New World Notes

Take a Short Research Survey on Second Life Identity & Consumption Practices for L$1000

Click here to take a short survey (less than 30 minutes) created by Peter Nagy, an academic fellow with Central European University in Budapest, who's using it for his a doctoral thesis, which is on "the relationship between offline and online identities and consumption practices in Second Life", as he describes it-- and he's paying the first 300 respondents L$1000 each to complete it.

I had a look at his questions, and they'll likely bring up some fascinating insights on that subject, which I'll be blogging about as the data comes available. More from Peter (whose SL account name is VirtualMesmer):

ABC News Surprised Female Second Life Avatars Bare More Skin Than Males -- Iris Surprised ABC Thinks This is News

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

"Getting naked in the virtual world — more women than men show flesh!", ABC News breathlessly reported recently, citing research by Canadian academic Matthieu Guitton, who was totally amazed to discover that female Second Life avatars tend to bare a lot of skin, you guys. That's supposed to be surprising news -- but it's actually just the latest evidence that most major media outlets and a lot of academics don't know much about virtual worlds. It's not exactly like ABC is a stranger to women baring skin themselves. The picture above, a parody of a different but no less popular set of housewives, is by celebrated SL photographer James Schwarz, and it illustrates my biggest issue with this article beautifully.

This point is probably painfully obvious to most NWN readers, but in case ABC News or would-be virtual world researchers are still confused, let me explain:

Take a Survey on Avatar Gender for Academic Researchers

Click here to take a 20 minute survey on avatars and gender being conducted by Jon-Paul Cacioli, a Lecturer of Psychology at Charles Darwin University in Australia, along with research assistant Amalia Badawi, who plan to share the results from their research with New World Notes and the public at large. Ms. Badawi has this to say on the importance of the project:

"Many people are using avatars more and more, such as in Second Life which, unlike MMORPGs, there is more freedom in choosing who your avatar is and what it represents, whether it is you, and ideal or some character you have always wanted to role play. This study will explore whether your personality factors may influence why you may choose to be (or not to be!) and avatar of the opposite gender. Maybe it is because you are open to trying new experiences, or maybe it is because you identify more with the stereotyped gender roles that are still lingering in our society...

Take a Short Survey for a Academic Research on SL User Personalities

Click here to take a short confidential survey on real life personality (if you're an active SL user and over 18, of course), which is for an academic study looking into whether "there are over-representations of particular personality type preferences." (Click here to teleport to an SL site with more information on the study.) The research is for a graduate student in Applied Psychology at Athabasca University in Canada, and the supervisor, Dr. Paul Jerry, promises to share what should be the interesting results on New World Notes.

The Importance of Virtual Artifacts in Virtual Societies (Excerpt from Ethnography and Virtual Worlds)

In this fascinating excerpt from Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method by Tom Boellstorff, Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce & T. L. Taylor from Princeton Press (a sponsoring partner to this blog) the authors explain the importance of virtual artifacts in the virtual worlds they study as academics -- among them, Uru Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft and Dreamscape.

When ethnographers conduct research in the physical world, artifacts play an important role in understanding culture (Appadurai 1988; Spyer 1997; Hoskins 1998; Miller 2005). The artifacts of a community—how they circulate, are incorporated into everyday life, and are given meaning—help illuminate culturally specific meanings and practices. When we speak of “virtual worlds,” the term “world” is not just a metaphor. One way in which virtual worlds resemble physical world fieldsites more than other online contexts (like blogs or social networking websites) is that they have place and space, embodiment, and objects.

Get a 20% NWN Discount on Ethnography and Virtual Worlds by Tom Boellstorff et. al!

Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method is a new book from Princeton Press by my friend and acclaimed anthropologist Tom Boellstorff (who also wrote the acclaimed Coming of Age in Second Life), along with three other experts in the academic study of online games/worlds: Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce, and T. L. Taylor. I'm proud to announce, thanks to a media partnership between Princeton and this blog, readers can get a 20% discount on the book:

Click here to order Ethnography and Virtual Worlds, and then enter the discount code P05169 at checkout.

More news and info about the book and its authors coming soon. If you have read it, be sure to discuss in Comments.

Virtual World User or Gamer? Please Take This 5 Minute Survey for an Academic Study on Male & Female Avatars

My colleague Robert Geraci, a Professor at Manhattan College who regularly researches and writes on Second Life and other virtual worlds and games (including for this book published by Oxford), is studying real life gender in relation to avatar gender, and is looking for volunteers to take an anonymous, 5 minute test:

• If you're MALE IN REAL LIFE and use virtual worlds/games, click here to take this survey.
• If you're FEMALE IN REAL LIFE and use virtual worlds/games, click here to take this survey.

I just took the male version of the survey, and found the questions pretty interesting. But let Professor Geraci, who's conducting the study with his wife Dr. Jovi Geraci (who also teaches at Manhattan), explain the overall goals of this project:

Coming of Age in Second Life Author Tom Boellstorff Joins Intel Science and Technology Center

Virtual world academic makes good: My pal Tom Boellstorff, Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine and author of the acclaimed Coming of Age in Second Life, recently left his position as editor of American Anthropologist to join the faculty of the new Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing. As you might imagine, virtual worlds will probably play a part of his research there:

"The Center will help support work on the social dimensions of virtual worlds that I hope will be interesting not just to academics, but designers and participants of every stripe," as he puts it to me. "What people do in existing virtual worlds is changing, mobile devices are having an increasing impact, and new virtual worlds are coming into being all the time. What’s all this mean for the human journey: for politics, identity, social justice?"

He's going to start answering those questions at the Center, which he describes as "a collaborative space of possibility":

Take a Survey on Second Life Avatar & Identity, Get L$250

Click here to take a short survey on Second Life avatars and identity put together by Péter Nagy, a Ph.D student at the Corvinus University of Budapest. His dissertation is about Second Life, and he's paying the first 60 respondents L$250 to answer questions such as this:

• Have you ever thought about what your avatar created in Second Life symbolizes?
• Do you want to learn why you created your “second self”?
• What is the difference between you and your avatar?

Be sure to include your avatar name at the end of the survey, so he can send L$ to your account. And yes, he'll share the results with New World Notes. So click here to take the survey.

Update, 3pm SLT: If you took this survey before 12:30pm SLT today and want the L$250, please retake the new version here. I originally posted an old version of the survey which didn't have a section for listing your avatar name to get the Linden Dollar honorarium. The links have been fixed since then -- sorry for the hassle!

Take This Fascinating Academic Survey on Avatars & Real Life Identity

Which avatars above are closest to the modesty level you generally choose for your own avatar? That's among the questions you'll answer in this intriguing survey on avatar and real life identity, for a study by University of Missouri-Columbia media professor Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz, PhD, who's also an active Second Life user herself. "I am interested in understanding how people represent themselves in virtual worlds, interact with others, and the influence of virtual worlds on offline life," she tells me. She'll be sharing the results with New World Notes, and up to 10 participants will get L$5000 each from a lottery drawing. So go here to take it!