Virtual Communication Under Surveillance Essay

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The safety of people’s data, as well as their security, have always been major issues in public policy. However, the existence of a rather rigid set of rules and regulations restricts the actions of potential criminals. The advent of the information technology era, however, has affected the modern public policy to a considerable extent. Since the transfer of the existing public policy into the cyber reality is fraught with a range of complexities, people have become much more vulnerable. The enhancement of online users’ security as the extension of the public policy into the cyberspace presupposes that the users should agree to their private conversations being analyzed by the security service, which poses a dilemma between the invasion of privacy by the state and by culprits. Therefore, it is crucial to test whether communication within the environment of virtual reality is possible once its participants are aware of being watched by the corresponding public service authorities and whether the specified strategy may be efficient

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The research hypothesis is that the state of knowledge about the possible supervision of the communication process, as well as the fact that the data provided by the conversation participants is collected by the state authorities and stored in the governmental database, will affect the communication process by reducing the imitativeness among the participants. It is supposed that the very existence of online communication will be jeopardized with the introduction of statewide supervision systems into the realm of the Internet.

The key concepts that will be utilized in the course of the experiment include cyber reality, communication, discourse, online communication, information security, and personal safety. Communication is traditionally defined as the process of exchanging ideas. Discourse is traditionally defined as any form of conversation, whether written or oral. Information security presupposes the safety of an individual’s data, whereas personal safety means being protected from any form of damage. The cyber reality, in its turn, is the online environment, in which people may communicate, either anonymously or under their real names.

The level of users’ engagement and security can be identified as the dependent variable. The independent variables include users’ awareness of their messages being read (Variable A), the environment, where no supervision occurs (Variable B), and the opportunity for using nicknames in the chat room (Variable C). It is assumed that the proactiveness rates in the communication process drop with the introduction of Variable A and Variable C, yet will drop inevitably if Variable B is introduced; in other words, supervision will jeopardize the very existence of online communication.

The experiment that will be used for gathering the required data can be defined as a controlled one. The controlled experiment will take around two hours and consist of two stages. The participants (20 random people aged 21–35) will be split into two groups, i.e., Group A (experimental group) and Group B (control group). At first, both groups will be introduced to an online site with the option of chatting and sending personal messages incognito. A conflicting topic will be chosen for the discussion. Twenty minutes later, the participants will evaluate their opponents’ responses on the Likert scale based on the parameters such as confidence, aggression, originality, etc. Afterward, Group A participants will be told that their messages will be available for the researchers as well as the messages in the chat room from this moment on. Group B participants will be unaware of the specified fact. The second evaluation of the respondents will ensue. In the course of the analysis, ten random responses of the participants will be used as samples, which will later be analyzed to make a relevant conclusion concerning the outcomes.

The fact that the sampling process will be carried out randomly predetermines the internal validity of the study and is the key source thereof. Also, the fact that the number of participants is quite large allows suggesting that the study outcomes will apply to other scenarios similar to the proposed one. Finally, the existence of two groups of participants, i.e., the control group and the working group, can be considered another source of internal validity, as it helps approximate the study results.

It is assumed that the introduction of the supervision factor will most likely not only reduce the number of negative factors (e.g., aggression, trolling, etc.) but also harm the communication process considerably, making people less confident in their conversation and losing interest in the discussion quickly. Therefore, the initial hypothesis is very likely to be accepted and the fact that statewide supervision affects the process of online communication negatively will be proven.

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As far as further researches are concerned, new studies can be improved by selecting several methods of data retrieval. Thus, the information will be less subjective. Also, a mixed (qualitative and quantitative) research design should be used so that the outcomes of the research could be made measurable and that a means of quantifying the threats to online communication could be created.

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IvyPanda. (2020) 'Virtual Communication Under Surveillance'. 3 July.

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IvyPanda. 2020. "Virtual Communication Under Surveillance." July 3, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-communication-under-surveillance/.

1. IvyPanda. "Virtual Communication Under Surveillance." July 3, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-communication-under-surveillance/.


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IvyPanda. "Virtual Communication Under Surveillance." July 3, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-communication-under-surveillance/.

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