Psychosocial Impacts of Digital Travel

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking is organizing a special issue dedicated to the applications, limitations, and future potential of different varieties of digital travel. 

Physical travel is important for most people, but is impossible or hazardous for many who would like to visit other places, due to ill health, infirmities, or advancing age. COVID-19 reduced the feasibility and attractiveness of much travel for a great many people in all age groups. Travel often has a serious negative impact on the environment, the deterioration of which is seen as an increasingly urgent problem. These factors, and the experienced feasibility of using digital substitutes for physical travel, have led to increasing acceptability of the idea of traveling and visiting other places digitally, as well as renewed interest in evaluating the effects and effectiveness of digital travel, and also in improving the way it is implemented.

Digital travel is used here as a general term that covers a broad spectrum of situations where people experience a sense of being in a place other than where their bodies are physically located, through the use of digital technologies. The technologies used might include VR, large-screen displays, game interfaces, PCs, and mobile phones, amongst others. The application situations range from casual or planned meetings with others in cyberspace, through visits to actual or simulated places or events of particular interest, to carefully organized virtual vacations in popular holiday resorts. 

In this special issue, we are focusing on the various ways in which digital travel can be designed and applied to enhance the lives and experiences of the “digital travelers” visiting virtual places. 

We are open to high-quality original articles and review articles on the following topics (though other topics will be considered):
 

• Therapeutic applications of digital travel
• Aging and digital traveling
• Attitudes to digital travel amongst specific user groups
• Evaluation of digital travel experiences
• Impact on wellbeing factors, such as perceived loneliness, social connectedness
• Motivated innovations in approaches to virtual meetings
• The role of narratives in digital travels
• Digital travel and autobiographical memory
• Explorations of the sense of presence and place attachment through digital travel
• Comparisons of physical and digital travel
• Digital travel as a supplement to, versus substitute for, physical travel
• Experiences of place in games 
• Digital visits to historical sites and other actual places 

We are interested in both theoretical and practical work on these and related topics. Evaluations of the subjective effects of digital travel experiences on quality of life are particularly sought.
 
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Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, the Official Journal of the International Association of CyberPsychology, Training, and Rehabilitation, is the premier peer-reviewed resource for authoritative research on understanding the social, behavioral, and psychological impact of today's social networking practices, including Twitter, Facebook, and internet gaming and commerce. The Journal is under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN, Interactive Media Institute, and other leading investigators. View the entire editorial board.

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