Sunday morning is always the most stressful time. You’ve scoured all the stats: power rankings, the spread, home vs. away records, strength of schedule, injury updates, individual match-ups, est. Once the game turns on, it’s hard to concentrate. Rooting for your favorite team takes a backseat to flipping through the channels to catch glimpses of your fantasy studs dominating their respective games. You jump every time the live coverage segway into Boomer and Shannon announcing a ‘gamebreak.’ Every commercial you run up to the computer to get the live score updates. Fantasy football is an addiction.
Fantasy football is a phenomenon that has gripped the sports world practically since the creation of the Internet. The concept is that you get to pick your own ‘fantasy team’ from all the players in the league in a draft format against your competitors. Every week, you decide which players are going to start and which are going to sit out. These players get points based on their performance. Touchdowns, yards, and field goals are good for your team while interceptions, fumbles, and sacks are bad. Fantasy football is tied directly to the Internet. Sites like Yahoo keep track of the statistics and tabulate the scores. Yahoo even offers software that gives you life updates, which allows the ‘owners’ to know exactly how many points they need their last wide receiver to get in order for them to win their weekly match up. Other sites charge people for ‘inside’ tips on who to play each week.
Problematic Internet Use(PIU) is defined as “Maladaptive Cognitions and behaviors involving internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences”(Caplan 2004). Fantasy football is an online space that fosters such an obsession in individuals. For the devoted fantasy footballer, there is an infinite amount of resources available. Sunday has always been a source of tension in relationships. For guys, and some girls, it’s a holiday every time their team takes the field. Fantasy football perpetuates this feeling. It gives the individual more of an emotional (and sometimes economical) investment in the sport. Often times, people would rather stay hovered over their computer and TV than go outside and enjoy some good old-fashioned sunshine. This can lead to dire social consequences. When money is involved, it is a form of online gambling, and provides a forum that is primed to take advantage of individuals with impulsive and addictive personalities. Caplan predicts that those that compulsively check an online Internet space will form a negative opinion about FTF communication. While this is partly true, as people are in leagues with complete strangers and trash talk on their discussion boards in a way that they would not normally in FTF interactions, often the best fantasy leagues are the ones that include a group of tight knit friends or work associates in which most of the trash talking occurs outside of the online arena.
Wallace’s Operant Conditioning causes players to hover over their computers while constantly clicking the ‘refresh page’ button in order to get up to date statistics. From the NFL website or ESPN. Because of the delay from live action to online updates, people will continue to constantly refresh their page, each time thinking that the next will be when they find out if their running back ran it in on fourth down from the one yard line.
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Monday, November 5, 2007
Assignment #9: Away Message Stalking
Away message stalking allows people to check what their “buddies” are doing throughout the day. A person’s buddy list can include many different people—including those who are our closest friends to those who we only used to be friends with in middle school to those who we do not really even know. Some people change their away message status frequently, while other people leave the same message up all day, apparently still “sleeping” from the night before. Away message stalking can be associated with problematic internet use (PIU) in some instances, but all stalkers do not necessarily have PIU. There are aspects of the internet associated with away message stalking that exist for everyone, but I think that there are individual differences between all stalkers that lead some people to develop PIU while others do not.
According to Wallace, there are certain properties of away message stalking that are related to the internet, such as operant conditioning and maintenance of virtual presence. Operant conditioning regards the rewarding of behavior with a variable schedule. With such an inconsistent reward schedule, the behavior is more difficult to extinguish. Finding an updated away message is the great reward for those who stalk down their buddy list. Because people post new away messages at different and unpredictable times throughout the day, away message stalkers are even more so drawn to continually check their buddy lists. The maintenance of virtual presence is also an associated factor of the internet that involves away messages. As opposed to just standing on the sideline while watching and checking status changes, away message stalkers are able to produce behavior and be apart of it as well. Away message stalkers have the ability to update their own away messages to keep others informed of their activities in the virtual AIM environment. These internet properties are present for all AIM users, but they seem to me to only have an especially problematic impact for those with individual differences that are associated with PIU. As maintained my Davis, Flett, and Besser (2002), PIU is predicted on the basis of four dimensions—diminished impulse control, loneliness/depression, social comfort, and distraction/procrastination—which I think can all be related to away message stalkers. The urge to check away messages can be especially common if a person is feeling lonely or is looking for a distraction from his responsibilities. Also, if a person is lacking in social comfort he will be more at ease if he can use AIM away messages as an online space to observe people instead of facing the fear of direct contact in face to face interaction.
In regards to Caplan’s model of problematic internet behavior, away message stalking is problematic for those who do so in excess, spending longer checking their buddies’ status than they had planned. The behavior is also problematic when stalkers compulsively check AIM away messages and their stalking obsessions later cause feelings of guilt. Caplan’s model theorizes that individuals with psychosocial problems and low social competence prefer less threatening interactions via internet as opposed to face to face, which in turn leads to compulsive use of the internet which connects again to psychosocial problems. This however, is a mediated connection because one must be low on social competence and have a preference for the internet in order for it to lead to problematic, excessive use. Thus I do not believe that all away message stalkers have issues with PIU, such as people who just have a preference for using AIM and the internet. It is people with individual differences specifically related to PIU, like low social competence and loneliness, that also have a preference for AIM as a means of social interaction, who will come to excessively stalk away messages.
Comments:
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http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-celebrity-gossip-blogs.html
According to Wallace, there are certain properties of away message stalking that are related to the internet, such as operant conditioning and maintenance of virtual presence. Operant conditioning regards the rewarding of behavior with a variable schedule. With such an inconsistent reward schedule, the behavior is more difficult to extinguish. Finding an updated away message is the great reward for those who stalk down their buddy list. Because people post new away messages at different and unpredictable times throughout the day, away message stalkers are even more so drawn to continually check their buddy lists. The maintenance of virtual presence is also an associated factor of the internet that involves away messages. As opposed to just standing on the sideline while watching and checking status changes, away message stalkers are able to produce behavior and be apart of it as well. Away message stalkers have the ability to update their own away messages to keep others informed of their activities in the virtual AIM environment. These internet properties are present for all AIM users, but they seem to me to only have an especially problematic impact for those with individual differences that are associated with PIU. As maintained my Davis, Flett, and Besser (2002), PIU is predicted on the basis of four dimensions—diminished impulse control, loneliness/depression, social comfort, and distraction/procrastination—which I think can all be related to away message stalkers. The urge to check away messages can be especially common if a person is feeling lonely or is looking for a distraction from his responsibilities. Also, if a person is lacking in social comfort he will be more at ease if he can use AIM away messages as an online space to observe people instead of facing the fear of direct contact in face to face interaction.
In regards to Caplan’s model of problematic internet behavior, away message stalking is problematic for those who do so in excess, spending longer checking their buddies’ status than they had planned. The behavior is also problematic when stalkers compulsively check AIM away messages and their stalking obsessions later cause feelings of guilt. Caplan’s model theorizes that individuals with psychosocial problems and low social competence prefer less threatening interactions via internet as opposed to face to face, which in turn leads to compulsive use of the internet which connects again to psychosocial problems. This however, is a mediated connection because one must be low on social competence and have a preference for the internet in order for it to lead to problematic, excessive use. Thus I do not believe that all away message stalkers have issues with PIU, such as people who just have a preference for using AIM and the internet. It is people with individual differences specifically related to PIU, like low social competence and loneliness, that also have a preference for AIM as a means of social interaction, who will come to excessively stalk away messages.
Comments:
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-facebook.html
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9 Because One Private Jet Just Isn't Enough...
The term Problematic Internet Usage (PIU), as Caplan describes it, encompasses, “maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving Internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences.” While for the most part this seems to indicate an addiction of sorts, I believe that Internet usage can be problematic in more than just the immediate way (compulsive behavior, psychological need, etc.). A form of Internet usage that has been causing more and more problems for people that engage in it is Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing and so-called “illegal” downloading. These phenomena and their negative consequences are becoming more relevant at Cornell, as 16 students were served lawsuits for illegal file sharing activity.
Now, I personally do not believe that file sharing should be illegal, instead I think it really helps bands that don’t have the mass-market resources of big record companies and established acts, and that this free advertising is what truly scares the industry. However, for the present and the foreseeable future, the activity is going to remain classified as against the law. Because of this illegality and because of the increasing aggressiveness of the RIAA in pursuing even the odd infrequent downloader who just happened to be unlucky enough to import the wrong Metallica file, file sharing comes into Caplan’s definition of PIU through the “social consequences” part. No, we do not see people losing relationships and academic performance to the Internet with this phenomenon, as we do in online gaming or perhaps Facebook addiction. This online activity does, however, have a much different pull than gambling and Facebook. Namely, it offers us a chance to exercise some consumer muscle and only select tracks we might want to hear as opposed to buying an entire CD for just a few songs, combined with a lack of iTunes’ pesky Digital Rights Management software all for the low, low price of FREE. The opportunity to get something for nothing, while for the most part facing little exposure to real consequences (thanks to the perceived anonymity of the Internet) proves far too tempting for most casual users of file-sharing services. However, the damage being done to society by this heavily controversial issue is both tangible and intangible, and in both cases very real.
The students above each had the option to “settle” for the flat rate of $3,000 or face charges of $750 per song if they were sued and lost. For many, if not most, college students, this represents a rather daunting sum, when considered into the $160,000 we are already paying for the privilege of learning at Cornell. So file sharing, even when used very casually, can have very negative fiscal consequences and leave its user holding a very intimidating bag. Furthermore, the RIAA adopts a seemingly random policy of legal action, pursuing those users it can, oftentimes ignoring the bigger fish for the smaller ones just to prove a point. This hurts smaller, underexposed bands as explained earlier, and also fosters a sense of distrust between the consumer base and the artistry itself. How can we believe that a band is “all about the music” if they are so preoccupied with losing money to “illegal” downloading?
The issues around copyright infringement and file sharing are still the subject of much debate in the world right now and I encourage all of you to do more than just participate in it. Get involved. Become aware of both your rights and risks.
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-harmless-or-harmful-look-at-online.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-9-neverending-hunt.html
Now, I personally do not believe that file sharing should be illegal, instead I think it really helps bands that don’t have the mass-market resources of big record companies and established acts, and that this free advertising is what truly scares the industry. However, for the present and the foreseeable future, the activity is going to remain classified as against the law. Because of this illegality and because of the increasing aggressiveness of the RIAA in pursuing even the odd infrequent downloader who just happened to be unlucky enough to import the wrong Metallica file, file sharing comes into Caplan’s definition of PIU through the “social consequences” part. No, we do not see people losing relationships and academic performance to the Internet with this phenomenon, as we do in online gaming or perhaps Facebook addiction. This online activity does, however, have a much different pull than gambling and Facebook. Namely, it offers us a chance to exercise some consumer muscle and only select tracks we might want to hear as opposed to buying an entire CD for just a few songs, combined with a lack of iTunes’ pesky Digital Rights Management software all for the low, low price of FREE. The opportunity to get something for nothing, while for the most part facing little exposure to real consequences (thanks to the perceived anonymity of the Internet) proves far too tempting for most casual users of file-sharing services. However, the damage being done to society by this heavily controversial issue is both tangible and intangible, and in both cases very real.
The students above each had the option to “settle” for the flat rate of $3,000 or face charges of $750 per song if they were sued and lost. For many, if not most, college students, this represents a rather daunting sum, when considered into the $160,000 we are already paying for the privilege of learning at Cornell. So file sharing, even when used very casually, can have very negative fiscal consequences and leave its user holding a very intimidating bag. Furthermore, the RIAA adopts a seemingly random policy of legal action, pursuing those users it can, oftentimes ignoring the bigger fish for the smaller ones just to prove a point. This hurts smaller, underexposed bands as explained earlier, and also fosters a sense of distrust between the consumer base and the artistry itself. How can we believe that a band is “all about the music” if they are so preoccupied with losing money to “illegal” downloading?
The issues around copyright infringement and file sharing are still the subject of much debate in the world right now and I encourage all of you to do more than just participate in it. Get involved. Become aware of both your rights and risks.
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-harmless-or-harmful-look-at-online.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-9-neverending-hunt.html
#9: WOW!
WOW! That is the online activity that I believe has taken over and ruined a many lives. I feel that the World of Warcraft can possibly lead to problematic internet use. I personally have never played WOW, but know several friends that are obsessed with this game. A couple of incidences that come to mind about WOW that leads me to believe it could lead to PIU are partly funny and partly worrisome. One such incident is when a friend wanted to finally beat a level of WOW he had been working on for several weeks, but the problem was that the next day he had his SATs. He stayed up all night to beat the level, fell asleep, overslept and missed the test. Another friend that played WOW on a regular basis was in college at the time and slowly started to miss more and more classes and stayed in his dorm room playing WOW. He finally got a wake up call about how WOW was consuming his life when he failed several of his classes.
Generally speaking, gamers who play WOW are stereotypically seen as pale nerdy guys who never leave their rooms and have no social skills because all they do all day is play WOW on the computer with their friends. Though I know some friends that play WOW in moderation and would not lead to problematic internet use, there are numerous incidences where it does lead to PIU.
As Caplan (2004) stated, PIU is “maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving Internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences.” In the case of WOW, I believe that being on the computer playing for hours and hours definitely leads to negative academic consequences as the example of my friend failing classes above. Also, depending on the person’s age, I believe it can interfere with their professional career as well as strain social relationships. Many people that play WOW are guilty of excessive use. Some people are so dedicated to the game that they develop teams of people that do not even know each other and set “practice times” online to better their skills and abilities in the game.
One way that WOW could lead to PIU also deals with the personality type of the person playing WOW. If they feel loneliness in their lives, they are going to be more susceptible to the game because they will find comfort and a sense of belonging from his/her fellow WOW players. As we discussed in earlier lectures, the idea of being identified as part of a group is very strong. Being part of the in-group boosts an individual’s self confidence and therefore is a dangerous characteristic of WOW for at least the reason that being part of a group requires the individual to put in heavy time constraints and commitment.
Therefore, in general the game WOW can be a fun and enjoyable past time for individuals as long as it played in moderation and do not start to effect the academic, professional and social lives of the individuals.
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Sunday, November 4, 2007
Assignment 9: The Never-Ending Hunt
The examples of possible online activities that lead to Problematic Internet Use that were listed on the description of Assignment 9 (porn, gambling, away message stalking) all have a negative connotation even when done in moderation. These are not the only problematic activities, though. We have all heard the saying “Too much of a good thing.” While people generally regard a thirst for knowledge as something to commend, the search for information on the Internet can certainly lead to PIU.
With the linkability of the Internet, especially on web sites such as Wikipedia where words in the description of one thing appear as links to their own pages, the ability to go from source to source is limitless.
When you need information for a specific purpose, you need to find the exact intelligence or statistics that will solve your problem. The catch is that you don’t know what site, page, or other source will give you the facts you need. This is where Wallace’s concept of Operant Conditioning comes into play. It’s possible that we’ll find our answer on the first website we look at it. It’s possible that that first site will have a link to the right site. It’s also possible that we will find what we’re looking for three hours and 30 web sites after our search began. But we don’t know which it will be. We keep searching and searching, thinking that just one more click will take us to our destination, and it’s hard to give up when the right answer could be around the corner. This is how a planned ten-minute information search can last for hours.
Sometimes, we look for information just for fun. This can be a problem too because we don’t know when something will pique our interest. Each page we visit could have a new, interesting link. This too can lead to knowledge gathering sessions that last hours.
Searching for information on the Internet can certainly lead to Caplan’s (2004) problematic behavior related to too much time online. People use the information search space of the Internet to excess when they spend longer than normal, or look for facts longer than they thought they would have to. Likewise, compulsive use is when people can’t control their search methods, and are unable to stop looking for a specific piece of data until they find it, or feel bad later when they realize how much time they wasted trying to find one little piece of information.
While porn, gambling, and Facebook can all cause problems online, part of what’s so dangerous about the internet’s addictive quality, is that it can cause issues in areas that are normally good for people, such as knowledge search.
Comments:
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http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/youtube.html
With the linkability of the Internet, especially on web sites such as Wikipedia where words in the description of one thing appear as links to their own pages, the ability to go from source to source is limitless.
When you need information for a specific purpose, you need to find the exact intelligence or statistics that will solve your problem. The catch is that you don’t know what site, page, or other source will give you the facts you need. This is where Wallace’s concept of Operant Conditioning comes into play. It’s possible that we’ll find our answer on the first website we look at it. It’s possible that that first site will have a link to the right site. It’s also possible that we will find what we’re looking for three hours and 30 web sites after our search began. But we don’t know which it will be. We keep searching and searching, thinking that just one more click will take us to our destination, and it’s hard to give up when the right answer could be around the corner. This is how a planned ten-minute information search can last for hours.
Sometimes, we look for information just for fun. This can be a problem too because we don’t know when something will pique our interest. Each page we visit could have a new, interesting link. This too can lead to knowledge gathering sessions that last hours.
Searching for information on the Internet can certainly lead to Caplan’s (2004) problematic behavior related to too much time online. People use the information search space of the Internet to excess when they spend longer than normal, or look for facts longer than they thought they would have to. Likewise, compulsive use is when people can’t control their search methods, and are unable to stop looking for a specific piece of data until they find it, or feel bad later when they realize how much time they wasted trying to find one little piece of information.
While porn, gambling, and Facebook can all cause problems online, part of what’s so dangerous about the internet’s addictive quality, is that it can cause issues in areas that are normally good for people, such as knowledge search.
Comments:
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-celebrity-gossip-blogs.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/youtube.html
9: Harmless or harmful? A look at online porn.
With the increase in internet popularity and internet users throughout the years, came an increase in the accessibility of online pornography. The ease of posting and watching a variety of videos for free, at any age, without having to walk into a store and risk being seen by someone, has greatly influenced the online-pornography trend. In our current society, the media portrays that people who partake in pornographic actions online are “bad” and are thus associated with Problematic Internet Use (PIU), or behaviors related to the amount of time spent on the internet. Infrequent internet users use information they receive from sensationalized news stories of dramatic incidents on the net to form strong impressions and attitudes towards a bigger picture, known as the availability heuristic principle.
Wallace attributes the anonymity, physical distance, and perceived lack of accountability in cyberspace to differences in the nature of pornography use and its effects on behavior. The individual factor of locus of control, and the internet factors of operant conditioning, maintenance on virtual presence, and newbie disease also contribute to the development of PIU with online pornography. The degree to which someone believes that they have control over a circumstance is known as locus of control. Davis et al. focused on this individual difference and formed an online cognition scale (OCS) that found that PIU is in fact influenced by a person’s diminished impulse control, amount of loneliness/depression, feelings of interpersonal social comfort, and desired distraction/procrastination. Internet pop-ups containing links and pictures of pornographic websites are related to operant conditioning because by clicking on one website, the reward of a link to another pornographic website appears. Web-cams used for pornography filming provide maintenance of virtual presence for users as they are accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Lastly, the amount of pornographic pop-ups and web-cam invitations received during a given time affect the fluctuation of this online activity especially after a first encounter, or newbie disease.
Caplan expanded the definition of PIU to maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences. If a person excessively and compulsively uses an online activity, they are considered to have adhered to the theory of PIU and psychosocial well-being. Those who suffer from psychosocial distress (i.e. Davis et al.’s four factors within the OCS) hold negative views about their FtF social competence and thus prefer online interaction because it is less threatening (i.e. do not risk running into someone while having pornography in their possession). This reinforced preference for online interaction contributes to excessive and compulsive use of the online activity thus worsening their psychosocial problems.
Mixed views of pornography use are definitely a unique property to this online activity. Some social scientists believe that the use of sexually explicit material is harmless because it can be a functional, healthy, and liberating way to provide education, erotic enhancement, an outlet for exploration, and entertainment. Pornography has also been used in some therapeutic treatment programs for sexual dysfunctions. On the other hand, many focus on the ethical and moral issues involved in pornography, especially those relating to the exploitation and objectification of women based on the notion that males are the principal users of this online activity. Should internet pornography be associated with PIU? I’ll let you be the judge.
9: Myspace Addict
Apparently not everyone is addicted to facebook. I noticed over the summer, that my single young coworkers preferred myspace (maybe we’re the facebook generation?). Granted, the employees maintained professionalism and never accessed the site at work, but one coworker in particular, “Bob,” always talked about it – whether it be the new people he met online, or what his friends were saying – to the point that it sounded like a real place where he was meeting people.
According to Wallace, myspace has the properties of the internet and individual differences mentioned in chapter 9. Operant conditioning, where a behavior is rewarded with a variable schedule, occurs on myspace when Bob checks his profile and sees that he has a new message. Maintenance of virtual presence is used when he displays selective characteristics of himself on his profile that he wants people to see. One, especially important aspect of myspace that he values most is locus of control, the degree to which he believes he has control over his circumstances. Since Bob is entering his late thirties and hasn’t been successful in finding a companion in the face to face realm, he has turned to myspace for help. According to Davis et al. (2002), Bob’s myspace use falls under loneliness and social comfort. Since Bob is shy, and fears rejection, he uses the internet as a tool to increase his social network, but this does not necessarily predict his internet use as problematic. Granted, he doesn’t compulsively check myspace, but based on Caplan’s theory, he has the potential to let is become problematic because he has negative perceptions about his social competence and prefers the less threatening characteristics of the internet. However, he has not allowed his online interaction to become an excessive and compulsive habit, which is where he breaks the cycle and prevents the negative outcomes from PIU.
The affordances of myspace are what mainly attract Bob to prefer online interaction. As discussed in the Hyperpersonal Model, in general, the internet offers greater anonymity, greater control, and more self-disclosure. For Bob, less social risk is probably the most important affordance that myspace has to offer because it relieves his psychosocial problem of social competence. With respect to myspace, it can be addictive because you can see peoples’ profiles, friend’s comments, view their friends, and see when was the last time they logged in to determine if they saw your message and if they did, why they did/didn’t reply. These aspects are open to all users, but not all of them have PIU, so for myspace to become an “addiction,” there are probably more inherent psychosocial problems in the individual that bring about the compulsive use.
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