Editorial: Researching bright and dark sides of the Cyberspace

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

we are very pleased to present the December issue (3-2013) of Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace. This issue consists of five high quality articles which investigate both bright and dark sides of the Cyberspace.

The first article "Effects of online multitasking on reading comprehension of expository text" (Phuoc, Tran, Carrillo, & Subrahmanyam) is based on three experiments which investigated multitasking and the learning effects of multitasking within online communication while reading expository text. Interestingly, authors found no evidence that multitasking while reading disrupted content learning, reading comprehension, and recalling, but they revealed a beneficial effect of multitasking for the easy task and a trend towards a beneficial effect for the moderately difficult task. The second article "Predicting adolescents’ willingness to disclose personal information to a commercial website: Testing the applicability of a trust-based model" (Heirman, Walrave, Ponnet, & Gool) examines the relationship between the level of trust that adolescents place in a specific commercial website and their behavioral intentions to disclose four categories of personal information to the website. The third article “Close relationships with people met online in a national U.S. sample of adolescents” (Walsh, Wolak, Mitchell) used data from a national telephone survey in United States and explored the characteristics of youth who reported close relationships with people they met online. The fourth article "Effectiveness of coping strategies for victims of cyberbullying" (Machackova, Cerna, Sevcikova, Dedkova, & Daneback) studied a sample of over two thousand Czech children between 12 and 18 years of age and evaluated the effectiveness of coping strategies for victims of online bullying and harassment. The fifth article "The role of personality and depression in problematic use of social networking sites in Greece" (Giota & Kleftaras) studied a sample of young Greek adults and concluded that problematic usage of social networking sites is positively related to depression and neuroticism (scales from NEO-Five-Factor Inventory), while negatively associated with agreeableness.

To summarize, we believe that the presented five articles are an interesting contribution to the debate concerning bright and dark sides of the Cyberspace. It seems that the same problematic online situation can have both a positive and negative impact on youth. For example, meeting a stranger from the internet can develop in very dangerous situation, but also lead to a beautiful romantic relationship. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a better understanding of the substance of various situations.

We are also proud that we are part of the SCOPUS database, which indexes the most important scientific journals around the world and also measures citations across journals. After two years in SCOPUS, we have also recently received a SJR index (an analogy of the well known Impact factor), which indicates that articles in our journal are cited across the world.

It is also important to mention that we are preparing two special issues right now. The first special issue focuses on online sexuality (editors Anna Sevcikova, Ph.D. and Kristian Daneback, Ph.D.) and is nearing its final stage, with expected publication in April 2014. The second special issue entitled “New Media and Democracy” (editors Monika Metykova, Ph.D. and Pablo Sapag Muñoz de la Peña, Ph.D.) focuses broadly on the roles of new media in democratic processes with a particular interest in empirical case studies that use interdisciplinary innovative approaches. The call for papers for this special issue is still open (deadline 28 February 2014) – you can download it here.

We will be honored if you submit your manuscripts to the special issue, but also want to encourage researchers to continue to submit their work to the standard issues.

We wish you a successful and fruitful year 2014!

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

Issue Content

Editorial and issue information

David Smahel and Kristian Daneback

doi: 10.5817/C P2013-3-1

Effects of online multitasking on reading comprehension of expository text

Phuoc Tran, Rogelio Carrillo and Kaveri Subrahmanyam

doi: 10.5817/C P2013-3-2

Predicting adolescents’ willingness to disclose personal information to a commercial website: Testing the applicability of a trust-based model

Wannes Heirman, Michel Walrave, Koen Ponnet and Ellen Van Gool

doi: 10.5817/C P2013-3-3

Close relationships with people met online in a national U.S. sample of adolescents

Wendy A. Walsh, Janis Wolak and Kimberly J. Mitchell

doi: 10.5817/C P2013-3-4

Effectiveness of coping strategies for victims of cyberbullying

Hana Machackova, Alena Cerna, Anna Sevcikova, Lenka Dedkova and Kristian Daneback

doi: 10.5817/C P2013-3-5

The role of personality and depression in problematic use of social networking sites in Greece

Kyriaki G. Giota and George Kleftaras

doi: 10.5817/C P2013-3-6

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 Assistant

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, Ph.D., 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 Vyb íral, 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