The popular mythology is that chatrooms are anti-social. Assess the evidence for and against this notion and account for the power of the myth.

Guidance

For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module, see the general criteria.

What Key Features Do I Look For? Familiarity with relevant texts Evidence - the stronger the better Argument - coherent and balanced Theoretical discussion - relation to relevant theories Understanding of relevant concepts Reflexivity - reflections on methodology Examples - insightfully analysed Style - readability and effective presentation

Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text (not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher. Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this department, click here.

Advice for this particular assignment:

Remember that the second assignment is a case-study, and that you are expected to undertake some small-scale research of your own in relevant online environments with chat functions. When you refer to individuals in chatrooms do not use their real names. Note that we can take no responsibility for the behaviour of those whom you may encounter in chatrooms and you are, of course, responsible for your own behaviour. You are advised to show appropriate caution in your own disclosure of personal information. To illustrate popular myths about chatrooms refer to media reports wherever possible. Remember that such 'moral panics' have existed at least since Plato (reading as anti-social, television as anti-social and so on). You should try to avoid any temptation to moralise about chatrooms, for instance, by reinforcing current moral panics about the abuse of chat systems by paedophiles.

Note also that this is an assignment for which the inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is recommended. These should be inserted electronically into your Word document rather than cut-and-pasted in. You can scan such illustrations in from print sources, save them from disk-based sources, download them from online sources (such as my Powerpoint slides) or even create them from scratch in a graphics package. Use them to help you to make points more effectively. Label each one, 'Figure 1' etc. and add a caption.

Some suggested reading

• Dibbell, Julian (1993) 'A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society' (original version from The Village Voice, December 21, 1993, pp. 36-42);
• Featherstone, Mike & Roger Burrows (Eds.) (1995) Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London: Sage
• Jansen, Klaus Bruhn & Nicholas W. Jankowski (1991): A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research. London: Routledge
  
• Joinson, Adam N: (2003) Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behaviour: Virtual Worlds, Real Lives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pemberton, Lyn & Simon Shurville (Eds) (2000): Words on the Web: Computer Mediated Communication. Bristol: Intellect
• Reid, Elizabeth M (1991) 'Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat' [WWW document] URL http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/misc/electropolis.html
• Rheingold, Howard (1995) The Virtual Community: Finding Connection in a Computerized World. London: Minerva
• Smith, Marc & Peter Kollock (1998) Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge
• Stone, Allucquère Rosanne (1995) The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; online extract 'In Novel Conditions: The Cross-Dressing Psychiatrist' in Stone (1995) op. cit., pp. 65-81
• Suler, John (nd) The Psychology of Cyberspace [WWW document] URL http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html
• Thurlow, Crispin, Laura Lengel & Alice Tomic (2004) Computer-Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and the Internet. London: Sage
• Turkle, Sherry (1996) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
  
• Wallace, Patricia (2001) The Psychology of the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Wood, Andrew F & Matthew J. Smith (2001) Online Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum