Saturday, 26 March 2016

Blog 2,3,4

Blog 4
Article: Online Communication Among Adolescents: An Integrated Model of Its Attraction, Opportunities, and Risks
Writer: Patti M. Valkenburg, Ph.D., M.Sc.correspondenceemail, Jochen Peter, Ph.D.
Dates: March 17, 2009

In this article, we focus on online communication in everyday life of teenagers, that is, their voluntary or intentional online interactions with online individuals or groups through e-technologies. It will tell us why online communication is attraction, opportunities, and risks. It analysis three features of online communication are include anonymity, asynchronization, and accessibility. Among which, anonymity is related to my research paper. The anonymity has two ways to influence teenagers’ psychosocial development in positive and negative ways. In positive ways, teenagers can self-disclosure and self-presentation on online because nobody can see their faces. In contrast, online anonymity may also stimulate impulsive reactions, which may result in disinhibited, aggressive, and insulting comments, as well as in cyberbullying and online harassment of peers. Thus, cyberbullying has a potential downside of online communication. The victim of cyberbullying is associated with many psychosocial attributes, such as increased social anxiety, psychological distress, and symptoms of depression in this article. Moreover, this article focused on the following two aspects of identity development are self-concept-clarity and self-esteem, which related to my research paper of develop user’s personal confidence. Self-concept clarity is means that beliefs and opinions about one's self are clearly. Self-esteem is how adolescents value their self-worth.

In my research, I decide to compare the user’s personal confidence of positive and negative. According to above article, “adolescents develop shallow relationships with online strangers or may become victims of online solicitation and cyberbullying. In contrast, it has also been argued that the Internet provides them with many opportunities to explore their identity, find support and information about developmentally sensitive issues, and develop close and meaningful relationships.” Therefore, I will have interview with 15 20 years old to 40 years old the users of golden forum. Through the interview, I hope to find out whether their confidence developments on online communication are different or they are the same. Moreover, I would like to find out how to change the users on online communication, which may are values, feelings, experiences etc. through the interview or questionnaire. In addition, I am going to find out some users from golden forums and arrange to interview. I will invite my friend as my interviewer too. I think the interview will be done within next two weeks.

Student name: Ip Man Yee 10643173
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Blog 3

What is the refined research question that you are setting out to answer?

After my considered and refined, I confirm my research project’s topic is “How the online communities influence user’s personal confidence? ”. I will focus on what reason of users spending time on online communication, what feelings they are using online communication, and what they are discuses or concern on online communication usually.

How does this develop themes and debates explored within the lectures of this module? (Please put down the revised short introduction to your project based on the one in blog 2. Remember that the introduction should include the purpose of your research project, significance and key concept(s) that may be useful for your analysis.)

Recently, Internet is widely used over the world.  Online discussion forums also have been commonly used and online communities are formed. Online communities help to shorten the distance of communication between human across the variety of geographical location and ethnicity. Through interacting online, it is easy to gather a group of people to share some common interest, goal and preference for a similar lifestyle.

Because of the Hong Kong education strategies, people are always trained to be a good listener but not a speaker who seldom to express and share their own opinion. People are lack of confident to express and speak for their own.  Surprisingly, we found that people enthuse to express themselves online in antonymous in many local forums. Through engaging the online communities, people are more confident to talk, discuss and express their own interest and opinion.  However, some people think that online communities just help to develop their virtual confidence instead of in person confidence.

In addition, the impact of the platform of online communication is far beyond our expectations, because users can get some information on online communication, such as job’s or school’s interview, experience of working holiday, political. That is mean how popularity of online communication nowadays. At the same time, cyber bullying is a serious issue too. It is because users do not need to be blamed for what they talked in antonymous. Then, how the “antonymous” is so important? What power in this “antonymous” term?

This research paper is going to study some local forums and investigate how these online communities / communication influence on personal confidence.

What critical methodologies are you going to use? How are you going to produce the evidence you’ll need to answer your research question?

1) In-depth interviews with 15 20 years old to 40 years old the users of golden forum to investigate the extent of their participation in the online communities.

2) There are around 15-20 questions for the respondents which is hoping accurately to know their views on the cyberspace.

3) In-depth interviews with 5 persons of experienced cyber bullying to understand what their feeling is.

Student name: Ip Man Yee 10643173
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Blog 2

Summary statement of what I would like to explore for my final project:

(Research question: How the online communities influence user’s personal confidence?)

A short paragraph on how this develops themes and concepts raised in lectures:

This paper will investigate how online communities affect on user’s personal confidence (positive or negative effect) through studying user’s intention of going online communities, the use of particular languages and style of communication.

Reason of the research paper

Recently, Internet is widely used over the world.  Online discussion forums also have been commonly used and online communities are formed. Online communities help to shorten the distance of communication between human across the variety of geographical location and ethnicity.  Through interacting online, it is easy to gather a group of people to share some common interest, goal and preference for a similar lifestyle.

Because of the Hong Kong education strategies, people are always trained to be a good listener but not a speaker who seldom to express and share their own opinion. People are lack of confident to express and speak for their own.  Surprisingly, we found that people enthuse to express themselves online in antonymous in many local forums. Through engaging the online communities, people are more confident to talk, discuss and express their own interest and opinion.  However, some people think that online communities just help to develop their virtual confidence instead of in person confidence. 

This research paper is going to study some local forums and investigate how these online communities / communication influence on personal confidence.


Method to be used

Two famous local forums are selected which are Golden discussion forum and Hong Kong discuss forum.  They are the best-hit rate sites in Hong Kong.  This paper is going to study the features of these two sites and how they gather the group of people. 
Besides, the users of these two sites will be interviewed through online questionnaire / private message.   The age group of 21-40 will be selected in this interview. It is because they are the most common members of online communities.
Questions are drafted as following for the questionnaire.
1)      Why you would like to engage into the discussion forums?
2)      How many times per day, you will spend on online communications.
3)      What power of discussion forums to attract you to use it?
4)      Do you scare that you will be a cyber bullying target?
5)      What feelings are you of discussion forums?

Student name: Ip Man Yee 10643173

3 comments:

  1. Dear Man-yee, As the three blogs are uploaded together, please allow me to give an overall comment here. Blog 2: The media effects would be difficult to research based on the questions of indepth interviews. Try to refine your topic as how and why people engage with Golden forum. Question 4 is another broad area of cyber bullying. It is not necessary to cover too many things in a small research.

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  2. Blog 3: The topic is interesting. My concern is whether we have learnt the analytical tools for answering the question. First of all, how do you measure personal confidence? Second, how do you establish the causal relationship? Try to be less ambitious and stick to the topic suggested for blog 2.

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  3. Blog 4: The reviewed article is very nice. I took a quick look of it. But it is from the discipline of psychology. It also made use of complicated calculation and psychological terms for the topic. How can we handle it? Media effects are not only about psychological science and my suggestion for you is to go for some media and cultural studies articles. There are a lot on HKU library archive.

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