This thesis examines the use of computer-mediated communication for lie-detection and interpersonal deceit. The literature within the fields of lie-detection and mediated communication are reviewed and it is proposed that there is a lack of knowledge surrounding how people use CMC to deceive one another. Qualitative research was carried out in order to address this shortcoming, exploring the self-reported experiences of chat room users who have been exposed to online deceit. Reports were provided that describe the misrepresentation of age, gender, vocation, affection, and appearance. The importance of stereotypes in driving suspicions is also emphasised within the reports. It is suggested that this key characteristic has more dominance in CMC than it would do face-to-face because of the occlusion of the traditional nonstrategic clues to deceit. Evidence for an alternative set of nonstrategic leakage clues was examined further by conducting a variant of the Guilty-Knowledge test within the context of a CMC based crime. It was found that participants exhibited a response time inhibition effect when presented with 'guilty knowledge' and that this effect was detectable through a standard two-button mouse. The use of such nonstrategic cues to deceit was explored further in a study that examined how CMC might be used to add additional control to a Statement Validity Assessment truth-validation test. It was found that the content analysis technique used by SVA was unable in its present form to correctly distinguish between truthful and fabricated statements of participants interviewed using a CMC chat program. In addition, it was found that the deletion-behaviours of participants fabricating a story within CMC provided no quantitative or qualitative evidence that they were lying.

This research uses observation, interviews and content analysis to examine the perceived and actual risks arising from Internet use in eight educational establishments. The majority of staff interviewed expressed concern about online pornography and the dangers of web based chat rooms. Additionally staff were anxious about the risks posed by hate engendering sites, websites encouraging experimentation, copyright infringement and threats to network security. In considering these school Internet risk narratives I make a distinction between concern that the student is "at risk" and that they are "dangerous”, posing a threat to the institution. I point out that in the primary schools staff talked about students solely as being "at risk", whereas in secondary schools this concern was tempered with the view that students misusing the school Internet also posed a danger to the institution. In the post-16 college Internet risks were almost solely expressed in terms of the "dangerous student". While only a sparse student risk narrative existed, with a few students anxious about on-line pornography, chat-lines and security there was non-verbal evidence indicating that students were worried about being punished for misusing the Internet. In assessing the "student- at-risk", I argue that exposure to pornography via the school Internet was not likely to pose an actual risk, while undesirable others in chat rooms, hateful websites and sites encouraging experimentation all posed actual, though statistically remote, risks. Considering the Internet activities of the "dangerous student", I found little evidence to suggest that the issues of school image, staff authority and copyright should be a source of great concern, although I note that school network security was an actual risk which deserves more attention. Finally, I consider institutional attempts to control Internet use and alleviate some of these perceived and actual risks through the use of rhetoric, exclusion and surveillance.

Chat rooms are of enormous interest to social network researchers as they are one of the most interactive internet areas. To understand the behaviour of users in a chat room, there have been studies on the analysis of the Response Waiting Time (RWT) based on traditional approaches of aggregating the network contacts. However, real social networks are dynamic and properties such as RWT change over time. Unfortunately, the traditional approach focuses only on static network and neglecting the temporal variation in RWT which may have lead to misrepresentation of the true nature of RWT. In order to determine the true nature of RWT, we analyse and compare the RWT of three online chat room logs (Walford, IRC and T-REX) putting into consideration the dynamic nature of RWT. Our research shows that the distribution of the RWT exhibits multi-scaling behaviour, which signi cantly a ects the current views on the nature of RWT. This is a shift from simple power-law distribution to a more complex pattern. The previous study on users RWT between pairs of people claims that the RWT has a power-law distribution with an exponent of 1. However, our research shows that multi-scaling behaviour and the exponent has a wider range of values which depend on the environment and time of day. The di erent exponents observed on di erent time scales suggest that the time context or environment has a signi cant in uence on users RWT. Furthermore, using the chat characterise, we predicted the factors which could minimize response waiting time and improving the friendship connection during online chat sessions. We apply our ndings to design an algorithm for chat thread detection. Here, we proposed two variations of cluster algorithm. The rst algorithm involves the traditional approach while in the second one, the temporal variations in RWT was taken into consideration to capture the dynamic nature of a text stream. An advantage of our proposed method over the previous models is that previous models have involved highly computationally intensive methods and often lead to deterioration in the accuracy of the result whereas our proposed approach uses a simple and effective sequential thread detection method, which is less computationally intensive.

The Internet allows individuals to make contact with other individuals, without divulging personal details or information. This means that the user has the choice to remain anonymous. Although the Internet has numerous advantages, the anonymity with which it can be used could cause certain problems. The anonymous nature of the Internet makes it extremely difficult to determine who is gaining access to personal information about Internet users. Thus it becomes an ideal avenue for paedophiles to gain access to information about adolescents and to use this information in the process to get close to, and to abuse them. Few parents who allow their children to use the Internet are aware of paedophiles’ activities on the Internet. This dearth of knowledge about the ways in which paedophiles operate, necessitates that parents and guardians should be educated about the potential dangers the Internet could hold for their children. This is especially necessary “as computers are becoming more and more a part of our daily lives, and computer literacy is a necessity in today’s computer driven world” (Haupt, 2001:26). Within this study the qualitative approach has been used. Interviewing was used as a method of data collection. The purpose of the interviews was to probe particular aspects in depth. An interview schedule was used during the interviews as a guide for the interviewer, and contained relevant questions which ensured that all the necessary aspects were covered during the interview. The focus of the interviews was to determine new avenues that paedophiles utilise to approach children for sexual purposes. In addition, the interviewer enquired if the experts have dealt with South African case studies, where an individual used the Internet to gain access to children. The adequacy of current South African legislation regarding child pornography and sexual activities with adolescents via the Internet was explored. Research participants were asked to discuss the existence of preventative measures to curb the use of the Internet for the enticement of adolescents for sexual purposes. Subsequently the existence of awareness campaigns to make parents or caregivers and children more aware of the dangers that the Internet poses for adolescents was discussed. After conducting the interviews, they were transcribed and interpreted. The research findings derived from the interviews were categorised and these categories were discussed. The analysis of the data indicate that the global problem with regards to the use of the Internet as an avenue to initiate sexual activities with adolescents is still vaguely grasped in South Africa. The fact that only one reported case of a child in South Africa that was approached by a paedophile online was identified, accentuates the dearth of knowledge regarding this social problem. Although it is not easily detectable, it is still a serious problem that needs to be attended to, especially when taking into account that more than three million South Africans have access to the Internet. In addition, children spend the majority of their leisure time using computers and being on the Internet (CIA – The world factbook: Communications South Africa, n.d.). Thus, this problem can only become worse in future. The Internet can be the child’s best friend, or worst enemy. Therefore it is the responsibility of all parents, guardians and the community to protect children against the negative aspects of the Internet. / Dissertation (MA (Criminology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Social Work and Criminology / MA / unrestricted

Each new medium of communication that has emerged over the past century and more has generated concern over its alleged negative effect on children. This concern has (in most cases) generated a moral panic, involving campaigning by moral guardians and office spokespeople, calls for greater regulation and subsequent response from the government or designated regulators. Based on continued inconclusive media effects research and debates over adults' and children's rights, regulation has become increasingly problematic. Such questions as how far you should restrict and protect children and how it may be possible to balance protection with rights, are complex and fraught with practical difficulties. These are the kind of questions that regulators have currently to consider. In addition, media convergence and internet technology threaten traditional regulatory structures. Such developments pose a further regulatory quandary. How are regulators attempting to tackle these issues? The thesis attempts to examine this question by exploring how regulators have responded to panics over children's media and whether their attempts have resulted in robust regulatory systems. The regulation systems analysed embrace advertising and obesity, internet chat-rooms and grooming, video games and violence and cinema regulation (the 12A classification). Case studies of these particular areas of current concern show how regulation has developed and how it works in practice, assess whether such regulation is effective and if not, recommends ways in which it could be improved.

A presente dissertação tem por objeto de análise os chats, as salas de bate-papo da Internet, de uma maneira algo diferenciada. Não se trata de cercar o objeto, mas de tentar alguma conversa com ele, de acompanhá-lo pelos bits afora. Grosso modo, este trabalho se divide em três partes principais ou capítulos. O primeiro capítulo trata de pôr a nu a relação entre pesquisador e objeto, e parte de sua composição encontra-se redigida em primeira pessoa. A idéia é mostrar como o objeto se apresenta ao pesquisador. Ou, reformulando em termos teóricos, como o sujeito (categoria que não usaremos neste trabalho) pode se comportar frente às investidas furtivas do objeto. O excerto final deste capítulo, Modus Operandi, trata da questão metodológica que guiará todo o texto ora apresentado. O segundo capítulo, onde as questões da subjetividade estão muito presentes, trata de mapear as mínimas unidades da cibercultura, seus personagens-bolha, e seu particular nomadismo na construção e desconstrução da tessitura social. Guerra, Controle, Terrorismo, são muitas as formas que a comunicação cibercultural toma e que não encontra uma tradução precisa antes da sociedade em rede. Isso quer dizer que as relações de poder também estão redesenhadas. Os dois últimos excertos deste capítulo procuram trabalhar como essas modalidades estranhas da comunicação espectral são vividas na contemporaneidade: como funcionam essas máquinas de subjetividade. O terceiro e último capítulo prende-se majoritariamente à questão da escritura do medium. Trata-se de discutir uma vez mais, embora por outro veio, como essas unidades compõem o texto imaterial da vida em rede. O debate sobre a linguagem, a imaginação e a sedução de um texto que já é em si mesmo uma imagem é parte de uma discussão que a teoria da comunicação não pode mais se furtar. Não bastaria discutir apenas como uma nova subjetividade é gerada por essas modalidades comunicacionais, também é preciso identificar como tais modalidades criam toda uma nova lógica comunicacional, como o ciclo se fecha e, assim, cria realidade. / The present dissertation concerns Internet chat-rooms making an effort to work them with a different approach. It is not about surrounding the object but trying a kind of conversation with them. It is an attempt to pursue it across bits. Roughly speaking, this work is divided in three major chapters or sections: The first chapter intends to clarify the relation between researcher and object embraced in this work. In fact, some parts of this chapter are written in first person. The point is to show how this object (chatrooms) comes to the researcher. In theoretical terms, it is to say how subject (a concept no longer used on this work) can represent itself with such a shifty object. The last extract on this chapter, Modus Operandi, is about the very methodological issue that guides this investigation. It is on the second chapter that subjectiveness comes to surface. It is an attempt to map these little spots in cyberculture we call bubble-characters and also to point out their very nomad technique of doing and undoing culture. War, Control and Terrorism: electronic communication presents a vast amount of phenomena not clearly referred previous to this networking era. That means power has also been shaped in fresh new ways. The last two excerpts of this chapter concerns this strange modality in spectral communication. It is about how these subjectivity machines work on contemporaneity. The third and last chapter is mostly about the writing style this medium brings on. Once again, the aim is to discuss how this intangible and networked text turns to be composed by small clusters called nicks. It is focused on language, imagination, and a seduction of the text which is an image itself. These are all questions theory of communication can no longer evade. However, it is not enough to just discuss how interactivity on Internet creates new subjectivity. It is also important to identify how these interactions create a new logic of communication conspicuously innovative. It is mandatory to identify how this feedback circuit works thus creating reality.

A presente dissertação tem por objeto de análise os chats, as salas de bate-papo da Internet, de uma maneira algo diferenciada. Não se trata de cercar o objeto, mas de tentar alguma conversa com ele, de acompanhá-lo pelos bits afora. Grosso modo, este trabalho se divide em três partes principais ou capítulos. O primeiro capítulo trata de pôr a nu a relação entre pesquisador e objeto, e parte de sua composição encontra-se redigida em primeira pessoa. A idéia é mostrar como o objeto se apresenta ao pesquisador. Ou, reformulando em termos teóricos, como o sujeito (categoria que não usaremos neste trabalho) pode se comportar frente às investidas furtivas do objeto. O excerto final deste capítulo, Modus Operandi, trata da questão metodológica que guiará todo o texto ora apresentado. O segundo capítulo, onde as questões da subjetividade estão muito presentes, trata de mapear as mínimas unidades da cibercultura, seus personagens-bolha, e seu particular nomadismo na construção e desconstrução da tessitura social. Guerra, Controle, Terrorismo, são muitas as formas que a comunicação cibercultural toma e que não encontra uma tradução precisa antes da sociedade em rede. Isso quer dizer que as relações de poder também estão redesenhadas. Os dois últimos excertos deste capítulo procuram trabalhar como essas modalidades estranhas da comunicação espectral são vividas na contemporaneidade: como funcionam essas máquinas de subjetividade. O terceiro e último capítulo prende-se majoritariamente à questão da escritura do medium. Trata-se de discutir uma vez mais, embora por outro veio, como essas unidades compõem o texto imaterial da vida em rede. O debate sobre a linguagem, a imaginação e a sedução de um texto que já é em si mesmo uma imagem é parte de uma discussão que a teoria da comunicação não pode mais se furtar. Não bastaria discutir apenas como uma nova subjetividade é gerada por essas modalidades comunicacionais, também é preciso identificar como tais modalidades criam toda uma nova lógica comunicacional, como o ciclo se fecha e, assim, cria realidade. / The present dissertation concerns Internet chat-rooms making an effort to work them with a different approach. It is not about surrounding the object but trying a kind of conversation with them. It is an attempt to pursue it across bits. Roughly speaking, this work is divided in three major chapters or sections: The first chapter intends to clarify the relation between researcher and object embraced in this work. In fact, some parts of this chapter are written in first person. The point is to show how this object (chatrooms) comes to the researcher. In theoretical terms, it is to say how subject (a concept no longer used on this work) can represent itself with such a shifty object. The last extract on this chapter, Modus Operandi, is about the very methodological issue that guides this investigation. It is on the second chapter that subjectiveness comes to surface. It is an attempt to map these little spots in cyberculture we call bubble-characters and also to point out their very nomad technique of doing and undoing culture. War, Control and Terrorism: electronic communication presents a vast amount of phenomena not clearly referred previous to this networking era. That means power has also been shaped in fresh new ways. The last two excerpts of this chapter concerns this strange modality in spectral communication. It is about how these subjectivity machines work on contemporaneity. The third and last chapter is mostly about the writing style this medium brings on. Once again, the aim is to discuss how this intangible and networked text turns to be composed by small clusters called nicks. It is focused on language, imagination, and a seduction of the text which is an image itself. These are all questions theory of communication can no longer evade. However, it is not enough to just discuss how interactivity on Internet creates new subjectivity. It is also important to identify how these interactions create a new logic of communication conspicuously innovative. It is mandatory to identify how this feedback circuit works thus creating reality.

Cette thèse porte sur les discours relatifs à l’allaitement maternel dans les forums de discussion sur Internet. L’enjeu est d’aborder les pratiques discursives des participants au regard des discours d’experts en la matière, qu’ils soient d’ordre institutionnels, relèvent de l’édition ou de la presse grand public de vulgarisation de la puériculture, ou d’associations de promotion de l’allaitement maternel. Nous avons choisi comme approche pour cette démarche une construction conceptuelle empruntée à Antonio Negri et Michael Hardt, l’aliénation autonome. Pouvant être définie comme le processus supposant autant l’interaction de chacun des membres de la société au travers d’appareils disciplinaires, certes plus diffus et plus nombreux que dans la société de contrôle, mais bien existants et actifs, que la conformation individuelle de chacun au discours social dominant, cette construction conceptuelle, appliquée aux discours relatifs à l’allaitement maternel, permet de mettre en évidence les rapports entre le discours des experts et celui des internautes sur les forums de discussion. La première partie est consacrée à un examen des travaux à la fois sur l’allaitement maternel et sur Internet et à l’élaboration de ce cadre théorique centré sur le concept d’aliénation autonome. La seconde partie est une analyse des discours relatifs à l’allaitement maternel, tels qu’on peut les trouver dans l’édition, la presse spécialisée, les publications institutionnelles et celles des associations de promotion de l’allaitement maternel, afin de dégager les différentes thématiques de ce discours. Elles servent de référentiel pour l’analyse du discours des internautes dans la troisième partie. Cette analyse a été réalisée conjointement à partir des données fournies par le logiciel d’analyse lexicométrique « Pistes » et grâce à la méthode d’analyse de contenu. Reprenant les thèmes et arguments du discours dominant sur l’allaitement maternel, interprétant les réalités auxquelles ils sont confrontés en fonction des éléments discursifs qui leur sont ainsi fournis, les internautes incarnent ici le concept d’aliénation autonome. Mais à travers certaines résistances qui parviennent à s’exprimer contre la « doxa de l’allaitement maternel », ils illustrent aussi une autre conceptualisation d’Antonio Negri et de Michael Hardt : celle de « multitude ». / This thesis concerns the discourses about breast feeding in the Internet chat rooms. The aim is to focus on the discursive practices of the participants from the expert discourses viewpoint. The concerned discourses can be institutional ones, publishing ones, from baby care popularization popular press or from associations promoting breast feeding. We chose to approach the point with a conceptual construction borrowed to Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt : the autonomous alienation. This conceptual construction that can be defined as a process with the interaction of each society member through disciplinary apparatus that are - it is true -more diffuse and numerous than in the control society but real and active, as well as the individual conformation of each one to the prevailing social discourse, applied to breast feeding discourse allows to put into relieve the links between the expert discourses and the one of net surfers in chat rooms. The first part is dedicated not only to an exam of the works on breast feeding on the Internet but also to the elaboration of the theorical frame focused on the autonomous alienation concept. The second part is an analysis of the breast feeding discourses that we can find in publishing business, specialized newspapers, institutional publications and the publications of associations promoting breast feeding. The goal is to put into relieve the different themes that will be used as references for the discourse analysis of net surfers in the third part. This analysis is based on data from the word count analysis software called “Pistes” and also owing to the content analysis method.If we look at the themes and arguments of the main discourse about breast feeding that interprets the realities they are confronted to, according to the discursive elements that are given to them, net surfers represent here the autonomous alienation concept. But through some resistances that can be expressed against the “breast feeding doxa”, they also represent another conceptualization of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt : the “multitude” one.

<p dir="ltr">One of the issues on social media that is expanding the fastest is children being exposed to predators online [ 1 ]. Due to the ease with which a larger segment of the younger population may now access the Internet, online grooming activity on social media has grown to be a significant social concern. Child grooming, in which adults and minors exchange sexually explicit text and media via social media platforms, is a typical component of online child exploitation. An estimated 500,000 predators operate online every day. According to estimates, Internet chat rooms and instant messaging are where 89% of sexual approaches against children take place. The child may face a variety of unpleasant consequences following a grooming event, including shame, anger, anxiety, tension, despair, and substance abuse which make it more difficult for them to report the exploitation. A substantial amount of research in this domain has focused on identifying certain vulnerabilities of the victims of grooming. These vulnerabilities include specific age groups, gender, psychological factors, no family support, and lack of good social relations which make young people more vulnerable to grooming. So far no technical work has been done to apply statistical analysis on these vulnerability profiles and observe how these patterns change between different victim types and offender types. This work presents a detailed analysis of the effect of Offender type (contact and fantasy) and victim type (Law Enforcement Officers, Real Victims and Decoys (Perverted Justice)) on representation of different vulnerabilities in grooming conversations. Comparison of different victim groups would provide insights into creating the right training material for LEOs and decoys and help in the training process for online sting operations. Moreover, comparison of different offender types would help create targeted prevention strategies to tackle online child grooming and help the victims.</p>

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Paulo de Tarso Roma de Oliveira.pdf: 844964 bytes, checksum: fdb0c052ff3fd8c7da83b6a1f7b54517 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-09-24 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Young people have been experiencing nowadays, a new type of gathering: the virtual talks in chat rooms, in which they are able to discuss openly and straightforwardly on themes related to their age and way of life. In this special occasion, their behavior and response, concerning particular issues, are somewhat different from those observed in other contexts, like school. Said occurrence led me to conduct this research, in which I seek to resolve the following questions: How do adolescents build their point of view in different social contexts, in a real environment (school class), and in a virtual one (chat room)? What does this point out to? Furthermore: How could the diversity in responses found in distinct environments contribute in the development of more effective methodologies on the teaching of the Mother Tongue? The theoretical tool herein used by me was Martin & White s Appraisal System (2005), which is derived from metafunctional studies developed by Halliday (1989, 1994) in Systemic-functional Linguistics, more precisely the Interpersonal Metafunction which deals with the functions that people take on social relations/interactions. After the analysis of the available data, and the perception of significant differences in the adolescents written production in both researched environments, it was clear to acknowledge the link between language and context, and also the fact that chat rooms could become an excellent environment for teachers to work, once they present themselves able to perceive their students experiences and thus propose learning strategies fit to their students characteristics / Os jovens vêm vivenciando um novo tipo de agrupamento, os encontros virtuais em salas de bate-papo, onde podem discutir abertamente, e com maior nível de espontaneidade, temas relevantes à sua idade e modo de viver. Nesses ambientes, a expressão de opinião sobre determinados temas revela-se diferente daquela que é observada em outros contextos, como a escola, por exemplo. Esta percepção me levou a efetuar a presente pesquisa, na qual busco responder às seguintes questões: Como adolescentes da mesma idade constroem pontos de vista em contextos sociais distintos, no ambiente presencial (sala de aula) e no ambiente virtual (sala de bate-papo)? E o que isso sinaliza? E ainda: Como a questão da diversidade de respostas em diferentes contextos de situação pode contribuir para a formulação de metodologias mais eficazes de ensino da língua materna? A ferramenta teórica por mim utilizada é o Sistema de Avaliatividade desenvolvido por Martin & White (2005), o qual deriva-se dos estudos de Metafunção desenvolvidos por Halliday (1989, 1994) na Lingüística Sistêmico- Funcional, mais precisamente a Metafunção Interpessoal, que lida com os papéis que as pessoas assumem nas relações/interações sociais. Após a análise dos dados, e da percepção de diferenças significativas na produção textual dos adolescentes nos dois ambientes pesquisados, ficou evidente a vinculação entre linguagem e contexto, e que as salas de bate-papo podem se constituir em excelentes ambientes para o trabalho do professor, desde que consiga perceber as experiências que seus alunos vivenciam nele e proporem estratégias de aprendizagem adequadas às suas características