Optional readings and unchosen topics

Optional readings

In addition to the readings listed on the Schedule page, I have also provided you with some additional optional readings for each week of the course. These readings are by no means required and our in-class discussions will not focus on them. But they’re a way for you to dive deeper into a topic if you’re particularly interested in it.

Ethics of using the internet for psychology research

• Kozyreva, A., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Hertwig, R., Lewandowsky, S., & Herzog, S. M. (2021). Public attitudes towards algorithmic personalization and use of personal data online: Evidence from Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00787-w (9 pages)
• Herington, J., Li, K., & Pisani, A. R. (2024). Expanding the role of justice in secondary research using digital psychological data. American Psychologist, 79(1), 123–136. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001190 (12 pages)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziltBdyFxDo (2 minutes)
• https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/

Emotion expression

• Jones, N. M., Wojcik, S. P., Sweeting, J., & Silver, R. C. (2016). Tweeting negative emotion: An investigation of Twitter data in the aftermath of violence on college campuses. Psychological Methods, 21(4), 526–541. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000099 (17 pages)
• Doré, B., Ort, L., Braverman, O., & Ochsner, K. N. (2015). Sadness shifts to anxiety over time and distance from the national tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. Psychological science, 26(4), 363-373. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614562218 (9 pages)
• Yudkin, D., Goodwin, G., Reece, A., Gray, K., & Bhatia, S. (2024). A Large-Scale Investigation of Everyday Moral Dilemmas. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5pcew (18 pages)

Social networks

• Urman, A., & Katz, S. (2022). What they do in the shadows: Examining the far-right networks on Telegram. Information, Communication & Society, 25(7), 904–923. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1803946 (17 pages)
• Boutyline, A., & Willer, R. (2017). The social structure of political echo chambers: Variation in ideological homophily in online networks. Political psychology, 38(3), 551-569. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12337 (16 pages)
• Konnikova, M. (2014, October 7). The Limits of Friendship. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships (General article)

Curiosity and information seeking

• Kelly, C., Blain, B., & Sharot, T. (2024). High-Level Characteristics of Web Queries Change Under Threat. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/c45jn (17 pages)
• Silston, B., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2024). Close Encounters of the Digital Kind: Motivated Search, Selection and Decision-Making in an Interactive Digital Context. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fvz94 (24 pages)

Collective memory

• Twyman, M., Keegan, B. C., & Shaw, A. (2017). Black Lives Matter in Wikipedia: Collective Memory and Collaboration around Online Social Movements. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 1400–1412. https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998232 (10 pages)
• Han, E. L. (2020). Journalism and mnemonic practices in Chinese social media: Remembering catastrophic events on Weibo. Memory Studies, 13(2), 162–175. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698017714833 (12 pages)
• Pentzold, C. (2009). Fixing the floating gap: The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a global memory place. Memory Studies, 2(2), 255–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698008102055 (14 pages)

Impression formation and self-presentation

• Choi, S., Williams, D., & Kim, H. (2020). A snap of your true self: How self-presentation and temporal affordance influence self-concept on social media. New Media & Society, 146144482097719. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820977199 (18 pages)
• Krämer, N. C., & Schäwel, J. (2020). Mastering the challenge of balancing self-disclosure and privacy in social media. Current Opinion in Psychology, 31, 67–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.08.003 (4 pages)

Social interactions

• Rathje, S., Van Bavel, J. J., & Van Der Linden, S. (2021). Out-group animosity drives engagement on social media. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(26), e2024292118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2024292118 (8 pages)
• Konnikova, M. (2013, October 23). The Psychology of Online Comments. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-psychology-of-online-comments (General article)
• Inside Social Media’s ‘Chaos Machine.’ (2023, March 3). Science Friday. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-chaos-machine-social-media/ (12 minutes)

Nudging and decision-making

• Hidden Brain Media. Buying Attention. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/buying-attention/ (38 minutes)

Misinformation and disinformation

• Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M. et al. Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature 592, 590–595 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2 (13 pages)
• Arechar, A. A., Allen, J., Berinsky, A. J., Cole, R., Epstein, Z., Garimella, K., Gully, A., Lu, J. G., Ross, R. M., Stagnaro, M. N., Zhang, Y., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2023). Understanding and combatting misinformation across 16 countries on six continents. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(9), 1502–1513. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01641-6 (10 pages)
• Thompson, J. (2023, October 26). Are We Having a Moral Panic Over Misinformation? Undark Magazine. https://undark.org/2023/10/26/opinion-misinformation-moral-panic/ (General article)
• Linden, J. R., Melisa Basol, Sander van der. (2021, February 22). A New Way to Inoculate People Against Misinformation. Behavioral Scientist. https://behavioralscientist.org/a-new-way-to-inoculate-people-against-misinformation/
• Play the game Harmony Square, highlighted in the above article

Mental health

• Oldemburgo De Mello, V., Cheung, F., & Inzlicht, M. (2024). Twitter (X) use predicts substantial changes in well-being, polarization, sense of belonging, and outrage. Communications Psychology, 2(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00062-z (9 pages)
• Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The US Surgeon General’s Advisory [Internet]. (21 pages)
• Miller, C. C. (2023, June 17). Everyone Says Social Media Is Bad for Teens. Proving It Is Another Thing. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/17/upshot/social-media-teen-mental-health.html (General article)
• Hidden Brain Media. Schadenfacebook. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/schadenfacebook/ (26 minutes)

Changes to cognition

• Storm, B. C., & Stone, S. M. (2015). Saving-Enhanced Memory: The Benefits of Saving on the Learning and Remembering of New Information. Psychological Science, 26(2), 182–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614559285 (8 pages)
• Ward, A. F. (2013). Supernormal: How the Internet Is Changing Our Memories and Our Minds. Psychological Inquiry, 24(4), 341–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2013.850148 (8 pages)
• Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. 333. (3 pages)

Artificial intelligence

• Cadario, R., Longoni, C., & Morewedge, C. K. (2021). Understanding, explaining, and utilizing medical artificial intelligence. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(12), 1636–1642. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01146-0 (6 pages)
• Borau, S., Otterbring, T., Laporte, S., & Fosso Wamba, S. (2021). The most human bot: Female gendering increases humanness perceptions of bots and acceptance of AI. Psychology & Marketing, 38(7), 1052–1068. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21480 (14 pages)
• Bloom, P. (2023, November 29). How Moral Can A.I. Really Be? The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/how-moral-can-ai-really-be (10 pages)
• Science Friday. Why Do Humans Anthropomorphize AI? https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/ai-human-personification/ (17 minutes)

Folk beliefs

• Scharlach, R., & Hallinan, B. (2023). The value affordances of social media engagement features. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 28(6), zmad040. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad040 (9 pages)
• Brodsky, J. E., Lodhi, A. K., Powers, K. L., Blumberg, F. C., & Brooks, P. J. (2021). “It’s just everywhere now”: Middle‐school and college students’ mental models of the Internet. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 3(4), 495-511. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.281 (14 pages)
• Bhandari, A., & Bimo, S. (2022). Why’s Everyone on TikTok Now? The Algorithmized Self and the Future of Self-Making on Social Media. Social Media + Society, 1–11. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1177/2056305122108624 (10 pages)

Humor and memes

• Hakoköngäs, E., Halmesvaara, O., & Sakki, I. (2020). Persuasion Through Bitter Humor: Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Rhetoric in Internet Memes of Two Far-Right Groups in Finland. Social Media + Society, 6(2), 205630512092157. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120921575 (10 pages)
• Akram, U., Drabble, J., Cau, G., Hershaw, F., Rajenthran, A., Lowe, M., Trommelen, C., & Ellis, J. G. (2020). Exploratory study on the role of emotion regulation in perceived valence, humour, and beneficial use of depressive internet memes in depression. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 899. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-57953-4 (7 pages)
• Marshall, C. (2022, June 17). The Cracked Wisdom of Dril. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-cracked-wisdom-of-dril (General article)

Activism

• Karimi, K., & Fox, R. L. (2023). Scrolling, Simping, and Mobilizing: TikTok’s influence over Generation Z’s Political Behavior. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 12(1), 181–208. https://www.thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/1251 (20 pages)
• Alsaad, A., Alam, Md. M., & Lutfi, A. (2023). A sensemaking perspective on the association between social media engagement and pro-environment behavioural intention. Technology in Society, 72, 102201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2023.102201 (8 pages)
• Guesmi, H. (2021, January 27). The social media myth about the Arab Spring. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/1/27/the-social-media-myth-about-the-arab-spring (10 pages)
• Caplan-Bricker, N. (2019, March 11). The Challenge of Preserving the Historical Record of #MeToo. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-challenge-of-preserving-the-historical-record-of-metoo (7 pages)
• Priante, A., Ehrenhard, M. L., Van Den Broek, T., & Need, A. (2018). Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research. New Media & Society, 20(7), 2647–2669. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817744783 (18 pages)

Unchosen topics

The readings for the unchosen topics in the Student Choice weeks can be found here, in case you’re interested.

Impression formation and self-presentation

• Bailey, E. R., Matz, S. C., Youyou, W., & Iyengar, S. S. (2020). Authentic self-expression on social media is associated with greater subjective well-being. Nature Communications, 11(1), 4889. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18539-w (8 pages)
• Brady, W. J., McLoughlin, K. L., Torres, M. P., Luo, K. F., Gendron, M., & Crockett, M. J. (2023). Overperception of moral outrage in online social networks inflates beliefs about intergroup hostility. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(6), 917–927. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01582-0 (10 pages)
• Schlosser, A. E. (2020). Self-disclosure versus self-presentation on social media. Current Opinion in Psychology, 31, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.06.025 (4 pages)
• Show the social media account of one of your friends to someone who doesn’t know them. Ask them to form an impression of your friend, and record their responses.

Changes to cognition

• Firth, J., Torous, J., Stubbs, B., Firth, J. A., Steiner, G. Z., Smith, L., Alvarez‐Jimenez, M., Gleeson, J., Vancampfort, D., Armitage, C. J., & Sarris, J. (2019). The “online brain”: How the Internet may be changing our cognition. World Psychiatry, 18(2), 119–129. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20617 (9 pages)
• Heersmink, R. (2016). The Internet, Cognitive Enhancement, and the Values of Cognition. Minds and Machines, 26(4), 389–407. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-016-9404-3 (16 pages)
• Fisher, M., Smiley, A. H., & Grillo, T. L. H. (2022). Information without knowledge: The effects of Internet search on learning. Memory, 30(4), 375–387. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2021.1882501 (11 pages)

Folk beliefs

• Dogruel, L. (2021). Folk theories of algorithmic operations during Internet use: A mixed methods study. The Information Society, 37(5), 287-298. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2021.1949768 (10 pages)
• Huang, S. A., Hancock, J., & Tong, S. T. (2022). Folk theories of online dating: Exploring people’s beliefs about the online dating process and online dating algorithms. Social Media+ Society, 8(2), 20563051221089561. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221089561 (10 pages)