User:ForrestCyber/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Cyberpsychology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I specifically have chosen the topic of ‘Cyberpsychology’ as I’m currently in a Doctoral of Science degree program in Cybersecurity. I have currently attained my Bachelor of Applied Science, Master of Science, and up to fiften industry standard certifications in Information Technology/Cybersecurity. However, until this Doctoral of Science, I had not heard of Cyberpsychology in of my academic, or professional career. From my experiences, many programs had taught primarily to a technical approach, mentioning the need for user awareness and training, but rarely covering considerations to achieve this.

I had approached this article with an open mindset. The study of Cyberpsychology is relatively niche, and still is being professionally researched across multiple fields. With such, I approached this article with an assumption there may be a lack of information. When I did an initial review of this article, the language used was presented as more of a narrative to explain information, rather than a neutral approach to detail information. With such, my preliminary impression suggested that this article was still being debated professionally and academically for what exactly this interdisiplinary field includes.

Evaluate the article
From my evaluation of “Cyberpsychology,” I found the lead section wanting. Before the overview of the topic, a single sentence is provided to deliver insights into what the page’s subject is. This sentence does not clearly describe the article’s topic, as the significant sections throughout the article deal with concepts this sentence does not explore. Further, this sentence is directly plagiarized from its source without any changes to the phrasing or terminology. While this source is, as well, an academic research group, the definition is seemingly pulled from an arbitrary professional body, ignoring any peer-reviewed definitions.

The lead section extends into the article’s “Overview” section. This section includes grammatical errors with running lists that do not correctly have comma placements in the first sentence. As the section continues, each sentence appears to have been written independently of each other and just added on. In one sentence, the domains of Cyberpsychology are suggested to be specific areas of virtual reality, the internet, cell phones, and social media that impact human behavior. In the following sentence, “hot topics” are defined that go beyond the scope of the previous list, including an “etc.” in the sentence despite stating these as “hot topics.” The following sentence further broadens this scope, including cyborgs and AI, while expanding the scope beyond human behavior and arbitrarily stating “ramifications” (without defining what that exactly entails) on psychology. Finally, the last sentence expresses the entire field of Cybersecurity is a part of Cyberpsychology. Through all of these sentences, the “Overview” verbiage suggests opinions and thoughts as facts, unlike any peer-reviewed research.

The article's content does not entirely fit what is defined in the lead section. The significant sections outside of the lead within the article are “Professional bodies,” “Social media and cyberpsychological behavior,” “Psychotherapy in cyberspace,” “In popular culture,” and “See also.” Only a single section, “Social media and cyberpsychological behavior,” has subsequent sections that entail psychological impacts related to addiction, depression, eating disorders, and others. Many of the items discussed in the lead section are not included in the article, specifically with any cyborg or artificial intelligence information lacking in the article. Additionally, the “Hot topics” that were listed in the lead are not explored or observed explicitly, with a lack of “gender” anywhere in the article outside of the lead with “online gender-switching.”

The “Professional bodies” section includes some professional organizations exploring research into Cyberpsychology; however, it is not holistic and uniform. In this section, there are two citations for the “British Psychological Society,” one linking to its homepage and one to its specific section for Cyberpsychology, and only a single source to the American Psychological Association to one particular section that includes Cyberpsychology. This section then cites an academic journal in the Czech Republic but does not cite the journal “Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,” an additional academic journal that covers Cyberpsychology. Seemingly, it would be appropriate to break out the Professional bodies” section into two separate sections, one being professional organizations and one being academic journals. Additionally, this section, in its current state, makes claims that are not backed up by the sources it cites, such as the founding date of the Cyberpsychology section of the British Psychological Society.

The most developed section of the article “Social media and cyberpsychological behavior” begins the section with vocabulary to tell a story, as opposed to informing of facts. The first sentence, stating “it was around the turn of the millennium,” does not provide factual information, dates, or specifics. Instead, it solely provides a narrative point of view. The section misrepresents Facebook as the leading social media platform when it should be defined as a social media network. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, would be the social media platform and would also include Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook, as per the source that the statement is pulling from. This section also refers to “Messenger” as its legacy name of “Facebook Chat.”

Further, this section misrepresents a finding from a source, stating that “Facebook users enjoy the sense of being connected,” where this should be represented as research findings of the source. The image in this section is outdated as well, as it still includes the logo of Twitter, which has been rebranded with the acquisition and renamed to “X.” Many of the subsequent subsections have citations that are flagged for further review and represent research findings as universal facts as opposed to conclusions of the research. Many subsections appear disconnected and written independently and have not been unified with the article or section.

“Psychotherapy in cyberspace” seemingly is the most accurately cited section of the article; however, it still has pitfalls similar to the other sections, misrepresenting research findings as facts for the universal population. This section talks of a program named “ELIZA,” which was developed in the 1960s as a Natural Language Processing program; however, this section has not entailed any Artificial Intelligence advancement since, and it does not speak of any regulatory requirements based on data of these programs. Further, this section claims virtual or augmented psychological patient intake but provides no sources or examples of such applications.

The sections “In popular culture” and “See also” loosely relate to the article. The items mentioned in “In popular cuture” link to the characters in popular television shows that are not defined as cyberpsychologists in their shows by the actions taken, relating what is discussed in the article and linking those items back to these characters; however, it is not precisely explained that the actions taken relate these characters to the article of “Cyberpsychology.” The section “See also” goes on to describe other articles that are somewhat related. However, two significant articles, “Web Mining” and “Psychology of Programming,” are not explored in the article, making it unclear why they are linked.

The sources of the article are somewhat well constructed. From spot-checking a selection of the sources, there are redundant (repeating) references for the same sentence and source. Many of the claims in the article are also flagged for needing revisions and sources. It was also observed that some sources, such as citation 61, link to a page no longer available. Many of the sources, however, appear to be plagiarized from the sources or incorrectly summarizing the material of the content, which, in turn, misrepresents the source material.

These findings are mirrored in the talk page, including concerns regarding sources and bias. The talk page does not appear to have many replies on any of the items, with only one reply observed in the entire talk page. Many of the conversation topics on the talk page also indicate that this page has primarily been looked at in the last five years by student editors in Wikipedia courses.

Overall, the article has a great deal of psychological backing already. However, this article needs a holistic review to determine what is accurately being stated by the sources. The information from the sources is represented as a definitive fact of life instead of a neutral statement. The article lacks research and exploration into Cybersecurity despite research from the field. Further to this, the article first and foremost needs to have its lead readjusted and unified to reflect the items that Cyberpsychology research has developed into accurately.