Robert LaRose

Internet Self-Efficacy and the Psychology of the Digital Divide.

Internet self-efficacy, or the belief in ones capabilities to organize and execute courses of Internet actions required to produce given attainments, is a potentially important factor in efforts to close the digital divide that separates experienced Internet users from novices. Prior research on Internet self-efficacy has been limited to examining specific task performance and narrow behavioral domains rather than overall attainments in relation to general Internet use, and has not yielded evidence of reliability and construct validity. Survey data were collected to develop a reliable operational measure of Internet self-efficacy and to examine its construct validity. An eight-item Internet self-efficacy scale developed for the present study was found to be reliable and internally consistent. Prior Internet experience, outcome expectancies and Internet use were significantly and positively correlated to Internet self-efficacy judgments. Internet stress and self-disparagement were negatively related to Internet self-efficacy. A path analysis model was tested within the theoretical framework of social cognitive theory (Bandura (1997).

Understanding Internet usage: a social-cognitive approach to uses and gratifications

Several studies have applied uses and gratifications to explain Internet usage. Like Bandura’s social-cognitive theory, the uses and gratifications framework explains media use in terms of expected positive outcomes, or gratifications. However, previous uses and gratifications research accounted for little variance in Internet behavior, although there were conflicting results. This research identifies new variables from social-cognitive theory that might further explain Internet usage and resolve inconsistencies in prior research. Measures of self-efficacy and self-disparagement were developed for the domain of Internet behavior. Internet addiction was interpreted as a deficient self-regulation within the social-cognitive framework. Finally, the negative outcomes of online behavior were analyzed for their impact on Internet usage. In a survey of 171 college students, the social-cognitive model explained 60% of the available variance in Internet usage using multiple regression analysis, a significant improvement over prior uses and gratifications research.

Getting Hooked on News: Uses and Gratifications and the Formation of News Habits among College Students in an Internet Environment

The present research proposed a theory of news habit formation based in the uses and gratifications paradigm and applied it to emerging patterns of news consumption among college students. Five distinctive patterns emerged: hometown newspapers, comedy news, cable news, Internet news, and broadcast news. A sixth consumption pattern included diverse sources specializing in depth news coverage. Surveillance and escapism gratifications were the most consistent predictors of news consumption behavior across these patterns. However, habit strength was the most powerful predictor of news consumption overall. Consumption of depth and hometown newspaper sources were related to current events knowledge.

How does online social networking enhance life satisfaction? The relationships among online supportive interaction, affect, perceived social support, sense of community, and life satisfaction

The purpose of this study is to examine whether supportive interactions on social networking sites mediate the influence of SNS use and the number of SNS friends on perceived social support, affect, sense of community, and life satisfaction. Employing momentary sampling, the current study also looked at the relationship between supportive interaction and immediate affect after the interaction over a period of 5days. An analysis of 339 adult participants revealed a positive relationship between supportive interaction and positive affect after the interaction. A path model revealed positive associations among the number of SNS friends, supportive interactions, affect, perceived social support, sense of community, and life satisfaction. Implications for the research of online social networking and social support are discussed.

Privacy issues in Internet surveys

Surveys administered over the Internet have been plagued by low response rates and at times have provoked respondent rebellions against researchers who stand accused of broadcasting noxious unwanted e-mail or “spam.” This article examines the issue from the perspective of social science research on privacy in an effort to understand the unique privacy context of Internet-based survey research. Online surveyors commit multiple violations of physical, informational, and psychological privacy that can be more intense than those found in conventional survey methods. Internet surveys also invade the interactional privacy of online communities, a form of privacy invasion seldom encountered with traditional survey methods. The article concludes with recommendations for improving response rates to online surveys using accepted privacy protection practices already found on the Internet as well as emerging Internet technologies.

Re‐thinking instructional immediacy for web courses: A social cognitive exploration

The growth of the World‐Wide Web of as a medium of instruction in higher education rekindles an old debate about the effectiveness of instructional technology. The present limitations of the Internet medium restrict the teacher immediacy of Web courses and possibly have a negative impact on both affective and cognitive learning. Web courses also appear to be a deficient means to form close relationships between students, which was termed student immediacy. But Web courses also have the potential to be more immediate than conventional classroom instruction by introducing a new “agency”; into the learning environment, the computer. Learner interactions with computers potentially convey a sense of personal tutorship or computer immediacy that augment immediacy in comparison to the limited large group interaction prevalent in conventional lecture sections. Social cognitive theory was applied to develop a unified construct of instructional immediacy that encompassed teacher, student and computer agency. Within this theory, immediacy behaviors provide social and status incentives that motivate learning. An exploratory qualitative ethnographic content analysis of three Web courses identified potential indicators of immediacy in Web classrooms and framed recommendations about future research on instructional immediacy and Web course design.

Electronic Bulletin Boards and “Public Goods” Explanations of Collaborative Mass Media

Collaborative mass media are a new type of mass communications medium in which the audience acts both as the source and the receiver of the message. Theories of discretionary data base contributions and critical mass theory offer parallel explanations for the success of collaborative media. The present research integrated the predictions of these two perspectives in the context of a national survey of public electronic bulletin board systems. The study documented the nature and extent of electronic bulletin board use and compared predictions about the success of collaborative media based on the two theoretical perspectives. File contribution levels and system adoption rates were both found to be directly related to a measure of symmetry in user participation. Content diversity was directly related to contribution levels, but not to overall adoption levels. The results provided limited support for discretionary data base theory.

Personal Internet use at work: Understanding cyberslacking

Cyberslacking, typically defined as the use of Internet and mobile technology during work hours for personal purposes, is a growing concern for organizations due to the potential in lost revenue; however, the majority of academic research in this area has focused on a limited number of cyberslacking behaviors and/or employed small, non-representative samples. In order to address these limitations, the present study employs a nationally representative sample of American workers and tests the relationship between nine cyberslacking behaviors and a variety of demographic and work-specific predictors. Three measures of cyberslacking are employed to provide a richer analysis of the phenomenon: individual behaviors, frequency of cyberslacking, and variety of cyberslacking. Results indicate that being younger, male, and a racial minority positively predict cyberslacking variety and frequency, as do routinized Internet use at work and higher perceived Internet utility. Results are discussed as to how the present study expands on previous research, and directions for future research are indicated.

Is Online Buying out of Control? Electronic Commerce and Consumer Self-Regulation

Preliminary evidence suggests that forms of unregulated consumer behavior, including impulsive, compulsive, and addictive buying, are present on the Internet. This study reconceptualized unregulated buying behaviors as the result of deficient self-regulation using mechanisms proposed in social cognitive theory. As a result, deficient self-regulation of online buying was positively related to online shopping activity. It was a more important predictor than the rational merits of e-commerce, such as convenience and low price, and than personal and economic consumer characteristics. Together with Internet self-efficacy and Internet use, these variables explained 43% of the variance in online shopping behavior.

Promoting personal responsibility for internet safety

Online safety is everyones responsibility---a concept much easier to preach than to practice.