The Moral Matter of an Interactive Online Domain - A philosophical and empirical exploration of how our relation with the online domain mediates online morality
Jan Bats is a PhD student the Department of Philosophy. His supervisor is prof.dr.ir. P.P.C.C. Verbeek from the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social sciences (BMS).
Today, much of the world comes to me via clicking buttons. In the online domain, I communicate with both friends and strangers, I find both information and entertainment, and I encounter both friendship and hostility.
At first sight in these examples, the role of the online domain in these practices seems clear. The online domain facilitates communication and information services. But, is the online domain indeed merely a technological facilitator of relations between users and between users and online information? Is the online domain simply a neutral extension of general human practices, or does its role reach further?
In this dissertation, I have investigated an additional role of how the online domain shapes our online practices. The online does not only facilitate relations between users, the functions of online environments often allow for an active relation with the online domain itself: we open search engines to find information that we can use, and we personalize our social media platforms. Before we have an relation with other people and content, we have a relation with the technology itself. Based on this starting point, this dissertation has developed an answer regarding how we can understand the significance of our active relation with the online domain in our online moral practices.
In the first part of this dissertation I examine how our active relation with the online domain itself can be understood. Based on the ontological properties of the virtual domain, I categorize and explain two types of relations that users can have with virtual and online domains. (1) The operational interactive relation, or operational interactivity, refers to the potential to navigate through virtual places and to the functional ability to use virtual objects that logically follow actions and provide a natural informational response (e.g., clicking hyperlinks, copy/paste functions). (2) The personalized interactive relation, or personalized interactivity, refers to the potential to modify online places and objects to personal preferences that persist across sessions (e.g., uploading background, setting font). Then, I argue that because of these interactive relations with the online domain, users perceive it as a personally controllable domain in which they can decide what happens. And this perception may affect their online moral practices.
How users’ active relation with the online domain shapes their online moral practices is further examined via empirical studies. Based on diary research, focus groups, and experiments several aspects were identified how users’ active relation with the online domain shape their online moral practices. (1) An interactive relation with the online domain stimulates self-interested behavior. It was found when users perceive a high-personalized interactive relation with the online domain, they are more stimulated to benefit the self, even when it comes at the cost of others. (2) An interactive relation with the online domain amplifies responses in online interpersonal contact. When users perceive an high-operational or high-interactive relation with the online domain, this can cause users to provide friends and peers with more positive responses and provide perceived strangers with amplified negative responses.
(3) Users that experience a high-personalized interactive relation with the online domain show more emphasis on individual responsibility in that domain. It was found that a high-personalized interactive relation with an online platform encourages participants to focus more on the importance of individual merit when they assess social scenarios. Furthermore, it was found that psychological ownership over the domain plays a role in this effect.
Based on the results, in the last part of my dissertation, I introduce the moral matter of interactivity as an explanation for our online moral practices to the already existing explanations. The moral matter of interactivity relates to the aspect that an interactive relation with the online domain can play a mediating role in users’ online moral practices.
Analyzing online moral practices from the viewpoint of our active relation with the online domain provides new insights in our online moral practices. Regarding interpersonal contact, this analysis helps to explain why online contact between friends is so successful. In highly interactive online places, users feel more committed and involved toward their friends and peers because friends are met in a domain that is considered personally controlled and involving.
The results also aid in our understanding of online aggression and hostility. This dissertation suggests that, when users engage with opposing views in their personalized interactive online domain, their responses may be intensified. Because high-personalized interactivity encourages users to make stronger judgments and deprive others based on individual competence, users may attack others who do not comply with their standards of individual worth. This effect may encourage users to provoke others whom they think are overweight or ugly, have wrong political ideas, and so on. And it may provide an additional explanation as to why cyberbullying can have a high psychological impact. Victims are harassed in a platform that is normally perceived as a safe and personally controlled place.
In addition, the results provide an explanation for why people are encouraged to share homemade and commercial content, even when this may not be advisable. When they can gather and find content in their own personalized domain, they feel entitled to use and distribute it without much moral concern.
In sum, this dissertation shows that the online domain is not only a facilitator of (im)moral practices, our active relation with the online domain also plays a role in our online moral practices.
