Learning from the love letters of erotomania

Brunskill, David

doi:10.1080/14789949.2017.1319967

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Having screened for their illustrative potential, examples were chosen for analysis. Being a relatively new area of research, established methods or measures were not available, so the principle of making multiple analytical 'rounds' of the material [11] was utilised. As the materials studied are publically available and 'stored' online, the individual references contain exposure to the social avatar material itself, some of which is presented below.…”

Section: Social Avatar Theory In Action and Objectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Social Avatar Theory: From In Vitro to In Vivo (Instagrammer Cognition - Mind the Gap)

Brunskill

2019

PBSIJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The concept of a social avatar was proposed in 2013, in response to observed patterns of human behaviour on social media. Social avatar theory has since developed to provide a framework which can assist in the necessary task of being able to examine the potential effects of social media use upon user psyche. Through ubiquitous use of social media, social avatar theory has effectively moved from in vitro, to in vivo, and can now be applied in non-hypothetical terms. Via de-construction of publically available social avatar material, several aspects of social avatar theory manifest, with examples which illustrate the principles of curation, positive skew and gap/facade. In the process of de-construction, prototypical cognitive schema can be recognised (Instagrammer Cognition).It is of concern that the mooted potential for psychological costs to be incurred, has also moved from hypothetical to real life (e.g. via a decrease in personal authenticity). Social avatar theory holds that a psychologically significant gap can develop between the online facade and the reality of life offline, and in doing so, that social avatars can be inherently psychoactive. For select users (further research required with respect to vulnerability factors), the creation/maintenance of a social avatar can become all-consuming, and even contribute to states of emotional distress and discord such as envy, smiling depression, or when the gap has grown so big as to be untenable, even risk psychological breakdown. As such, a social avatar health-check should be part of digital citizenship/education initiatives -Mind the Gap.

show abstract

Section: Social Avatar Theory In Action and Objectivementioning

confidence: 99%