, where communication is predominantly verbal and unrecorded. Networks of bloggers will often aggregate all of their individual blogs to a centralised location online, and these are referred to as planet aggregators an example of which is Irishblogs.ie.

However, some blogs are more connected to a blogosphere than others, with some bloggers not being connected to any blogosphere at all. Over 65% of bloggers indicated that they were listed on an Irish planet aggregator, and almost 64% consider themselves a member of the Irish blogosphere. The remaining bloggers indicated that they were not listed and did not consider themselves part of the Irish blogosphere. This highlights the 35% of bloggers unconnected from the Irish blogosphere, and this could suggest that there are far more Irish people blogging than is known.

It was assumed that non-bloggers would rate blogs based outside of Ireland as more credible than Irish blogs. However, out of a maximum score of 20 the non-bloggers rated Irish blogs with a mean score of 13.02 and non-Irish blogs with 12.64. The mean rating of the credibility of Irish blogs was actually slightly higher, though not significantly so.

Previous research has suggested that the more an individual relies on a source, the higher credibility they attribute to it, and the bloggers did rate the overall credibility of blogs higher than the non-bloggers. However, neither the bloggers nor the non-bloggers rated either Irish blogs or non-Irish blogs as significantly higher in credibility than the other. Incidentally, without a comparison to credibility scores of the traditional forms of Irish media this rating can only be used to compare the two categories investigated – Irish blogs and non-Irish blogs.

Additionally, approximately 50% of both groups said that they read a mixture of both Irish and non-Irish blogs, and approx. 35% said that they primarily read Irish blogs. Both the bloggers and non-bloggers indicated that they believed that blogging was more popular in other countries, and both groups thought that the medium was popular, but not “very popular” worldwide.

The Internet supports social networks, helps build social capital and having access to individuals outside one’s usual close circle can provide access to non-redundant information, resulting in benefits such as employment connections. During this research it was assumed that blog writing had a positive effect on the social lives of Irish bloggers, and it was queried what impact, if any, it had on their academic and professional lives too.

35.5% of bloggers believed blogging had a positive effect on their social lives, with 19.9% saying it had a “very positive” effect. Most importantly though, less than 1% indicated that it had any negative effect, and less than 44% indicated that it had no effect. Additional questions revealed that blogging has had an especially positive effect on the development of weak tie relationships with 81.3% of bloggers indicating that they have made friends that they communicate with online because of blogging. Weak ties are typical of relationships among casual acquaintances and are important for sharing information, making contacts and increasing awareness about new ideas.

Most people have only a few strong ties (closely-knit groups) and many weak ties. However, strong tie relationships can and do initiate online and can successfully move offline, as demonstrated by the 28.45% of Irish bloggers who have developed close friendships because of their blogging, additionally 62.07% of Irish bloggers have met people in real life as a result of their blogging. Although socalisation was found to not be a primary motivation for Irish bloggers, these results suggest socalisation is a by-product of writing a blog.

In an international online survey it was found that blogging is both personally satisfying and has a positive impact on its writer’s lives, with some bloggers claiming to have received speaking or publishing opportunities and career advancement because of their blogs. During this research it was found that less than 3% of Irish bloggers indicated that blogging had any negative effects upon their academic or professional lives,  and over 34% indicated it had a positive effect on their professional lives, and over 33% said it had a “very positive” effect.  Additionally, over 50% said it had no effect on  their academic lives however, over 30% said it had a positive effect and over 15% said it had a “very positive” effect

Blogging as a form of knowledge sharing contributes to the creation of a public good in the form of shared intellectual capital, and the positive social effects discussed above, combined with the academic and professional positive effects of blogging suggest that blogging can increase social capital, and Irish bloggers are clearly benefiting from this.

The Internet poses unique information privacy threats. Once information is recorded online it rarely disappears. It has permanence, and the individual the information belongs to can in many cases have no power to decide what happens to it.

During this research it was assumed that non-bloggers would indicate higher levels of concern with regard to issues of online privacy and the persistent nature of the Internet, in comparison to the bloggers. What was actually found was that both bloggers and non-bloggers have similar levels of concern about online privacy. 48.93% of the total participant sample indicated they were “concerned” and 16.87% indicated that they were “very concerned” about online privacy. However, there was a significant difference found between scores for concern about online permanence. 46.07% of non-bloggers indicated that they were “concerned” and 13.48% were “very concerned”, in comparison 36.48% of bloggers said they were “concerned” and 10.66% said they were “very concerned”.

Results indicate that Irish bloggers are not overly concerned about their published materials remaining online indefinitely, but Irish non-bloggers are, and this was one of the only differences found between the two groups. Concurrently bloggers were also asked how concerned they are with the possible misuse of information on their blogs, with over 38% indicating that they were concerned and 10% saying that they were “very concerned”.

The majority of the sample had 10 years or more experience online, but both bloggers and non-bloggers had very similar levels of experience – indicating that online experience is not a key indicator for participation in writing a blog, but is more likely to be an indicator of awareness of the medium. Correspondingly, computer skill levels were found to be similar in both bloggers and non-bloggers.

However, it was also found that bloggers are no longer primarily based in the Information Technology sector (as was the case in 2006) with less than 30% of bloggers coming from IT, almost 17% coming from the Media sector, 9% from the Education sector, and the remaining 56% coming from a variety of different areas e.g. Retail, Government, and Arts/Design etc. Additionally only 20% of the non-bloggers were based in IT. This suggests that exposure to the medium is not reliant on an individual being in involved with IT.