CHAT EVENT

Online Romances
July 25, 1999

You are cordially invited to attend a panel discussion:

In this meeting a panel of internet experts will discuss a series of questions about online romances that will be posed to them by a moderator. After the panel discussion, the meeting will be opened up to questions and comments from the audience. Some of the issues to be explored will include:

• How do online romances begin and change over time?
• How do they compare to face-to-face romances?
• What are the psychological dynamics underlying online romances?
• What is the first f2f meeting like and how does f2f contact affect the relationship?
• When are online romances healthy, and when are they not?

The program for the meeting is located at: http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/bolchatrom.html

The panel discussion will begin at 4:00pm (Eastern US time). You are welcome to come early - and stay after the hour - to talk with colleagues. During the panel discussion, please refrain from sending public messages. You are welcome to "whisper" (send private messages) to other attenders, but keep in mind that if you whisper to someone, the chat program places a series of dots next to your name. You will not see the dots, but other users will. After the panel discussion, when the meeting is opened up to questions and comments from the audience, indicate that you want to speak by typing the message "hand." Questions will be taken in the order of hands raised.

We strongly recommend that you visit Behavior Online ahead of time and test out the chat software. For this meeting, we will be using the chat software "FreeChat." Read the help page. It's easy to understand. There are some disadvantages to FreeChat as compared to other chat programs, but it requires no downloads, is easy to use, and is stable across many platforms. During the meeting, if you wish to see new messages as quickly as possible, set refresh to 5 and click on the refresh button often. If this frequent refresh is hard on your eyes, set refresh to a longer period (20, 40) and use the refresh button sparingly. Note that new messages since the last refresh appear in a different color.

THE PANELISTS:

ANDREA BAKER, PH.D. is a sociologist at Ohio University who studies online relationships. In research conducted since May, l997, she has collected data by email and phone interviews from both partners of thirty-five couples who first met online, asking them how and where they met online and then f2f, sequencing of modes of communication, the relative importance of physical attraction, and advantages and disadvantages of online romances. A prelimary analysis appears in Computer-Mediated Communication, http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/jul/baker.html. Presentations include a paper at the "Exploring CyberSociety" Conference in Newcastle, England, July, l999. Working on a book proposal, she continues to collect data. She has been interviewed about her work by The Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, and a local television show. She also cohosts the Life Online conference at Howard Rheingold's Brainstorms, a virtual community. If you know couples who may qualify for her study, please have them contact her at bakera@ohiou.edu.

ROBIN HAMMAN (robin@cybersoc.com) is a researcher based at the Hypermedia Research Centre, University of Westminster, London. He is the editor of Cybersociology Magazine (http://www.cybersociology.com) and the owner of the resource site Cybersoc.com (http://www.cybersoc.com). He co-hosts the Life Online conference at Howard Rheingold's Brainstorms, a closed online community. In 1996, Robin conducted what was probably the first social-scientific study of cybersex chat when he wrote his MA thesis, "Cyborgasms". He has published articles about the Internet in The Independent, The Guardian, Mute Magazine, Web Guide Monthly, and a number of academic journals and edited collections. Robin has been interviewed about his work on cybersex by newspapers, magazines, and radio stations in the UK, Austria, Portugal, USA, Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa. He has also provided background information and contacts for a number of television programmes about romance and sex on the net.

STORM A. KING, M.S. is a doctoral candidate in a clinical psychology program. He has been researching the value of online self help groups for several years His dissertation in progress is "The therapeutic value of virtual self-help groups," a corralational study investigating the therapeutic value perceived by members of email groups that function as self-help groups. He has been quoted as an expert on Internet addiction or on the value of online self-help groups in the following major media publications; Newsweek, The Chicago Sun Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Home PC, Fox News Online and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He created and maintains Stormsite that lists resources for researchers interested in researching the psychology of virtual communities. He is the current president of The International Society for Mental Health Online. His CV may be viewed at http://webpages.charter.net/stormking/cv/

CLEO ODZER, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and author of Virtual Spaces: Sex and the Cyber Citizen (http://www.echonyc.com/~cleo/vs.html). S he also is webmaster for the drug rehabilitation program Daytop Village, producer of a public access TV show, and a pioneer of streaming video for the web (http://www.cleodv.com/realtv.html)

PEG ROBERTS is an "old-timer" moderator/wizard at the Electric Communities "Palace" sites, which are some of the oldest and largest of the multimedia chat communities. She has been involved in a few non-serious online romances and two serious ones that led to f2f meetings. Her current relationship has lasted for over three years. "The good friends before lovers theory has worked extremely well!"

"MYSTIC WARRIOR" has a in PhD Clinical Psychology with additional schooling in psychoanalysis. He is currently working as an organizational psychologist for large corporation and is author of the book "CyberBeds Don't Squeak".

DR. KIMBERLY YOUNG is an internationally known researcher, speaker, and writer on how technology impacts individuals and families. She recently authored, Caught in the Net, the first recovery book for Internet addiction and is the founder of the Center for On-Line Addiction, (http://www.netaddiction.com) , a consultation firm to corporations, educational institutions, and law enforcement agencies dealing with Internet misuse, online deviancy, and child protection. Dr. Young's work has been widely covered in the media including major articles in The New York Times, Newsweek, and Time and appearances on Fox News on Health, Good Morning America, and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Dr. Young serves on the editorial board for CyberPsychology and Behavior and is recently a guest editor for a special issue devoted to Internet addiction. Most recently, Dr.Young has served as an expert witness for divorce and child custody cases initiated by cyberaffairs, established the Cyberwidows Help Center and is currently writing her second book on the impact of online relationships on marriage and families.

JOHN SULER, Ph.D., (moderator for the panel) is Professor of Psychology at Rider University and a practicing clinical psychologist. His online hypertext book The Psychology of Cyberspace describes the results of his ongoing research on how individuals and groups behave in cyberspace. His work has been reported by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, the Chicago Sun Times, CNN, MSNBC, and US News and World Report, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is consulting editor for Behavior Online, a member of the editorial board of CyberPsychology and Behavior, an executive member of the International Society of Mental Health Online, editor of The Contemporary Media Forum for The Journal of Applied Psychoanalysis, and staff writer for Cybertowers Self-Help and Psychology Magazine. He also created and maintains several other large web sites, including Teaching Clinical Psychology and the award winning Zen Stories to Tell Your Neighbors.