Careers in cyberpsychology - in conversation with Dr Linda Kaye

Can you tell us about your job role and your own career trajectory and the steps you took to get where you are today?

I'm a psychology academic at Edge Hill University. Specifically, I'm current Associate Head of Psychology, overseeing Knowledge Exchange and Marketing.

Prior to that I'd firstly completed an undergraduate Psychology course, and then a PhD in Psychology which focused on the psychology of digital gaming, which is what initially piqued my interest in cyberpsychology.

Immediately after my PhD, I secured a job as a Lecturer in Psychology at Edge Hill, and then have progressed to my current position over the last 11 or so years.

More recently, I founded my own business called The CyberDoctor, which helps me apply my research specialisms and experiences to help businesses use (cyber)psychologically-informed online marketing and communicational strategies.

All my career decisions have been related to my enthusiasm and commitment to cyberpsychology. As an academic, cyberpsychology has been central to my teaching and research activities, and allowed opportunities not only to engage with the field for my own career development, but also get involved in wider activities such as the BPS Cyberpsychology Section, to help inspire others to pursue this field.

My interest in developing my own business came from seeing a real opportunity of cyberpsychology as quite a niche approach to support the needs of businesses in online communication and marketing.

Whilst being an academic is quite focused around generating academic impact of our research, the opportunities to see how my insights could be used by the general public, media and businesses to make real change in the world, is especially rewarding.

What are your research interests and how have they changed over time?

My research started very narrow when I was transitioning from my PhD to being an early career academic. I was focused rather exclusively on being a "games researcher"  but this was restricting my abilities to see cross-over with my colleagues, and meant I was isolating myself at work from more collaborative research.

I soon learnt to broaden my scope and see synergy in the theoretical principles I was using which overlapped with colleagues, and this brought about some really rewarding collaborations.

This meant my research interests broadened, arguably perhaps too much at one point, where I felt I was spreading myself too thin. It did help me gain a tonne of experience with working with different people though, which I still contest was one of the most important lessons I picked up from those broad-ranging projects.

Within this period, I had started to move into the realm of emoji and first impression formation online, social identity in gaming, and stereotype threat and gaming performance, to name a few.

I managed to navigate my way to come back to being more selectively focused, through making a conscious effort to develop overarching aims, which all my projects could map directly onto.

This has certainly helped me make informed decisions about how various research tasks help me achieve my more general research goals and keep some level of coherence to my various research activities.

Overarchingly, I seek to explore how online settings promote social inclusion and well-being. Within this, my current research interests include:

• What are the factors which influence the effectiveness of online messages when communicated to specific audiences?
• What is the nature of online interactions (what does "social" look like online)?
• How are emoji processed socially and/or emotionally?
• How can social or collective identity be fostered through online connection/connectivity?

In your opinion, what essential abilities would you suggest for maximizing the connections between academia and industry?

Without a doubt, being an adaptive communicator is the most important skill. This is a key part of the capacity-building work I do when working with others, particularly in my current role which oversees knowledge exchange and marketing within my department.

Adaptive communication doesn't just refer to use of language which is appropriate to the target audience/recipient, but also how to frame the knowledge or insights in terms which make sense to the target recipient.

Cyberpsychology knowledge and insights have so many benefits to so many stakeholders. This includes; the general public when helping inform public debate on controversial issues about technology and internet use; policy-makers when making informed use of cyberpsychology evidence for new policy or governance; and practitioners and businesses when informing use of technological strategies or tools to enhance effectiveness of products or systems.

Alongside adaptive communication, this has to be considered in line with how accessible these insights are based on the platform or format these take.

As a cyberpsychology researcher, if I want my insights to reach businesses, I will share relevant insights or content on platforms such as LinkedIn.

If I want to reach the general public, I might use short video explanation or animation to explain study findings in lay person terms. I don't see much point in spending so much time and energy don't cool research if it just gets stuck behind a paywall in an academic journal!

What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your current role as a cyberpsychology professional?

One of the biggest challenges is often a lack of familiarity of what cyberpsychology actually is. However, having cyberpsychology recognised as a designated network in the BPS has certainly helped increase people's familiarity which has been encouraging to see.

Another challenge is to ensure that public debate on technology and internet use isn't too biased by conjecture or moral panic. Whilst I'm sympathetic to the risks and harms which can co-occur with technology and internet use, I remain committed to ensuring that it's evidence-informed insight rather than conjecture which is represented in public debate.

This is another key reason why accessible and adaptive communication is important, to help diffuse these evidence-led insights into public forums.

How do you stay current with the latest trends and developments in the field of cyberpsychology?

I'll be honest, I could probably be more proactive to stay updated with the wider academic literature! However, my own active engagement in doing research means I'm very familiar with current developments in my own specific topic areas which I clearly find important.

I do a lot of academic writing for research papers, and that involves being knowledgeable about the contributions our own research brings to that topic area.

I'm also very much an active citizen in different forums such as Twitter and LinkedIn and this means I often see updates from colleagues on new research papers in my field, so I at least am aware of the types of work that might be going on.

From a business point of view, it isn't quite so difficult to stay current with latest trends to know where my insights might be best placed. Effective technology diffusion and innovation in businesses will always present ongoing challenges with every technological advancement which occurs.

Also, keeping up-to-date with the changing nature of online consumers and their preferences will equally be an ongoing problem for many online businesses and brands. As such, it isn't too difficult to know what cyberpsychology insights and solutions are worth marketing to different types of businesses at any given time.

What are some of the most important factors to consider when choosing a job in cyberpsychology?

Recruiters might not use the term cyberpsychology, but that doesn't mean a job that's directly related to your expertise doesn't exist!

Depending on the specific domain of interest, alternative terms or job roles might include: human factors, user-centred design (UCD), user-experience (UX), player experience (PX), online consumer insights marketer/advisor, social media manager/officer, communications officer, technology policy advisor, online campaigns officer, researcher….the list goes on!

On a positive note, cyberpsychology is very "future-proof" as careers go, so the longevity of your subject knowledge and skills is pretty solid.

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out in their career in cyberpsychology within academia?

My main advice would be to see the value of your insights more widely than being solely academic pursuits. Personally, I couldn't care less what my citation count is, but I do care about whether my insights could make a real difference to end-users.

I'd also think about how your research might align to public debate, policy development or the priorities of practitioners. This can help you know what type of research questions are worth asking and how you could then find ways of communicating the value of your insights to people who might actually be able to make use of them. From a personal point of view, this is can be very rewarding.

Working in academia oftentimes does not bring such reward, and so knowing that the work you are doing has merit in its own right can be very gratifying.

Finally, do remember that the topics of cyberpsychology don't exist in a vacuum. There's a huge academic literature out there within the wider discipline of psychology, but also socio-informatics, communication studies, business information systems, human-computer interaction, media studies etc.

There's likely to be a wealth of academic research in these domains which relates to many issues which cyberpsychologists are interested in. So don't restrict your mindset too much, and instead draw on building alliance with research or researchers who have established some decent groundwork for you to apply to your ongoing questions and interests.