Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Second Life - Response
The article “Knee-High Boots and Six-Pack Abs: Autoethnographic Reflections on Gender and Technology in Second Life” (2009) by Delia Dumitrica and Georgia Gaden spoke about the role gender plays in the alternative environment presented by the online game Second Life. The game is centered around your virtual presence and the unlimited creative ideas available to you in the online world of the game, “implying a universe of possibilities in terms of identity constructions and social interactions” (6). The question arose of whether or not an avatar can be a strong “presentation of gender” (7) and the idea of autoethnography was presented, which hadn’t been touched on in the previous Second Life article on avatars from a few weeks ago in this class.
Autoethnography, though cited as controversial in the article for meaningful research, sounds like a strong way of investigating something for me because of how you combine individual interpretations of experiences with (in this case) Second Life together with the shared interpretations of others in the same virtual space, and the unknown setting of such a vast online world meant that the female writers of the article “always be[came] targets of harassment in places that lack formal and protected gender equality policies” (10).
Looks are a big deal in Second Life, and the experimentation and fantasy element of the online world meant that the level of sexual objectification and enhanced physical norms of avatars prevalent in the game is commonplace. Avatar creation includes gender standardization, and the game even lets you shop for new body parts or perform odd or explicit “pose-balls” (15) which animate your avatar. The visual interface fuels the economy of Second Life (18) and it is controlled by technical prowess and ability to manipulate the constructs presented by the game to your liking, meaning that you put as much time as you desire into it and make it as visually exaggerated as you wish, for better or worse compared to real life.
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It is stated auto ethnography studies from their own experiences. I take this as almost a biased opinion since they are developing their criteria from their position. They develop the thick description of the characters in from their own background. It is stated that a better process would be through ethnography research. Subject matter would be determined by the social relationships that occur within the culture.
ReplyDeleteI found that it appeared that the authors took the proper steps in order to form a non-biased opinion with their approach. They were sensitive to the creation of their characters and documented their findings as such. The character types that were described could be found in most online games. I'm not sure if the findings would be much different for this case study if were done in an ethnographic manner.