What is PsyberSpace®
Hello!
I’m your researcher, educator, and host, Leslie Poston
PsyberSpace isn’t just a podcast, it’s an information, research, and educational ecosystem designed to help you understand what’s happening in the world.
Every week I’ll be there for you, hosting the PsyberSpace® podcast on your favorite podcast player, helping you wrap your head around what’s happening in our world with solid research, original research, courses, newsletters, and more.
Why me? I hold a PhD in Applied Psychological Sciences with a focus on Media and Technology from Fielding Graduate University, a Master’s degree in Media Psychology from Fielding, and a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Psychology from UMass Amherst. I’m the host of this podcast, was a research assistant in the Society, Technology, and Subjectivity Lab(STS-Lab), teach our courses here at PsyberSpace, and lead research at PsyberSpace lab.
My own research examines how social media platforms, algorithmic digital spaces, and AI systems shape identity, emotion, resistance, and everyday sense-making, with a particular focus on TikTok, Discord, reddit, and other social and dark social communities as digital “third places.” Drawing on qualitative, quantitative, and critical approaches, I study how people adapt their language, lives, and self-presentation in response to algorithmic systems, and how these dynamics intersect with power, neurodivergence, and social justice in mediated environments.
Science is magic that works.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The Research
In addition to drawing on my own knowledge from my studies and our work in the PsycberSpace lab, PsyberSpace® runs on actual research, not opinion dressed up as expertise. Each week I draw on new studies and current thinking, with access to the complete research libraries of two universities alongside publicly available sources like Google Scholar, preprints, and Open Science publications. When I can’t find a study through the usual channels, I go straight to the authors. Researchers genuinely love that, and it means you get the real thing rather than a secondhand summary. No fabricated citations, no made-up experts. If I cite it, it exists and I can show you where to find it.
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The Education
PsyberSpace has a slew of courses coming soon to help increase your media literacy and inoculate yourself from propaganda and manipulation. Sign up here to be alerted when they drop!
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What is the PsyberSpace® podcast
I started this podcast because I wanted to make everything that is happening less confusing, and help people find and understand real research that could help them in their day to day lives. The show covers digital psychology, societal entropy, and everyday cognitive traps: the systems shaping how we think, how power concentrates and what that does to people, and the patterns that trip us up in modern life. No sponsors, no advertisers, just research and honest analysis.
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What other media does PsyberSpace offer?
We offer print and digital newsletters, books (coming in 2027), merchandise (coming in Fall 2026), and more. Stay tuned to the site for announcements of new drops!