Between Cyberplace and Cyberspace: the researcher's role in virtual setting research

Disciplines such as Internet Research, the Psychology of Cyberspace and the Social Psychology of Cyberplaces call for an epistemological reflection not merely on the universe of objects they deal with, but also, and perhaps especially, on the research settings used to investigate them. With this work, we intend to make a contribution to the debate on three issues: psychosocial interpretation of the new environments, the ‘mediated’ nature of the researcher-setting-study object relationship, cyberplaces as settings for mediated interaction research.