Dear researchers, colleagues, and readers interested in cyberspace research,

I am happy to present to you the December issue of Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace. The year 2012 was very successful for our journal: in addition to two regular issues, we also published the first special issue of our journal, entitled “Generation and mediated relations,” edited by Andra Sibak and Nicoletta Vittadini. The special issue was the result of the work of the Working Groups on "The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships" and "Audience transformations and social integration" and the work of COST Action IS0906 on "Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies" and we are honored for this cooperation.

That means we published, for the first time in our short history, three issues, with altogether 17 high quality articles in 2012, excluding editorials. We will continue with the tradition of special issues in 2013 as well—I can already reveal that the first issue of 2013 (March) will be a special issue, entitled “Children in Cyberspace: Opportunities, Risks, and Safety,” edited by Veronika Kalmus and Kjartan Olafsson. The following special issue will focus on online sexuality, and the relevant call for papers for this special issue will be announced soon in January 2013.

We are honored that so many leading researchers in their fields world-wide are willing to cooperate with us, work as guest editors for upcoming special issues, and publish their articles in our journal. This collaboration leads to an increase in the number and the quality of articles and thus an increase in the number of citations, along with the prestige, of our journal. We have therefore decided that we will submit our request to Thomson Reuters in 2013 to receive our impact factor in the future.

The current issue (3-2012, volume 6) of our journal consists of five articles, which I will now briefly introduce. The first article, entitled “A Method for Collecting and Interpreting Interpersonal Behavioral Data in Second Life: A Sample Study on Asians’, Blacks’, and Whites’ Social Distances” (authors Tawa, Gongvatana, Anello, Shanmugham, & Lee-Chuvala) describes a method for collecting and interpreting interpersonal behavioral data in the virtual world of Second Life. We consider this kind of data collection very interesting and we are happy to publish such articles to encourage innovative research of this kind. The paper also provides details to other potential researchers, who can adopt this valuable method of data collection in their own research.

The second article, entitled “Inside out: Avatars as an indirect measure of ideal body self-presentation in females” (authors Thomas & Johansen), also focuses on investigating Second Life, in this case, in order to test for the expression of ideal body images during the avatar creation process. Interestingly, participants who showed a desire to be thinner in offline life created avatars which had a lower body mass. The authors revealed that people tend to present ideal personal attributes in the online world, where the risk of being caught out is lower than in the offline context.

The third article, entitled “Investigating Markers of Behavioural Addiction in Excessive Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Gamers” (authors Metcalf & Pammer), investigate two markers of behavioural addiction—cue-reactivity and impulsivity—in a sample of online game users. The authors also employed an experimental design in their study, and concluded that peripheral criteria, such as cognitive salience and tolerance, are unsuitable for identifying MMORPG addiction. The authors also observe that video gamers are a heterogeneous group, and future research on video gamer populations should distinguish between genres of games, as well as addicted and engaged gamers.

The fourth article, entitled “Are we the same online? The Expression of the Five Factor Personality Traits on the Computer and the Internet” (authors Blumer & Doering) attempts to answer the question of whether the five factor personality traits are expressed differently on the computer and on the internet. The authors concluded that for four of the five factors, the data indicates a decrease of personality expression online, which is most probably due to the specification of the situational context. Interestingly, on the computer and the internet, participants reported higher emotional stability than in the offline world.

The fifth article, entitled “The Quality of Online, Offline, and Mixed-mode Friendships Among Users of a Social Networking Site” (authors Antheunis, Valkenburg & Peter), aims to compare the quality of online, offline, and mixed-mode friendships among users of a social networking site. The authors revealed that in generating social capital, whether a friendship is formed online or offline is less important than whether newly formed friendships migrate to cue-richer communication modalities (i.e. telephone and face-to-face contact).

We are especially proud of this set of five articles as we feel they truly provide new insights to the theory of human behavior online, and to the methodology of researching this behavior. We are also happy that some of articles employed innovative approaches what could encourage more diverse ways of researching cyberspace in the future. We are very open to publishing such innovative and interdisciplinary manuscripts and we would be honored to receive more manuscripts of this kind.

Call for papers: the next issue of the journal (1-2013) will be published in July 2013. Contributions for this issue are now welcome. The deadline for paper submission is 1/31/2013. We encourage researchers from a variety of disciplines to send us their work: political science, social work, anthropology, sociology, media studies, psychology etc. Please read the information for authors and send your articles to: info@cyberpsychology.eu

We wish you a successful and fruitful 2013!

David Smahel, editor
Kristian Daneback, associate editor
Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace

Issue Content

About Journal

The 'Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace' is a web-based, peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The first peer-reviewed issue was published in September 2007. The journal is focussed on social science research about cyberspace. It brings psychosocial reflections of the impact of the Internet on people and society. The journal is interdisciplinary, publishing works written by scholars of psychology, media studies, sociology, political science, nursing, and also other disciplines. The journal accepts original research articles, as well as theoretical studies and research meta-analyses. Proposals for special issues are also welcomed.

The journal is indexed with EBSCO Academic Search Complete, the Directory of Open Access Journals, SCOPUS and the Czech Database of Scientific Journals.

Editor

Assoc. Prof. David Smahel, M.Sc. et Ph.D., Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
E-mail: smahel(at)fss.muni.cz

Associate Editor

Assoc. Prof. Kristian Daneback, Ph.D., University of Gothenburg, Sweden
E-mail: kristian.daneback(at)socwork.gu.se

Editor Assistants

Vera Kontrikova, M.A., Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
E-mail: kontriko(at)fss.muni.cz

Lenka Dedkova, M.A., Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
E-mail: ldedkova(at)fss.muni.cz

Editorial Board

Prof. Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Ph.D., California State University, Los Angeles, USA
Prof. Herbert Hrachovec, Ph.D., University of Vienna, Austria
Prof. Dr. Micheline Frenette, Universite de Montreal, Canada
Prof. Alexander E. Voiskounsky, Ph.D., Moscow State University, Russia
Prof. Michael W. Ross, Ph.D., DrMedSc, MPH, MPHEd, University of Texas, Houston, USA
Prof. Petr Macek, CSc., Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Prof. Olle Findahl, World Internet Institute, Uppsala University, Sweden
Prof. Jochen Peter, Ph.D., University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Prof. Veronika Kalmus, Ph.D., University of Tartu, Estonia
Assoc. Prof. Joshua Fogel, Ph.D., Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, USA
Assoc. Prof. Gustavo S. Mesch, Ph.D., University of Haifa, Israel
Václav Štětka, Ph.D., University of Oxford, UK
Andra Siibak, Ph.D., University of Tartu, Estonia
Birgit U. Stetina, Ph.D., University of Vienna, Austria
Lukas Blinka, M.A., Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Advisory Board

Prof. Bente Traen, Ph.D., University of Tromso, Norway
Prof. Charles Ess, Ph.D., Drury University, USA
Prof. Dr. Ilse Kryspin-Exner, University of Vienna, Austria
Prof. PhDr. Jan Jirák, Ph.D., Charles University, Czech Republic
Prof. Vasja Vehovar, Ph.D., University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Prof. Dr. Larry D. Rosen, California State University, USA
Prof. Patricia M. Greenfield, Ph.D., University of California, USA
Prof. Peter K Smith, University of London, England
Prof. Nicola Döring, Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany
Prof. Kimberly Young, Center for Internet Addiction Recovery
Prof. Jos de Haan, Ph.D., Erasmus University, Netherlands
Prof. Zbyněk Vybíral, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Prof. Monica Whitty, Ph.D., Nottingham Trent University, UK
Assoc. Prof. Alfred Choi, Ph.D., Wee Kim School of Communication and Information, Singapore
Assoc. Prof. T. Ramayah, Technology Management Lab, School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia
Assoc. Prof. Neil Coulson, Ph.D., The University of Nottingham, UK
Assoc. Prof. Kenneth C. C. Yang, Ph.D., University of Texas at El Paso, USA
Assoc. Prof. Sun Sun Lim, Ph.D., National University of Singapore, Singapore
Assoc. Prof. Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D., Florida Atlantic University, USA
Assoc. Prof. Jana Horáková, Ph.D., Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Assist. Prof. Alexander Schouten, Ph.D., Tilburg University, Netherlands
Assist. Prof. Ewa S. Callahan, Ph.D., School of Communications, Quinnipiac University, USA
Assist. Prof. Regina van den Eijnden, Ph.D., Utrecht University, Netherlands
PhDr. Ing. Petr Soukup, Ph.D., Faculty of Social Studies, Charles University, Czech Republic
Alistair Duff, Ph.D., Napier University, Scotland
Janis Wolak, Ph.D., University of New Hampshire, USA
Francesca Romana Seganti, Ph.D., American University of Rome, Italy
Jeffrey Gavin, Ph.D., University of Bath, UK
Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Ph.D., University of Tartu, Estonia
PhDr. Radim Polčák, Ph.D., Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Michael Fenichel, Ph.D., New York, USA
Leslie Haddon, Ph.D., London School of Economics, UK
Monica Barbovschi, Ph.D., Babes-Bolyai University, Romania
Jan Sirucek, Ph.D., Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Publisher

Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Studies
Jostova 10, 60200 Brno
Czech Republic

Publication Schedule

Twice per year (July and December) plus special issues