Strategic Uses of Social Technology
An Interactive Perspective of Social Psychology

On an everyday basis, we communicate with one another using various technological media, such as text messaging, social networking tools, and electronic mail, in work, educational, and personal settings. As a consequence of the increasing frequency of use and importance of computer-supported interaction, social scientists in particular have heeded the call to understand the social processes involved in such interactions. In this volume, the editors explore how aspects of a situation interact with characteristics of a person to help explain our technologically supported social interactions. The person-by-situation interaction perspective recognizes the powerful role of the situation and social forces on behavior, thought, and emotion, but also acknowledges the importance of person variables in explaining social interaction, including power and gender, social influence, truth and deception, ostracism, and leadership. This important study is of great relevance to modern readers, who are more and more frequently using technology to communicate with one another.

1. Introduction: a social psychological analysis of computer-supported social interaction Zachary Birchmeier, Beth Dietz-Uhler and Garold Stasser; 2. A SIDE look at computer-mediated interaction: power and the gender divide Russell Spears, Martin Lea, Tom Postmes and Anka Wolbert; 3. Trust, deception, and identity on the internet Melanie C. Green and Jordan M. Carpenter; 4. An interactional approach to social influence in computer-mediated communication Kai Sassenberg; 5. Social interaction in cyberspace: social construction with few constraints Susanne Abele; 6. Dynamics of leader emergence in online groups Andrea B. Hollingshead; 7. Ostracism in cyberspace: being ignored and excluded in electronic-based interactions Eric D. Wesselmann and Kipling D. Williams; 8. Opinion-based groups: (racist) talk and (collective) action on the internet Craig McGarty, Girish Lala and Karen M. Douglas; 9. A juxtaposition of social influences: Web 2.0 and the interaction of mass, interpersonal, and peer sources online Joseph B. Walther, Stephanie Tom Tong, David C. DeAndrea, Caleb T. Carr and Brandon Van Der Heide; 10. The virtual social world: the continually changing landscape of social interaction Garold Stasser, Beth Dietz-Uhler and Zachary Birchmeier.

Dr Zachary Birchmeier is currently an Instructional Technology Support Specialist at Stephens College in Columbia, MO, USA. He received a PhD in Psychology from Miami University in 2004.
Beth Dietz-Uhler is Professor of Psychology at Miami University. Her research interests include intragroup and intergroup behavior, reactions to threats to social identity, sport fans and spectators, and computer-mediated communication.
Garold Stasser is Professor of Psychology at Miami University. His published work has appeared in the Psychological Review, the Review of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Inquiry, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. His research interests are communication in decision-making groups, coordination of social behavior, collective choice and problem solving and computational models of social interaction.