Editorial

Cyber spaces – social interactions Long before learning the meaning of the term cyber, I used to write articles about real spaces for human interactions where humans may form networks. Human networks have existed throughout history in various forms, such as clubs, sects, brotherhoods, guilds, gangs, and political parties. Forming such networks required sharing the same physical space, at least for a certain time. This meant members of a network needed common space to develop social mores, but not always for the entire lifespan of that network. In the year 2000, it seemed as if the time had come to leave the physical space because the virtual space offered even better chances of developing relationships. Just five days before writing this editorial, I happened to walk in the area of the City of London where a complex of buildings has existed for ages, The Inns of Court in London, for me an excellent example of forming a network in a common space. Since their inception in the Middle Ages, the Inns of Court have been devoted to the technical study of English law, rather than Roman law, as was taught in the universities. The ties created by this common interest were supported by common space, such as libraries that could be used by students as well as lawyers. The main common space, The Temple, a series of buildings associated with the legal profession, lies between Fleet Street and the Embankment in the City of London. When the members had to leave to work somewhere else in the vast empire, they became members of a virtual community held together by ships, mail, and later telegraphy. While organising a congress about worldwide work, our WWW, including a series of virtual meetings, I always had the Inns of Court in mind. Would we be able to create a virtual space that would perform better than they did for centuries? Well, the first attempt did not end as a success story. The participants preferred to join physical meetings rather than our virtual get-together. Although those 15 years between then and now are no more than a blink of an eye, when measured in historical time scales of the development of some human networks we seem to live in a different world in which a considerable part of all living humans is connected by so-called social networks (SNs). Do they really help develop social entities with intensive interactions? This issue starts with an activity most people love, gaming, dealing with an aspect most of them are likely to hate, cheating. Online games were known long before Internet became a buzzword, and even in the era of hardwired terminals academics all around the world made one exception to their common habit of disagreeing, gaming is fun. From modem-driven online games to massive multiplayer online games it took more than a blink of an eye, but not much more. In the year 2013, a Guinness world record was established with an incredible number of users playing Runescape. Since nobody believes in aliens invading the world of online games, the alleged number of players could only exceed the number of humans on the planet multiple times if many players were robots; another use of technology to cheat. Vivian Hsueh-Hua Chen, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Yuehua Wu, School of Media and Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, report a study on the impact of anonymity on game cheating. Does group identification help? Their study employed a survey to examine the influence of anonymity and salience of group identification in gaming on game cheating behaviours. A total of 1400 paper–pencil surveys was randomly distributed at all neighbourhood centres and the nearest Mass Rapid Transit railway stations in Singapore. The respondents returned 961 valid responses. The effect of anonymity on game cheating was found to be significantly mediated by the group identification with online gaming communities/groups. Male gamers cheated more frequently than female gamers. Female gamers are more likely to cheat as a consequence of group identification than male gamers. One consequence of cheating beyond online games may be having ex-partners. People who had been married before becoming ex-partners are likely to meet each other in courtrooms or similar spaces for hearings or trial. But what is the likelihood of meeting an ex in a group with a number of members equal to that of the population of China? Chia-Wen Tsai, Department of Information Management, and Pei-Di Shen and Yi-Chun Chiang, Teacher Education Center, all from Ming Chuan University, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China, have managed to survey 202 Facebook users aged 16–65 years with the aim of exploring their subsequent emotions and behaviour when they re-encountered their ex-partners on these SNs. They used a 79-question online survey to examine users’ emotion and behaviour (state anxiety, trait anxiety, and severity of depression) when their ex-partners reappeared. Persons who accepted former partners’ invitations to become Facebook friends were much more depressed than those who did not. In addition, the authors found that gender generates significant differences in the severity of depression. I am not sure if we should accept the proposal of the authors