Cyberpsychology Thesis
I’m in the early stages of writing my second thesis. My first one, for my undergrad studies in Psychology Applied to I.T was based on online advertising, was only about 5,000+ words and I had about 80 participants in my experiments.
This one will be three times the size, it will weigh in at about 10,000 - 15,000 words and I’ll be needing about 1,000 volunteers to fill out multiple online surveys for me (this step won’t commence until at least September). So wish me luck! Below are some of the aims I have developed, they form the basis for my upcoming research.
Aims:
- To investigate the immediate and initial factors that influence the perception of credibility and trust online, in regards to non-commercial websites and blogs.
- To explore and evaluate cues of trustworthiness online.
- To investigate trust-inducing interface design features and tools employed by non-commercial web designers, blogging platforms and blog writers, and examine their effectiveness.
- To examine online trust formation from a user’s perspective, including brand awareness and social experiences.
Though there is a lot of research with regard to the topic of trustworthiness online, almost all of this research focuses solely on e-commerce (eBay, Amazon etc.,) and does not delve into information exchange. Recently Wikipedia and Blogging has come under scrutiny by the traditional media for an apparent misrepresentation for information. However, this has in no way effected the popularity of these mediums. What I want to know is - why? Why do people trust certain websites and blogs but not others?
The next stage is to develop sets of hypothesis, which I’ve begun to do and have quite a few so far. I’m very much looking forward to getting feedback on my initial ideas from the college, I may have to alter the above aims as time progresses. If anyone would like to contribute some feedback or direct me towards any existing research, articles etc., please do.
If anyone else, like myself, is currently in the process of doing research into existing literature, online, let me suggest a wonderful tool called Zotero. It’s a file management system that works in conjunction with Firefox to help you sort, tag, reference, etc., research papers from sites such as Google Scholar.
