Thank you for inviting me. I’m really looking forward to having a bit of a chat. Excellent.
It’s always a delight chatting to you. Linda, I just want to get a bit of background from you in terms of where you’ve come from and what that pivot point for you was in terms of your passion for cyberpsychology. Yeah, I mean, I just, like a lot of people, I did an undergraduate psychology degree, which was just a normal sort of standard BSc route.
And I actually kind of fell into cyberpsychology really, it was when I started my PhD, which was just on the topic of sort of the psychological experiences of video games, broadly. And it was from finding, trying to find conferences to go to that I then saw this term cyberpsychology and thought, oh, that sounds exciting, and realised there was actually a community that my research fit into. Because I think a lot of people who do cyberpsychology research tend to find that the university they might be studying it at, they might be the one, one of the only people in their department who might be studying it and feel a little bit isolated.
And so it’s nice to kind of have a collection of people who were doing things that, you know, were similar to me, or at least in the same sort of field to me. So yeah, it was very much falling into it. So the pivot for me was just finding my people, which is always nice.
And recognising that there was a broader kind of field to what I was doing. Yeah, absolutely. It’s like finding your tribe, people who you can connect with on the deep level of passion.
Yeah, definitely. And I think that’s always lovely about the cyberpsychology community is that it genuinely is a really supportive, friendly community. And we certainly experienced that at our own conferences in the cyberpsychology section.
And we get a lot of really positive feedback on that. So it’s really, really lovely to have a great community. Yeah.
And especially because they, throughout the UK to come together at something like a conference is an amazing thing. Yeah, I mean, for me, it’s like the thing to look forward to every year is the conference. And certainly it’s, I know, it’s useful for me kind of making sure I get stuff done.
So I’ve got stuff I can present. So it’s good to keep me on sort of time track. So I’ve got something exciting that is something new that is ready to share.
So that’s always good in terms of managing projects and things from that perspective. Exactly. In terms of the cyberpsychology community, you were instrumental or part of the founding members of the British Psychology Society cyberpsychology section.
That’s a lot to say in a mouthful. Yeah, we need an acronym. So tell me about that.
How did it start kind of getting to the point where you’ve actually launched this whole section? And that was in 2018, I think it was recognised and officially became a section. Yes, that’s right. Yeah.
So yeah, 2018 was our official kind of birth, so to speak, as a section in the BPS. And yeah, I mean, it’s myself and it was Dr Alison Axel Smith, and that’s Chris Fullwood and Dr Simon Bignell, who were the sort of four founding members, really. We sort of took this forward alongside a few other people who were part of a wider sort of steering group.
And it came about as part of a roundtable discussion at one of the kind of previous conference series that a lot of us used to go to. University of Wolverhampton used to do a lot of conferences and host a lot in their network there. So it’s part of a roundtable discussion.
And there was this general appreciation that it would be a useful thing to do. There were enough of us, enough interest, and why not have it recognised more officially as a sort of discipline of psychology. So it’s that really, that stimulated the movement of that.
And then it involved a whole load of putting together proposals to the BPS and going to their research board and defending the proposal. And it got a lot of support from the BPS. We didn’t come under much opposition, which is great because we’ve got a lot of effort and time into the proposal.
And then it just involved the official processes of the BPS, like member approvals and voting and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, that was several years in the making. It’s really fantastic to see that it is now recognised and that the community just continues to be abused and to grow.
And grow and grow and grow. Yeah. And then so you, keynote speaker of this year’s 2024 Cyberpsychology Conference.
So tell us about that and what’s kind of generally, because it’s the title you’ve got is What Cyberpsychology Can Tell Us About the Digitally Connected Human Experience. That sounds really exciting and fascinating. I hope it is.
Hopefully one day. Yeah, so I was really, really looking forward and really grateful to be invited, actually, to keynote at it. It was a lovely surprise to get in my inbox.
And so, yeah, the kind of idea was, I keep sort of using this term, digitally connected human experience. And I think there’s something really intriguing about that as a term. And I kind of think, you know, it helps us recognise that, you know, as psychologists, the human experience is a kind of essence, really, of what we’re interested in.
And actually, what does that look like? How is it different? What are the kind of nuances of it when we are in a digitally connected world? So it’s trying to sort of do a bit more of a kind of bird’s eye view, I guess, of cyberpsychology as a whole. I do, I am intending to draw on very specific kind of insights from my own research, because anyhow, it’s always just nice to be able to do and, you know, I want to be able to talk about something I actually know about, which sounds good. But yeah, I thought it’s a keynote, it’s a nice opportunity to kind of do that kind of a sweep, I guess, and where are we up to? And where do we want to go? And what are the kind of interesting things we could get even more curious about? And what do we need to discover more? So it’s sort of a bit of a kind of a checkpoint, really, for me as well.
I find doing things like keynotes are a great way of helping me consolidate my own thinking of what my thoughts are. And so it’s useful for that as well. Absolutely.
And when is the conference? So the conference is taking place on the first and second of July 2024. And it’s great for me this year, because it’s really local, it’s Liverpool, it’s being hosted at Liverpool John Moores University. And so, but we do have people all over the country who come and attend it and also some international colleagues as well.
And so yeah, the abstract deadline is actually still open. It’s open until the 5th of April. And actually, I’ve just seen on the websites, that actually there is an extended deadline as well to the 12th of April.
So if you’ve not quite got anything ready, you’ve got a little bit of grace period there. And then registration will then open thereafter. Okay.
So if someone wants to come along, do they have to be a cyberpsychologist? Or can there be anyone who’s just kind of fascinated and wants to know more? And if they do, how long do they have before they need to, before the final registration ends? Yes, that’s a good question. I mean, I’m also, I think it’s nice that, you know, anybody who’s enthusiastic about cyberpsychology can come. Anybody who isn’t necessarily wanting to present anything, you know, the registration is open to not just to members of cyberpsychology section, but much more broadly.
So the deadline for registration is the 17th of June. So there’s plenty of time to sort of be pondering whether you want to come along. In terms of if you wanted to present at it, then the submissions for abstracts do go through a review process, and it has to sort of meet particular kind of criteria.
So that will depend on the outcome of that review process. But essentially, anybody can register and attend, who might just have an interest. We have had the members of the press come along to conferences before, because they’ve seen something that has piqued their interest.
In terms of what you’ve done to kind of promote and talk more about cyberpsychology in general, you’ve done a TED talk. Tell us about that. Yeah, that was a while ago now.
That was in 2017, I think. So yeah, that was that was a very random email to get. The email to actually went to my junk folder, so I actually missed it for ages, but it was a good job I seriously checked my junk folder.
But it wasn’t junk, it was genuine. Yeah, so that was the TEDx Vienna, which was lovely, because we went to this theatre, which is a beautiful venue. And that was all about the what are emojis? I can’t remember the title.
What do I remember to say about you? I think this is the title. Yeah, it is. What can you tell about people’s personality from their emojis? And that was a really good experience.
It was really exciting. And something else which is really nice about TEDx is you have a general theme of the conference, but everybody’s from very different disciplines. But you do become a bit like a family because you spend a few days with people.
And it’s really nice, again, as another opportunity to talk about your ideas and research to wider audiences and people who might not necessarily know about cyberpsychology. So it’s great. Have you done any more research on emojis? Yeah, so doing a lot of research on emoji and actually the focus of that has changed actually a little bit and evolved over time.
So the previous work and the work that I presented at TEDx was based on our research more about the sort of personality judgment angle on that. So what we can tell about people when we’re in a social kind of interactional context. And the more recent research and a lot of the program research got kind of mapped out now is more about how we process emoji.
So it’s a bit more kind of what the cognitive processes are when we’re kind of on the emotion recognition of them. And how do we kind of what’s the sort of sensory and visual and those kind of processes. So it’s a lot more cognitive.
But it’s really interesting and I’m delving into areas of the literature in different disciplines that I haven’t done for a long time. So it’s really nice to continue to learn and apply really interesting approaches and experiments or paradigms and things to study this. And it’s really intriguing to me that nobody’s really done the kind of things I’m thinking about, which seems a bit weird, because they seem quite obvious things.
But unless I’ve missed something. So yeah, it’s an exciting area to be in. And what’s really good is to because it’s a lot of lab based studies, I can get students who are interested in cyberpsychology involved.
And they can work as paid research interns and actually learn about psychology, and then support with collecting data and meeting participants. And so it’s useful for both myself and my students. Yeah, I think that’s the great thing about cyberpsychology is there’s so many areas that haven’t been studied and haven’t been researched.
So to find to find something that you’re passionate about and not find anyone anyone’s done it before is actually relatively easy compared to the general psychology fields. And so for you studying emojis, it’s Yeah, it might just be that there just hasn’t been enough people who are fascinated by it, like you are. Possibly.
And I think the other thing is that, again, I think I’m kind of going to be reflecting a bit on this in my keynote talk is I think, sometimes there’s a lot of really useful, theoretical, and also areas of literature that exist that actually apply really closely to some of the things we’re interested in cyberpsychology. But actually, I don’t think we’re drawing on perhaps as much as we should do. So one of the particular limitations, I think, actually, generally, this is not specific to specific researchers, but as a general observation is, I think we tend to sort of try and start things from scratch and think, oh, yeah, we need a theory to explain that.
And so the theoretical foundations of a lot of cyberpsychology is a bit weak and a bit shaky. And but actually, there’s so many really useful frameworks in other related disciplines, sometimes even in other areas of psychology that actually apply, well, I think they apply really well. So if we use those, we’ve got a much stronger foundation.
So I think that’s the general observation. And so I think it’s the case that people who think of the kind of cyberpsychology angle and I’ve got these ideas, but just haven’t kind of made the connection with what kind of currently exists in other areas, maybe that might be why there’s areas that haven’t quite fully been explored yet. Yeah, absolutely.
Just going back to research. So in terms of your TEDx talk, what you it sounds to me is that the research you did before was how people use emojis to express themselves. And now it’s about how people receive those emojis and how that then resonates with them psychologically and cognitively.
So is that fair to say? Yes. Yeah, I think that’s it. So it’s sort of shifted from what the interpretations are about it in a social context.
Yes. And two more from a receiver’s point of view, how it actually is processed, not sort of in a communication context, but on a very kind of on that kind of automatic level. So looking at, you know, is it a kind of implicit judgment process or is it more explicit? So using different kind of measures to answer that question.
Yeah. So and just kind of taking your research out of the academic realm, how do you feel? How do you think people who are not academics will be able to use your research and your findings in a way that will benefit them? Do you think it’s for teachers, therapists, parents? Who do you think is going to really benefit most from what you’re finding out? Yeah, well, different ways, actually. I mean, I’m currently working with an organization called The Emolytics and they’re based in the US and they actually, I actually cooperate with somebody there and they actually are interested in the research and actually collaborated and published together because they use the insights on that to understand how we can use emoji or how different businesses can use emoji to understand net emotion index and sentiment of remote working and sort of well-being and the well-being metric of organizations.
So actually being used in a sort of organizational sort of context, which is something I would never really thought about. And so, again, that’s useful when people kind of approach you and say, I’ve got this particular thing and I think this could be relevant. Oh, glad you’ve made that connection because I haven’t.
And so in that context, I think, and I can see a lot of scope there. So something else I’m sort of interested in at the moment is looking at how we might experience emoji in terms of do we feel like we approach or withdraw? So again, there’s interesting frameworks in psychology about that idea of approach and withdraw and from a kind of emotion point of view. So we’re more drawn to positive emotion, more likely to inhibit a negative.
So I’m kind of interested in that. So I think from a digital marketing perspective, what’s interesting is how that might relate to brand and perception and engagement. Yeah, that kind of thing.
That’s what I’m kind of thinking. So, yeah, I think it can be kind of applied to those sorts of contexts as well. So that’s fascinating.
So it’s almost narrative psychology, but from an emoji perspective. I don’t know what narrative psychology is. So it’s about the words we use to describe what we’re going through and using different words that mean different things and how that then really gives a good indication of where we’re at.
Yes, I guess that’s quite a nice summary, actually. Yeah. And I think what’s what’s interesting about emoji and what we have to be careful of is we tend to have this assumption that emoji are a universal language and I would tend to disagree with that because we don’t seem to, from one hand, we don’t seem to process them emotionally on a kind of implicit level.
So there is a kind of evaluation process that goes on. And what the implication of that is, is that we have different interpretations of the same emoji so that we have diverse ways that we label them and use them in different contexts. So when we get kind of a narrative psychology point of view, I think it’s interesting that we don’t all share a narrative that there are differences.
So, yeah, I think that’s a really important caveat of this kind of emoji research. So from a generational perspective, do you think that there’s a difference? Because older generations won’t, I suspect, use emojis as much as younger generations. And there’s meaning attached to specific emojis that some people will understand and others won’t.
Is there this generational difference or is it more about a culture, a group context of what they talk about and how they speak? Yeah, I think it’s a mixture of things. I don’t think there’s a generational distinction. I think you sometimes see a bit of some kind of trends.
But definitely, I think it’s less about how much people use them, but the way they use them is very different. And again, we see that when we look at some gender differences. Again, it’s not the case that females use more emojis than men.
It’s more likely to use them for emotional expression than men. And men are more likely to use them for other punctuation or all that kind of stuff. So I think that there are distinctions, not necessarily always very clear cut.
But we do see trends about them being used in maybe different ways. And I think we also have to remember now the software has developed where we can have emojis reactions to messages. And again, that’s a sort of different way that we might use them.
Younger generations might be more likely to make more use of those as a substitute to written comments and things like that. So I think there’s kind of nuances on that. Never a clear answer is there.
I didn’t give a yes or no to your question. It was a defence. Yeah, that’s genuinely the answer in psychology.
It depends. There’s caveats. That’s interesting, though, that there’s now those reactions to a message because it kind of tells someone that you’ve read it and you and you acknowledge it.
But actually, you don’t have to go to the effort of replying and thinking through what the answer ought to be without offending or saying the wrong thing. Yeah, it’s really interesting because there’s actually a really kind of interesting sort of popular book called I think it’s called Metiquette. And it talks about what does a like actually mean and the different interpretations of that.
And I think that that’s the same for things like reactions is that sometimes it might just be an acknowledgement. Sometimes it might be. And that could, in some cases, just be very abrupt and could be interpreted as being a bit rude.
And other times it might just be, yeah, I’ve just not had time to play. I’m just saying I’ve seen it and I’m on it. So, yeah, I think again, it’s that, you know, is it universal when we have all these different contexts that affect how we make a judgment about what that means and also that people interpret things differently? Yeah.
And that even that’s fascinating, because even from my perspective, when I react to a text, I think people think the same as me with my reaction. Yeah. And they probably they possibly don’t think that’s rude rather than, oh, she’s seen it.
Yeah. And I’ve had this conversation before with somebody, I think there’s a, again, I’m not sure if it’s been done or not, but, you know, I think there’s a really interesting theory of mind kind of piece there about how do you use emoji based on what your understanding of another person’s appraisal is about how you’re using it. And then there’s an interesting sort of interaction that happens there.
And so I know there’s research that looks at the kind of mirroring of emoji. And I know just anecdotally, I do that myself, people who don’t use them much, I don’t use them much with. If I know somebody uses this emoji a lot, I might be more likely to use it.
So there’s a really interesting interactional kind of thing that goes on there. But yeah, definitely, there’s something interesting about how we use them and interpret them based on our own kind of construct of what things mean. That’s just this is why I love cyberpsychology.
There’s so many fascinating things you don’t think about and suddenly you go, oh. No, actually, this is a really nice example of why I really like doing these kinds of things, because I often am thinking out loud, and I think, you know, verbalize things that either have been kind of been pondering in there or things that I haven’t thought about before, and it’s just prompted you to think that it’s really useful. Yay!
Brilliant. Now, during lockdown, I know that you did a, wrote a book. You may or may not be able to see this, but I’ll put a link to it in the chat.
Issues and Debates in Cyberpsychology. So what started this whole process of writing this book on your own and getting it published? Well, first I was invited to write it, so that’s always good. And it came actually at a really good time.
Well, two reasons for the time being, actually in retrospect, it was very useful. One is that I think I was at a point where I was thinking about a lot of different things in kind of isolation of each other and didn’t have that opportunity to kind of bring them together. And as I was sort of saying earlier, again, a good value for me for doing things like keynote talks is that it helps me do that bird’s eye view of things.
So actually it was really useful. It was at a point where I thought I really need to piece these things together in my head. And actually, for me, writing things really helps me do that.
And I do find I think three things better when I write things out. Yes, I might just read it all. I don’t know, but I just haven’t.
That’s really useful. I get birds. OK.
So it seemed like a really good point in time to do it from a kind of career perspective. And I had a chat with a few colleagues, senior colleagues, and they said, yeah, I think it’s a good point in your career to be a named author on a book. This can be helpful.
So I don’t know how familiar you are with academia, but certainly psychology. So research papers rather than books tend to be kind of rated the kind of esteem and higher esteem in books. But yeah, it seemed like a good thing to do because of that.
And as well as that kind of looking back retrospectively, it was just coincidence that I felt aligned with the time where we were experiencing a lot of lockdowns. And honestly, I think it was probably one of my saving graces. Yeah, I think a lot of people experience a lot of, you know, isolation and, you know, that kind of thing.
But it just it was a challenge for me to just just kind of get, you know, articulate things. And so I think kind of looking back, it was kind of good that it happened during that time as well. Yeah, it’s a fascinating book.
I just thoroughly enjoyed reading. I was like, oh, yes, I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s amazing.
So who is the who do you think is the right for the people who would be really interested in this book and go, yeah, you really need to read this? Is it people who are starting off in an undergrad or is it just a general knowledge book? What what do you think is a good type of person to pick it up? Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of applies quite quite well to lots of different audiences. I think certainly it’s it’s one of the key texts on one of the modules I do on cyberpsychology, and I’m actually now situated the module. So it is more aligned to the kind of themes of the book.
So it speaks a bit more directly. So that’s also helpful for me and my teaching to kind of just kind of review that. But actually, I think my main reason for doing it was actually probably more targeted towards media commentators, journalists, because often, a lot of people who work in cyberpsychology, myself included, get a lot of requests for comments on things that relate to popular debates about things like screen time or social media wellbeing, that kind of thing.
So actually having a book that situates the evidence around those sort of debates, I thought was a helpful way of framing it, rather than just there’s a book on this, and it’s let’s weigh up this and come to some kind of informed conclusion. So I think from that perspective, that in my head, I sort of thinking about future Linda, and this might rectify and give people the kind of answers that might be useful. But yeah, I think students, but also general public, is accessible enough for public audiences as well.
Yeah, I think it’s accessible enough for public audiences. It does, it’s kind of quite an academic style of writing, but that’s because you are an academic. So it’s kind of naturally, but it is, I think what’s really great about it is it’s very readable and very consumable by someone who doesn’t have a background in academics or cyber psychology.
So it is, it’s, and it’s, it’s not a long book. And that in the nicest possible way. I don’t think I could have written anymore.
Yeah, no, I thought actually when it comes to physical copies, that’s, that’s quite nice, actually, it’s just a little adjustable. Yeah, it’s something that’s easily read within a week, over a few cups of coffee. Okay, that’s good to know.
Yeah. Yeah. And just still so rich with information.
And just talking about journalists, because you said you said a lot of journalists contact academia, do you find that often journalists or the mass media misrepresents the information that academics do find and do write about in the papers that they publish? Or do you think they generally are getting it sort of okay, right? Things seem to be improving, I’d say. Sorry, it’s another it depends answer. Yeah, I worked with some very, very good journalists who didn’t, who used to take a lot of time to speak with experts who do their own research, who do a really good job of representing the kind of where the science is at.
And I’m not saying that’s always the case. It does, to some extent, depend on the particular news outlet they’re representing, not to name anyone in particular. And so I don’t engage with them, because I don’t agree with the way that they do journalism.
And certainly people I’ve worked with have done a really good job at being able to represent. And I think this often the kind of default mode is, let’s, let’s kind of panic a bit about these kind of things. But actually, I have seen an improvement in, but to be honest, what can be represented in the media can only be based on the quality of the science that exists.
And I think part of the ongoing challenge we have in cyberpsychology, and I know there are a lot of other scholars who experience this as well, is that we we’re constantly battling against ourselves, and where we have very different sort of philosophical views about technology. And when there’s so much contrasting opinion perspective in the discipline itself, and that really doesn’t help journalists try and understand where you’ve got these very different views, where do you find the kind of synergy of that and the kind of the agreed consensus points, because there are very many. So I actually don’t blame journalists, to be honest, because it’s a bit of a, a bit of a mismatch of evidence.
Yeah, so I think, I think there’s a learning point there about what the discipline itself can do to support itself to then be represented better. But there are, there are a lot of tremendous efforts from really good groups of research groups of people who are really trying to rectify that. And I know, you know, colleagues are involved in that kind of a really high level, government level of informing policy, and that it is the right people who are doing that, who are doing the good science.
So that’s always really encouraging, and that kind of reassures me a bit. Yeah, that is encouraging for me too, because I, I often talk to cyber psychologists who are so frustrated at what’s coming out of, in the mass media, the clickbaits and the, it’s all about getting, or it seems to be all about getting eyeball attention rather than decent science. So it’s so refreshing, so good to hear that that’s been done by great academics.
And there are a lot of, or there are quite a lot of good academics, really great academics in psychology. They are, and they also do a lot of work on the kind of public facing stuff. So one that comes to mind is the Oxford Internet Institute, and they, I actually saw the other day they were actually advertising for somebody to do the kind of public mass media kind of facing stuff.
So they’re investing a lot of resource in, in understanding why it’s important to be disseminating the research and making it available in a format that’s accessible. So that’s really good to see there’s a kind of investment there. That’s amazing.
Really, really good news. So you’re researching emojis. What else are you researching? Is there anything else that you find really fascinating that you’re diving into? A few of the bits and bobs.
I think my problem has always been I’m a bit of a magpie. I just think, oh, that’s exciting. I’ll do that and end up being way too broad.
Emoji stuff is always kind of very central and where the kind of very rigorous academic stuff comes in. But I’m also interested in understanding social media behaviours, a bit more collaborative colleagues at Aston University on this. And we talk about social media use and that isn’t.
I don’t really know what that means. That can mean a lot of things. So, yeah, and then people thought, well, you know, we can then talk about active use and passive use and that still doesn’t quite help me understand what that is.
So, yeah, looking more intricately at what the nature of different specific behaviours are that one can use. And it’s really interesting to me. And I’d love to do more research to look at how that specific types of behaviours change over time and context.
So doing some momentary sort of assessments that looks at the mood drivers or the context drivers about why you might do certain types of behaviour at different points in the day or whatever. And I think there’s an interest in that. And so, yeah, I’m trying to scrutinise that a bit more and understand that because essentially as a psychologist, I’m interested in behaviour and I want to understand what those behaviours are and what I’d be psychologically interested in that.
So, yeah, so I’m doing stuff on that as well. Other things, my friend, more industry sort of kind of work, collaborating in a very early stage of getting proposals together on thinking about drivers of technology acceptance in industry. So how we can support technology diffusion and implementation.
So, again, drawing on what we know from technology integration models and technology acceptance literature there. I think there’s some interesting work there to do as well, but that’s in very early stages. And you’ve also spoken about students who get involved with your research.
So tell me more about that. If someone wants to know more about cyberpsychology or get an undergrad with some experience in that, what kind of things do you get students involved with that will give them that experience? Yes, so at HCL, we have a really great paid research internship scheme. So that’s where our second year students and those who are on our masters conversion course can apply to be basically a research assistant in the department to work with colleagues on my projects.
And so over many years, and we’ll continue to be doing this as long as the funding is available to do it, which looking like it might be next year, which is great, is to just advertise projects on Psychology Emoji. And then I’ve always been able to engage students on those projects. And they do a lot of really useful work to support my research, but also they learn about cyberpsychology on psychology, how to do psychology research, and, you know, by practically doing it, which is obviously useful from a learning perspective.
And so they can get involved in and actually the research itself in that way. And as a result, they then if we publish those papers, they then become co-authors, because it’s a valid contribution to the research, which is great for them as well. And as well as that, certainly at Edge Hill, we have the final year optional module, which is what I’ve done in cyberpsychology.
And, you know, that’s, it’s a really cool module, I’m obviously very biased, but I always get lots of positive feedback from it, students seem to really enjoy the module and just helps them have really discussions and answer questions that they’re interested in, and think about the applied nature of it and how it can translate into all sorts of different contexts. So yeah, so those are the ways certainly at Edge Hill that people can get involved in cyberpsychology. So if a parent is watching this, or one of the children, and they’re really fascinated with psychology, and want to get involved in cyberpsychology at some point, or think this is an area that they may be really interested in the future, how do they register for undergrad? And what kind of processes would they need to go through? Because it’s the academic year is still about six months away.
So how, what are the processes? Is it too late to apply? Or do they need to still do other stuff? Yeah, so usually undergraduate recruitment setting at the Edge Hill, it might differ, the universities go through the UCAS system. So it is too late for this coming academic year. So normally the UCAS deadline is usually end of January, sometime in January.
And so it will be too late for this coming academic year. But for September 2025 entry, I mean, we’re already thinking about 2025 entry, we’ve asked the inspectors and things. So it’s not, it’s not too far in advance for me to be thinking about that.
And then yeah, it will be a case of the application window would be opening, such as I guess from, you know, September to January this coming year. And so that would, that would be the time to be looking at options and applying. And is there anything else that you want to kind of chat about, or that we haven’t covered that you find completely fascinating about cyberpsychology, or someone who hasn’t really interested in cyberpsychology, who has no experience or understanding of it? Are there any things that you think actually they really need to know this? I think it’s what’s useful is that there’s a lot of really useful kind of accessible resources out there.
And it’s something I did alongside a book where some like what I call cyber bites, sort of videos, which are summarized with video summaries of each chapter. And I actually find that really useful, actually, on my cyberpsychology module as well to kind of give a kind of little bit of a trailer of particular issues. And so it kind of works quite nicely as a companion resource to the book, but also those can be watched and accessed just in isolation as well.
So, and there’s other kind of examples of resources about topics in cyberpsychology, you’ve got things like pieces for conversation that colleagues have written on topics related to that, those are really designed specifically for public audiences, and that kind of digest some of the issues and give an accessible summary of the kind of scientific evidence. And I think things like that, you know, there’s lots of examples of those that exist. And, and there are some as far as I’m aware, still some resources on BPS cyberpsychology section website as well.
So and on there, actually, what’s really good is BPS have actually been doing a series of careers in cyber psychology, which I know you’ll know about because you’ve done one for us, which is amazing. And those are really, really useful to give insights into how cyberpsychology is applied in different types of careers. And again, I think you’re a really good example of that it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t again, naturally think about where cyberpsychology fits, but obviously does really well.
And so those are really good as well, careers in cyberpsychology series that our colleague on the committee, John Wife, has done a fantastic job at. Yes. And one final question, what is your favourite cyberpsychology book? There are a lot of really good resources out there.
And I think one of my favourite ones is possibly the introduction to cyberpsychology resource that was published and edited by colleagues at IADT over in Dunleary. They’ve just finished the second edition and it’s on my bookshelf. Yes, get it.
Actually, this one’s a BPS core textbook series as well, which is even better. But this one’s great. This is really comprehensive.
And I find it useful, again, to recommend to students. It’s very sort of accessible in terms of it breaks down a lot of the sort of very typical content areas in cyberpsychology. So I would always say that one’s a really good one.
And I do have a lot of fondness for that as well, because I was invited to write a forward for that one. And I originally launched the book on its first edition. So that was always really nice.
And, you know, the colleagues over there are really lovely and friendly. And yes, that was a good one. And in terms of that book, how is it different to the first edition? Are there new topics or is it just updated research? It’s a bit of a mixture.
So broadly, they’re just sort of updates. And there are a couple of new topics in there. I can’t remember now off the top of my head what they are, but definitely were some new sections in it.
But yes, there is a progression from the first one in terms of it has been updated, because obviously, the nature of cyberpsychology is research moves quite fast. So these things do need to be updated quite regularly. So, yeah.
Excellent. Because I bought the first one. So I’m like, oh, do I need to? Yes, I do need to buy the second one.
Possibly. I’ll double check which the topics are. I think I need to anyway, because it’s just always fascinating to get updated research, because as you say, it moves on so quickly and there’s always new technology coming up.
And so therefore new behaviours that we display and the way that we engage with technology changes over time as well. And a cultural shift changes. So you really do need to keep up to date with cyberpsychology information.
It’s not just, you know, it’s therefore done slightly different things like child development, for example. Yes, there’s new research, but it’s not as fast-paced, which is one of the exciting things about cyberpsychology. This is interesting.
Yeah, this is exciting. Sometimes I just think, you know, I need about five of me to be able to study all the things I’m interested in and keep up to the pace, which, again, is part of the problem. I think it’s been quite broad in the kind of things I’m interested in, because it’s very difficult to keep track of all the different advancements.
And even though they’re still all within the same field, it’s quite a task to do. So again, yeah, that’s a lesson to me to be a bit more focused. Brilliant.
Linda, it’s been a delight and a joy chatting to you, as it always is. And all the best with your preparation for the cyberpsychology conference. And yeah, I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Yeah, thank you. And thank you for joining us in episode two of Confessions of a Cyber Psychologist.
