Culture, Power, Cyberspace

The Question of Player Status in World of Warcraft

2009-05-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

The Question of Player Status in World of Warcraft

By Bryan Tu Tran, Claire Hayati, Rebecca Lin, and Hank Whitson

Inside every server of World of Warcraft (WoW) there exists an eclectic community of players from all over the planet who participate in a complex cultural system where co-operative dungeon raids, gladiatorial duels, and constant multi-channeled communication are just part of the daily grind. Yet in a world where such fantastic activities are mediated by an invisible system of intricate calculations, and every character is designated a numerical value, what, aside from the raw math, determines a character’s status? By examining four central aspects of WoW’s game play—race and class configuration, guild membership, participation in player vs. player combat (PvP) and role playing (RP)—our study offers new insights concerning online impression building and the nature of interpersonal status in virtual worlds.
As in real life, a character’s race and class play key roles in determining status on WoW, having dramatic influence on both appearance and abilities. According to the well-known anthropologist Max Weber, there are three factors that may determine one’s social status: Property, Prestige, and Power. We would argue that since property and prestige must be obtained by a player’s actions in-game, his character’s inherent power, based on the criteria of race and class, is of paramount importance.
In order to examine the social influence of a character’s class and race, we conducted research through extensive participant observation and gathered data through semi-structured interviews with participants in person, as well as online through the private chat function. A sum of 120 hours was spent inside of the game. Eight in-depth interviews were obtained from age 15 to age 48. Half of the participants were between the age 18-24 and two were female. These consisted of gamers who just started playing to veterans with at least three years of experience.
In WoW, there are two factions which are called Alliance and Horde. Inside the Alliance faction, there are five races: humans, dwarves, night elves, gnomes, and draenei. Inside the Horde faction, there are also five races: orcs, undead, tauren, trolls, and blood elves. Each race has its own background story as well as a unique appearance. Alongside the physical differences, are the different “racial traits” or special abilities or powers granted to a character based on its race. For example, the blood elf race has a passive magic resistance that reduces the chance you will be hit by spells by 2%. Another example is the racial trait of ‘shadowmeld,’ which allows Night Elves to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect their presence.
The specific race of the character does have an effect on one’s ascribed status, comparable to the status which is fixed for an individual at birth. In this context, the ascribed status is embodied by racial traits which are given to the character upon creation. According to the interviewees with at least one level 80 character (currently the highest level attainable), racial traits play a crucial role in organized battles such as raids or arena matches. Because the special abilities granted by a character’s racial trait may give a desirable advantage, the preferred race is depicted with more social value. For example, the tauren race, which resembles muscular anthropomorphic bulls, are considered to make better warriors than other races because two of their racial traits: 1) “endurance” in which the base health is increased by 5%, and 2) “war stomp” which stuns the enemy for a small time period, are particularly useful in melee combat, where extra health and a few seconds to get in an extra hit can make all the difference.
In regards to the physical appearance of a race, interviewees who have just started the game would rather choose the more attractive looking races. However, they believe it is relatively insignificant when asked if it has any importance in relation to social status. According to the piece, “The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep?”, “Online users can organize the information flow and enhance self-image by strategically selecting how and what to convey to the receiver” (Walther et al.). However, this is not necessarily true when applied to WoW. Players with more experience in the game tend to disregard the physical appearance and focus more on things that enhance power such as class specialization and racial traits. Appearance then only holds importance to newer players.
Among the different races in WoW, there are ten playable classes: death knight, druid, hunter, mage, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock, and warrior. Each class is drastically different from each other in that they all have unique abilities through their spells and skills. For example, the priest class is known for their healing abilities and the rogue class is recognized as the primary melee damage dealer because of their powerful attack abilities. Another crucial difference that distinguishes these classes from one another is their ability to wield different types of weapons and wear different types of armors. For example, the paladins, warriors, and death knights are the only three classes that are capable of wearing plate armor, which has the highest defense value. In addition, each character class utilizes unique resources and play systems to give each class a distinct feel. Rogues, for example, draw from a stamina gauge to perform attacks and accumulate combo points as they successfully land hits on enemies. On the other hand, priests draw from a manna gauge to cast spells that may either damage their enemies or heal their allies.
Given its drastic effect on character abilities, players are all but unanimous that class is the single most important choice to consider when creating a character. There is considerable debate however, about which class is the most powerful or important for group play. Most agree that classes who perform specialized roles, such as healers and tanks—characters designed to absorb damage from enemies to protect the rest of the party—are more important than damage dealing classes, which are plentiful. Priests, warriors and death knights were mentioned in almost every single interview. These classes tend to be more valued by the online community because they have more specific duties to fulfill in raids. Ironically, classes focused on dealing high amounts of damage-per-second, or DPS, tend to be the most widely played even though they are less ‘prestigious’ than tanks and healers. This may be accounted for by the fact that DPS classes tend to be more efficient at solo-play than healers and tanks, who enjoy most of their specialized, role-based prestige late in the game, when party organization is crucial for advancing.
Since multiple classes are able to fulfill different roles, there is considerable debate about which class is the best at its job, and frequent debates concerning the balance of power between classes. Blizzard Entertainment addresses these imbalances by adjusting a class’s abilities through the semi-monthly software patches released to fix bugs, and add new content to the game. When a class (or item, or race, or ability) is made stronger, players say that it has been “buffed,” while any weakening adjustments are referred to as “nerfs.” Another remedy that Blizzard Entertainment came up with is introducing new classes and races in expansion packs, to address shortages of certain character types. For example, the death knights were added in the recent Wrath of the Lich King expansion to address the scarcity of tanking classes. Consequently, the status afforded by class and race are constantly in flux.
It is important to understand that the status afforded to race and class is contingent upon the player’s ability to fulfill the role they shape. On occasion, new players who do not want to deal with the trouble of building a character will purchase high-level, well-equipped characters from other players, despite Blizzard explicitly prohibiting the practice in their terms of service agreement. In most cases, the new player’s inexperience will betray itself through foolish mistakes in group play and net them an extremely negatively reputation, despite the prestige of their experience, and the strengthened attributes of their equipment, or property.
Regardless of how powerful a class is at a given time, a single player cannot hope to tackle WoW’s hardest challenges alone. Guilds are essential for high-end game play, providing the support and connections necessary to take on the game’s greatest challenges. Although it does not affect a player’s external appearance as drastically as race, guild membership is prominently displayed under characters’ names in-game, and it plays a considerable role in establishing their reputation.
Blizzard devised guilds as the mechanism to ensure that a sense of community and social networking was present in WoW. Guilds function as support groups and friend databases in which a member is considered responsible for participating in guild activities, helping fellow members, and following rules set by the guild leaders. Guilds are especially useful for high level players and obtaining “achievements.” They are important to study because they provide insight into how relationships form between characters and how status relationships develop both amongst their members and in contrast to nonmembers. Based on the research on guilds performed by Chen, Sun, and Hsieh, we hypothesize that high-level guilds, also referred to as power-guilds, create a sense of community amongst their members and isolate outsiders. We tested our theory through participant observations and interviews.
Guilds in WoW are constructed by individual players and grow when other players join. Haris and Nardi say that guilds’ main “focus is [to collect] reliable players for advanced play” (Haris and Nardi). Each guild acquires a reputation and unofficial status based on the identity of its members. According to Chen, Sun and Hsieh “the percentage of avatars joining guilds [increases] steadily with avatar level” (Chen, Sun and Hsieh). Low-status guilds are not very selective; they tend to be more accepting of characters of all levels, classes, specializations, and races. Most do not have strict regulations, do not require much play time, and often do not have the same sense of community responsibility as other more powerful guilds. The size of the low status guilds varies between 30-200 people, but most of the smaller guilds are not as stable and tend to be less helpful to their players (Chen, Sun and Hsieh). High-status guilds, on the other hand, are very selective, often requiring many interviews and applications to become a member. They also require large amounts of play time, sometimes forty or more hours a week, and implement strict rules.
Power-guilds collect players with high levels of skill and understanding, and therefore can become very insular, with their members rarely mingling with outside players. The players in such guilds rely on each other for any activity requiring multiple players, including raiding and making items for one another. Within a server the more powerful guilds can become famous and their players respected and well known by players in less powerful guilds. However, the well-known characters tend to keep to themselves and do not need to seek help from others not in their guild. Also these players are extremely hard to access to ask for help from non-guild members. The status of the guilds therefore creates a virtual boundary in which players are separated based on skill and guild association. With all the high-end, skilled players concentrated amongst themselves they are less likely to help less-skilled players to advance in skill or complete hard tasks in the game. This isolation controls which characters someone can play with and hinders access to the more challenging parts of the game. At the same time the skilled players are ever advancing and pushing the boundaries that Blizzard has created.
This separation between guilds and their players is one based on skills and understanding of the game. Within guilds it is not a requirement that in order to be in a high position one has to be more skilled than the others below. Guild hierarchies tend to be more about social relationships than ability. Once in the guild the only way to advance to a more authoritative position is through social connections. “Raider” is the only guild role based on playing skills (interviews). Within a guild there are two levels of authority that are similar to government roles. The top position is guild master, which can be reached only by creating the guild; any player can create a guild. The master has ultimate control over the guild no matter how powerful the other members might be. For example, the master has the right to kick out members, shut the guild down, take all items from the guild bank, and invite anyone into the guild. The next authority level is that of the officers, who have power to add or kick anyone out, have full access to all bank items, and can control who plays in which raid. The only way to become an officer is to be chosen by existing officers or by the guild master. Officers choose raiders to go on raids. Raiders have no authority over other players but do receive automatic preference to receive the best items and a guaranteed spot in raids. Raider status is achieved through merit and the player’s ability to be organized and effective (interviews).
Discrimination between guilds helps to separate people who are not in the same guild and at the same time brings people of the same guild closer together. The hierarchy and different status positions allow the guild to run smoothly, and despite these differences, companionship and friendship is readily available. Guilds create a WoW community that is much smaller than the entire server, thereby providing more opportunity for repeated interactions. Guilds also define and supply a method of approaching the WoW play experience, either technically or with greater social interaction. This, along with boundaries imposed by guild status, pulls together players of similar ability and “can be designed to create somewhat customized play experiences” (Nardi and Harris). By imposing responsibilities on players within the guild, a sense of real-world community develops.
Many of the guild members in power guilds actively play with each other for forty hours a week and constantly use voice and text chat. During these sessions personal information and daily updates are given, bringing the group together to share common interests and experiences that strengthen the relationships between guild members and can create long-lasting friendships. Without the guild structure these groups of strangers and intensive players would not be given the opportunity to come as close to other players and the game would not hold the same sense of reality (Nardi and Harris).
Character abilities and connections have significant influence on forming status in WoW, though few things have more impact on an individual player’s status than their personal skill. But while the dungeon raiding scene is rife with horror stories about reckless players whose mistakes wipe-out entire groups, and “ninja looters” (unscrupulous players who steal valuable items dropped by dungeon bosses without their party’s consent), status gained through Player-versus-Player combat (PvP) is solely focused on competition.
PvP takes a variety of forms in WoW. Certain servers are designated as PvP servers (as opposed to PvE or player versus environment servers), where players are allowed and often expected to attack characters of the opposing faction in zones regarded as contested territory. All servers have access to other types of PvP play, such as arena battles, a more formal system of PvP where players form teams and participate in gladiatorial matches against other teams. Finally, there are Battlegrounds: large scale, mission based skirmishes where one Alliance team and one Horde team compete by accomplishing various objectives.
To research status relating to PvP, we participated in the Warsong Gulch battleground, the first and only type of PvP combat available to low level characters. Our findings suggest that status gained in Battlegrounds is like a sandcastle built near the shoreline, as it is constantly being wiped clean with each new skirmish. In their article, “Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘Third Places’”, Dimitri Williams and Constance Steinkuehler cite “Players [ability] to enter a world in which success is based not on out-of-game status but on in-game talent, wit, diligence, and hard work” as one of the core appeals of MMO’s (Steinkuehler and Williams). Furthermore, they cite ‘a level playing field’ as one of the essential criteria for online games to serve as ‘Third Places’; relaxing social environments outside the work and home. There are many points where WoW wipes a player’s record clean. Character creation allowing players to build their legacies according to their tastes, and forgiving death penalties encourage player’s to take another stab at challenges they fail. Yet Battlegrounds seem to be the best example of this etch-a-sketch-esque cycle, giving players nothing but a blank score and an opportunity to do their best.
To examine the role of status in a PvP battleground match, one must first understand its mechanics. Warsong Gulch is accessible from any major city for all races, wherein the player enters a queue to join the next match. The majority of battleground matches are with pick-up groups, meaning the teams are randomly assembled from those waiting in a queue compiled from several different servers. A player from the Dragonmaw server could find himself with a mix of teammates from the Frostwolf and Blackrock servers. For these reasons it is unlikely a player will join a team with someone he had fought with in the previous match. Consequently, any respect or derision gained in the previous match is wiped clean. Depending on the time of day, queues take anywhere from two to twenty minutes. He has no status among his teammates when the match begins because they have no idea of his skills, save for speculation.
After joining a battleground, the 10-character team has two minutes to lay out basic strategies and buff one another—cast spells to increase damage, strength, health, and general survivability. Once the match begins, the two teams compete to capture the enemy flag and return it to their own camp three times to win. All basic strategies for Warsong Gulch involve three roles: a flag carrier, defense, and offense. The flag carrier, arguably the most important role on a team, enters the enemy camp and is the one who physically—in the game sense—brings the flag back to his team’s home base. Defense characters escort their flag carrier to and from the enemy camp; if the flag carrier is killed, the enemy flag is dropped on the ground and can be recaptured by the enemy. Offense engages the enemy team directly and prevents them from reaching their camp. If their flag is captured, the offense chases down the enemy flag carrier and kills him to restore their flag to its original location inside their camp. Players who fulfill their roles well are respected during the battleground match, and teams who play well gain honor—literally accumulate a PvP currency called honor that they can redeem for special items.
At the conclusion of a match, a chart appears showing the names of each participant, their level, class, damage dealt, health healed, and how many times they captured the enemy flag or recaptured their own flag after it was taken by the opposing team. The player’s status is summarized by the statistics displayed on this chart at the battle’s end. The player who dealt the highest damage or captured the enemy flag the most times is respected, and is thus granted a kind of high status, one that is supported by his apparent gaming skill, an inherent knowledge of the game that fellow players should aspire to. But this status is fleeting; even if the player lingers to look at the end game scoreboard, the battleground automatically closes within minutes and prepares for the next pair of teams to clash.
Given the brevity of each skirmish, players have little opportunity to form lasting impressions on their teammates, leading one to question if appreciable status is created at all. Juniper is a female college student who plays a level 80 character and participates in Battlegrounds almost daily, yet she rejects the notion that status in battleground PvP exists. “There is no status,” she insists. “You almost never have the same teammates again and you’re not going to remember them anyway. It just doesn’t work like that.” Her boyfriend Astrus, with two level 80 characters of his own, agrees: “I don’t think you’re going to find status the way you describe it, probably because they’re all random people, so you don’t feel that kind of connection—that mutual respect for people you do know.”
Etically, one could argue that the post-match scorecard conveys a degree of status on participants, but from an emic point of view, status in battleground PvP is nonexistent, because one’s teammates are randomly selected and it is unlikely that they will be encountered again. Since many players are driven by the desire to compete in as many matches as possible, they leave the Battlegrounds without examining the score. At the same time, there are dedicated teams of players who enter the queue as a group, and conquer other teams with a combination of superior communication and rehearsed tactics. This practice is perfectly legal, but uncommon due to the large of amount of planning necessary, which is comparable to a guild’s preparations for a raid, but yields no experience or equipment. Consequentially, such teams are easily recognized and greatly feared by their competitors.
Another niche activity with considerable impact on player-to player perception is role-playing, (or RP). Throughout our experiences in WoW, we noticed, through conversations and remarks in public chat channels, that the general opinion toward RP and Roleplayer’s is largely hostile or disparaging. This strikes us as both curious and ironic considering WoW’s classification as a Role-playing game (RPG). Our examination produced a fascinating insight concerning the correlation between game design and player behavior.
Before one can examine the effects of role-playing on player status, it is crucial to appreciate the distinction between the class based mechanics that structure role-playing games, and role-playing as a multiplayer activity. As a gaming genre, RPGs use a combination of character-specific categories (in WoW’s case, race and class) and statistics (that gauge attributes like strength and stamina) to determine characters’ abilities and power respectively. As discussed earlier, a character’s race and class have the most impact on a player’s duties during group play in WoW. Therefore, from an etic perspective one might say that people are always playing a role of some sort when they play WoW together. However, the emic definition of RP refers to playing the game in an in-character fashion, where users chat and “act” (through emote commands) as if they are their character, as opposed to their operator.
As with other types of social play in WoW, there are casual and serious role-players. Casual sessions tend to be more improvisational, with participants reacting to in-game events as if it were their reality. Serious role-players generally meet at agreed upon times to act out a storyline in game, and restrict technical discussions of game play to an Out of Character (OOC) chat channel. Serious RP sessions also do not usually take place in dangerous environments; nor are they accommodating of other players who try to jump in uninvited, since unplanned player deaths and arrivals can disrupt the story.
Once again, our research consisted of participant observation and several semi-structured interviews taking place in game and online via an instant messenger program. It is worth noting that Blizzard has taken a decidedly hands-off approach toward facilitating RP in WoW. While there is a matchmaking system and chat channel to help people find groups for PvP and dungeon raiding, the only feature deliberately designed to facilitate role-playing are designated RP preferred servers. Yet this designation does not require players to engage in role play, nor does it give role play any type of priority treatment. This makes sense given the subjective nature of the activity, but one of the first lessons we learned about RP in WoW, is how difficult finding a session to participate in can be, even on a RP preferred server.
Currently, the most used chat channel in WoW is the Trade channel, accessible in each of the game’s capital cities. As its namesake would suggest, the channel is intended for players to conduct business, allowing players to advertise their wares or request goods. Since it is visible to every player in the capital city and moderated only by player complaints, Trade is frequently used for general chat and by role players searching for groups, much to the chagrin of actual traders whose chat logs are crowded with unrelated information.
During research, we witnessed a particularly passionate argument arise when two players started to role-play in Trade chat as if they were bartering in the game world. The traders, frustrated by the extra chat, lambasted the role-players who cited the game’s role-playing status. Without any official statement from Blizzard awarding precedence to the RP status of the server or the functional purposes of the Trade channel, the matter is left up to players to determine. In his article, “Beyond Management: Considering Participatory Design and Governance in player Culture” , T.L. Taylor notes that “Players are not merely consumers of games, but actively contribute to their creation,” and goes on to detail the numerous ways players voice their opinions to game designers, citing one example of an in-game protest about the warrior class that occurred in WoW (Taylor). It is interesting to note that when the protest began to affect game play, Blizzard was quick to respond with a message threatening “actions against user accounts.” In the instance of the great Trade channel debate, those opposed to RP suggested that the issue be settled with a vote and claimed that the server was no longer RP preferred according to the results. Proponents of RP argued that the verdict had no ‘official value’ since it was unsanctioned by Blizzard and that the issue was not up for debate. Other parties argued that RP should only take place at specific locations in game.
The discussion gradually died down, though many comments from both sides of the debate suggested that it was a common topic of discussion, and that it would not be the last. Given Blizzard’s prompt and serious response to the warrior protest, it seems curious why the matter of RP in trade has not been laid to rest. Though having identified character class as a primary component of a player’s power over, and status within the game world, it seems reasonable to assume that it was given much higher priority than issues pertaining to RP, which has a very insignificant influence on game mechanics.
It seems that the functional goal driven mechanics seem to stifle the social aspects of the game crucial to role playing. This observation is consistent with Williams and Steinkuehler’s findings, which concluded “As complex, long-term collaborative activities become increasingly prevalent [in MMOs], the game becomes increasingly more entangling, time-consuming, and work-like, diminishing its status as a relaxing social environment” (Steinkuehler and Williams). Having no place to belong to, we expect role-players to feel frustrated or alienated by the generally hostile tone toward their activity.
Yet during our interviews, most role-players stated that they were indifferent or amused by the debates. “It’s easy enough to ignore people online,” said Silver, a level 78 Paladin, “but I think it’s kind of hilarious that you have these people calling us geeks while they’re here in our world, trying to sell virtual dragon teeth.” Hornz, a high level Night Elf Mage who had role-played in other MMOs explained that he did not play in WoW because most role-players seemed inexperienced. He actually felt that the debates on Trade were good, because they served to help weed out less dedicated players: “The ones who get upset are usually just trying it [RP] on. If they like it, they keep at it. If not, it really isn’t for them anyway. I don’t roleplay on WoW because there are too many of those people here.”
When asked about their primary motivations for engaging in RP, most interviewees cited creative expression, immersion in the game world, or a mixture of both. Surprisingly, none of the subjects cited socializing as a primary motivator. Silver observed that RP could make it harder to socialize with other gamers, due to the fabricated personalities players adopted for their characters. Another player, Sage, suggested that role playing does not necessarily need to be a strictly multiplayer activity, feeling single person activities such as Machinima, which use the game world to create movies, constituted role playing as well.
Overall, one’s status in WoW is primarily focused on a player’s power. Classes and races enjoy prestige based on their abilities to help parties achieve specific goals. Power guilds serve as an extension of such practices, fine tuning their ranks to take on the greatest challenges the game has to offer. By contrast, status gained through participation in RP and PvP is largely unrecognized, since the personal satisfaction afforded by such pursuits cannot be precisely quantified by the game’s system. Ironically, even though the interactions of online games occur in virtual worlds which we navigate alone from our computers, there is a strong emphasis on tangibly increasing one’s power, and working with others to achieve great things.

Works Cited

Bonnie Nardi and Justin Harris, Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft, 2006.
Chien-Hsun Chen, Chuen-Tsai Sun, and Jilung Hsieh. Player Guild Dynamics and Evolution in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Cyber Psychology & Behavior. 11(3), 2008.
Constance Steinkuehler and Dimitri Williams, Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as “Third Places.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11(4), article 1, 2006.
Interviews conducted. February 20th- March 5th of 2009.
Joseph B. Walther, Brandon Van Der Heide, Sang-Yeon Kim, David Westerman, & Stephanie Tom Tong, The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep? Human Communication Research 34(1):28-49, 2008.
T. L. Taylor, Beyond Management: Considering Participatory Design and Governance in Player Culture. First Monday, Special Issue #7, 2006.

Age and Gender in Online Dating Websites: An Analysis of User Profiles on Mingles.com

2009-05-23T15:20:00.000-07:00

Age and Gender in Online Dating Websites: An Analysis of User Profiles on Mingles.com

Ed Chow
D Coulombe
Valerie Garcia
Donna Vuu
Jen Wade

Introduction:

Cyberspace has a great effect on how we communicate, interact, and form relationships online/offline, and affects how we see ourselves both in the realm of virtual space and real/actual space. Online dating sites are spaces where the actual and virtual self are intended to be as identical as possible. Within the domain of online dating, the self is presented through constructs of gender, age, and social interaction. Online dating arenas represent an opportunity to record changing cultural norms regarding technology-mediated relationship development and gain insights into important aspects of online behavior, such as gender identity construction and self-presentation strategies. Understanding the ways people create online identities based on their “offline” selves gives insight into the interplay between virtual and actual worlds, i.e. how our real world culture affects the culture we create online and vice versa. Relationships wherein people first meet online and then move offline, known as mixed mode, challenge established theories focusing exclusively on online relationships and provide opportunities for new theory development (Ellison, Heino and Gibbs 2006).
The study of online dating profiles provides interesting dimensions to research of identity, gender, and relationships in cyberspace. This research project was developed to analyze the gender identities of users, e.g. how they present themselves in their profiles and the kind of relationships they are looking for or expect to find using online dating sites. In addition, we examined the differences and similarities between men and women, using age as a variable. Using data gathered from personal profiles on Mingles.com we were able to compare the ways these sites mediated users’ identities through online interactions with the prospect of developing an offline relationship.
Mediated matchmaking is not a new phenomenon: Newspaper personal advertisements have existed since the mid-19th century and video dating was popular in the 1980s. Tom Standage (1998) gives a fascinating account of online dating in his book The Victorian Internet, which documents the history of the telegraph, the first invention that truly had the potential to facilitate romance through virtual space. Standage gives reports of telegraph operators who fell in love while chatting online during slow work hours. Like the modern computer monitor, the tickers functioned as the interface where information was sent and received by telegraph operators. Although different than modern computer-mediated communication, the telegraph and the relationships it facilitated are similar in kind, and this research, along with other research conducted on virtual spaces, aims to shed light on the dynamics of online dating.

Literature Review

A large body of research exists on virtual spaces, the ways in which individuals interact within them, as well as the myriad of ways in which people construct their own identities and perceive those of others. Research on online dating sites in particular have focused on how the online dating platform inhibits and permits impression management and the ways in which romantic relationships develop.
As mentioned above, “love over the wires” is not a new phenomenon. Not only was the telegraph utilized as a way to transmit love messages from one person to another, but telegraph operators actually utilized the device for their own ends, forging romantic relationships between one another through the wires, having never actually seen each other and no visual cues to base impressions: “Despite the apparently impersonal nature of communicating by wire, it was in fact an extremely subtle and intimate means of communication” (Standage 1998:130). Even through female telegraph operators were physically separated from their male counterparts, and often overseen by a matron, men and women were enabled to make romantic connections across the wires (Standage 1998:134). Anecdotes of online love affairs illustrate the inevitability of romance through any communicative form. Also, both the Internet and telegraph have the ability to “help couples transcend real-world barriers” (Standage 1998:137), particularly physical distance, but also shyness and social anxiety.
Visual stimulation is an essential element of the internet, and social networking and on-line dating websites “support members pursuing their own objectives of socializing and sharing of textual and pictorial content” (Messinger 2008:5). Yet, despite the increased means through which users are able to express and represent themselves, notions of authenticity are further complicated, rather than simplified. Online impression formation and management is uniquely complicated because interaction is substantially reduced online from what it would be in the actual world, rendering online impressions suspect because they are so controllable (Walther 2008:32). “People make active decisions about when and how they will self-disclose. These decisions involve a complex process in which people set rules about how and when they will divulge private information, negotiate those rules with other people, and make decisions to disclose based on violations of those rules” (Walther 2008:32).
Deception on the internet, especially within the realm of online dating, has been extensively documented in online research studies. Although the anonymous aspect of the internet may suggest widespread lack of authentic self-representation, the majority of online dating members state they are honest, and research suggests online dating may discourage deception as a result of the technical and social aspects of the environment (Ellison, Heino and Gibbs 2006:419). For example, the expectation of face-to-face contact affects self-representation decisions where individuals engage in more intentional and deliberate self disclosure as the likelihood of face to face interaction increases (Ellison, Heino and Gibbs 2006:419). Design features such as profiles where information is recorded and archived may also deter individuals from lying online (Ellison, Heino and Gibbs 2006:419). Furthermore the essence of online dating websites is to find a romantic partner in real life which may decrease misrepresentation compared to other online relationships (Ellison, Heino and Gibbs 2006:420).
Online dating participants operate in an environment in which assessing the identity of others is a complex and evolving process of reading signals and deconstructing cues, using both active and passive strategies. A study conducted by Ellison, Heino, and Gibbs found that online daters consistently engaged in “creative circumvention strategies as they went through the process of posting a profile, selecting individuals to contact, communicating with potential romantic partners and developing rules for assessing other profiles as well as their own” (2006:431). Online daters use information in profiles to form impressions of others using limited cues available online such as screen names, activeness, and friends (Ellison, Heino and Gibbs 2006:420).
Research conducted by Whitty discovered that online daters were attracted to genuine and honest people and they hoped an individual’s profile presented something about who the individual “really” is (2007:1718). In fact, over half of the participants said an attractive person was one who was truthful and honest. It appears these individuals were more attracted to individuals who expressed their “actual” self, that is, “online daters perceived honest and genuine people to be those who included in their profiles the traits or characteristics that they typically express in everyday offline social setting” (Whitty 2007:1719). Whitty’s research also highlighted the idea that the value placed on physical attributes may be greater for online daters than for individuals establishing relationships is other places on the Internet (2007:1716). However, online daters still engage in impression management, negotiating a delicate balance between revealing their true selves in their profiles and trying to “sell” themselves to prospective partners by describing how they would like to be. The motivation for this was based on not wanting to disappoint the date once they met face-to-face, but at the same time trying to attract a decent number of individuals (Whitty 2007:1716).
The pervasiveness and influence of gender stereotypes and ideologies in everyday life has prompted significant research on the effects of gender in online spaces. Del-Teso-Craviotto’s study on the language differences among men and women in online dating chat rooms found linguistic strategies such as self descriptions and screen names (2008:264). The resulting gender and sexual identities are sketches of stereotypes whose value derives from the acceptance of social and cultural discourses on gender and sexuality negotiated through interactions. Authentication is not an external process imposed upon people but the result of specific social practices (Del-Teso-Craviotto 2008:264).

Methods

Initially, our research was to be conducted using NoLongerLonely.com, an online dating website for people with mental illnesses; a marginalized group not only within society but also within the realm of research conducted in cyberspace. However, we were unable to obtain permission from the administrator of the site to conduct research. Limited access to the site and the ethics involved in working with the mentally ill as research subjects forced us to find a new direction while staying within the arena of online dating. Nonetheless, we came across Mingles.com, an open website for people looking for relationships online. Mingles.com is substantially smaller in membership than eHarmony and Match.com, but it offers a glimpse into the culture of online dating.
Online dating sites are set-up very differently from other virtual spaces, such as newsgroups, virtual worlds, chat rooms, and MMOGs. Individuals are required to construct a profile, where they may upload photographs and videos and write a description of who they are. On Mingles.com, individuals contact each other through “winks,” email, and chat features. The site also provides forums and blogs where members can interact.
Exploratory research was conducted in open forums and blogs dedicated to online dating. Through data collection, we narrowed down our research and focused on the dynamics between gender and age and impression management on online dating sites. A sample of 100 profiles was taken from Mingles.com, 50 men and 50 women. Five age cohorts were established between the ages 18-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, and 61-99. Twenty profiles from each cohort were sampled, each containing 10 men and 10 women. The profiles were analyzed based on content; self preferences, preferences in a mate, profile pictures, friends, groups, tags, blogs, and forum posts. A textual analysis was performed on the personal essays in the profiles, as well as members’ screen names.
A short survey was constructed and posted on the Culture and Cyberspace class blog. The survey consisted of questions about the subjects’ age, sex, and experiences with online dating. The survey was mostly used to compliment the data procured from the Mingles.com profiles. Although it would have been ideal to conduct interviews with online daters, we were unable to find informants willing to participate in the study.

Results

Profile Pictures

On average women posted more pictures of themselves than men. Women’s pictures were also more posed and they seemed to pay more attention to their physical appearance than men; they wore dressier clothing and makeup. Men appeared more casual in their pose and dress. Women tended to smile in their pictures more than men. Male pictures were more inactive (had less comments from other members) than the female pictures.
The younger online daters had more active pictures and they also tended to pay more attention to their appearance and pose in their pictures, especially compared to the oldest cohort (61+ years old). The younger cohorts on average posted more pictures of themselves.

Personal Essays

Women on average wrote more in their personal essays than men and tended to be more descriptive when describing themselves and the type of men and relationships they were looking for. Most of the women described themselves as loving, caring, romantic, sexy, and honest, while men used words such as funny, easy going, open minded, and honest to describe themselves. Gender-specific language was used by both men and women in their essays and screen names. Men chose masculine terms such as stone, crane, and bear for their screen names, and women used words like sassy, flower, sweet, and spunky in theirs. Women used expressive text more often in their personal essays, including emoticons, e.g. smiley faces, exclamations marks, tildes, ellipses, and quotation marks. The use of this kind of language made the tone of the essay more informal then the men’s essays. Women were more inclined to mention friends and family as their priorities in life, whereas men often stated their interest in sports and travel.

Preferences

Women were more descriptive than men regarding the partner and relationship they were seeking. The older cohorts were more specific regarding the kind of relationship they wanted and the kind of partner they were seeking, while the younger cohorts, especially 18-30, were more open to different kinds of people and interactions.
Women from the older cohorts varied in types of relationships they were looking for, although most of them stated a preference for more casual relationships such as email/chat and friendships. Older men and women stated they were interested in casual dating or serious relationships. However, women reported a desire for friendship and email/chat relationships as well. Women in general stated a preference for friendships and email/chat relationship compared to men who were looking for serious relationships. This was also supported in the survey results.
Most of the people in the sample were single or divorced, of course this varied across age cohorts with the older members more likely to be divorced. The majority of the men and women in the sample were Caucasian. Both men and women were most specific in their preference of the marital status and ethnicity of prospective partners, most favoring a person who is single, divorced, or widowed and Caucasian or Hispanic/Latin.

Age

Women were more limiting regarding the age of prospective partners, usually preferring an older man, although this varied across age cohorts. Men within the oldest cohort preferred younger women (25.7 years younger) while younger men preferred women who were closer to them in age.

Height

The majority of women stated a preference for a taller man; however, the majority of men did not state a precise height preference.

Body Type

In terms of their body types, the majority of women preferred a body type bigger than their own, and the majority of men preferred a body type smaller than their own. Men reported looking for a woman with a body type of either “thin, average or athletic.” Women were more inclusive than men regarding body type often listing the body types “a few extra pounds” and “larger” in their preferences. This was true across all age cohorts.

Friends

The majority of men and women sampled did not have friends listed in their profile; however, among those who did, women were more likely to have same sex friends as compared to the men. Among men who had friends in their profile, all of them were female and they were typically significantly younger (20- 25 years). Men in the two oldest cohorts had a higher average of friends compared to women in those cohorts.

Analysis

Pictures are one of the most salient aspects of a profile. The placement and size of the picture in relation to other elements of a profile make it the focus of the profile page. This makes the presentation of a profile picture extremely important. Almost every profile in the sample had a personal picture with most of them averaging two pictures each. The women in our study were especially conscious of their physical appearance in profile pictures. We can infer that women share a perception that there exist certain gender norms they are expected to adhere to in order to attract a romantic partner. Men seemed to share a desire for aesthetics in their pictures although not in the same way as women. Men appeared more laid back in their profile pictures, often in casual, sporty attire with less expressive and friendly facial expressions (e.g. smiling, laughing) which exemplifies gender stereotypes prevalent in American culture.
Virtual environments are not devoid of the cultural norms and historical events from which they emerged, but instead, are embedded with the ideologies of the dominant society. In their ethnographic study of cyber marriage on the Chinese Internet, Wu et al. discuss “how in-game marriage, with its game codes and marriage regulations, turns out to be the most visualized, institutionalized, and heteronormative form of cyber marriage” ( 2007:59). Similar to online dating sites such as Mingles.com, online games in China are dominated by real world practices, ideas, and norms. Gender is as much an aspect of virtual environments as it is of actual environments. The rules and regulations of marriage in China is mirrored in those of cyber marriage in online games, thus, cyber marriage is an example of the hegemonic powers in China that control the gender norms and expectations of Chinese society (Wu et al. 2009:85). While power may not be perceived to be centralized in America such as it is in China, there are nonetheless, dominant ideologies which direct our day to day interactions, thoughts, and behaviors (see Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus”) which are visualized on the Internet. The gendered behavior displayed in the online dating profiles sampled reflects the prevailing gender ideologies in the real world.
This is not to imply cyberspace is not inhabited by dissidents of the status quo, for the internet is rife with individuals and communities who deviate from the norm. For example, Chinese male gamers often play with their gender identities through gender swapping in online games. Through a practice referred to as renyao, they subvert the binary gender roles implanted within the design of Chinese online games and explore new concepts of gender and sexuality. In addition, not every female in the online dating sample fits the stereotypical image of a feminine and demure lady. In fact there were gender outliers who preferred more masculine dress and behavior, although this was less the case with men. Gendered behavior and language is prevalent in online dating sites and signifies the culture of both cyberspace and the corporeal world.
The attractiveness and impression of personal pictures is clearly an important aspect of individuals’ online profiles. This suggests profile pictures correlate with avatars commonly used in online games and virtual worlds. Avatars allow internet users to easily play around with their identity by manipulating and changing the appearance of their avatars. Online daters may not be able to change their profile pictures to the degree they could avatars, however, they deliberately select pictures that best represent who they are and how they see themselves. This act by itself is a form of identity transformation. Since the point of online dating is to attract other online daters, it is common for them to choose an attractive profile picture. If individuals believe their profile picture is attractive they may be more inclined to contact others they view as attractive. Therefore, the perceived attractiveness of profile pictures, “avatars,” can cause them to behave differently.
Although our research does not measure changes in behavior before and after selection and placement of pictures on dating profiles, we can infer that individuals with attractive profile pictures exhibit more confidence and increase self-disclosure in their profiles and interactions with other online daters. Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson discuss the Proteus effect of transformed self-representation on behavior in their experiments with altered avatars. Yee and Bailenson’s experiments compared participants with attractive avatars to participants with unattractive avatars and revealed that participants with the attractive form were more inclined to lessen their interpersonal distance with others and disclosed more personal information (Yee and Bailenson 2007:281). They also found participants with taller avatars behave in a more confident manner and “negotiate more aggressively than participants in shorter avatars” (Yee and Bailenson 2007:285). These statements correlate with research conducted on height and attractiveness in the actual world. The interesting thing about online dating sites is virtual technology is used to facilitate actual world interactions. Like the participants in Yee and Bailenson’s study, online daters are constantly negotiating interactions with others using their profile pictures to influence prospective romantic partners’ perceptions of them.
In our study age differences and similarities among online dating participants, we found that younger people posted more pictures in their profiles and sought more casual relationships such as dating, friendships, and email/chat friendships. Online daters between the ages of 18-30 have grown up within the digital culture age, which affects how they view and use digital technology, specifically the internet. A seminal study on youth and digital media funded by the MacArthur Foundation, researchers found young people mostly used communication devices such as private messages, IM and mobile phones to interact with close friends and romantic partners (Ito et al. 2008:16). For youth in America today, “new media provide a new venue for their intimacy practices, a venue that renders intimacy simultaneously more public and more private. Young people can now meet people, flirt, date” within an online setting (Ito et al. 2008:17).
The Internet offers a space for youth to experiment with identity, communication patterns, and new relationships in relatively safe environment. For young people, joining an online dating site may be a form of “hanging out” online. Ito et al. describe hanging out as a way for young people to develop peer relationships within a supportive learning environment and the quick accessibility of “multiple forms of media, in diverse contexts of everyday life, means media content is increasingly central to everyday communication and identity construction” (Ito et al. 2007:14). In addition, they use the term “hypersocial” to define the process through which young people use specific media as tokens of identity, taste, and style to negotiate their sense of self in relation to their peers” (Ito et al. 2007:14). In the case of online daters, young people use online dating sites and media such as profile pictures to navigate emerging concepts of identity and social relationships. As observed in various online dating forums, many youth use these sites as practice for real world interactions, a way of gaining real world social skills and experience through virtual spaces, which may explain their lack of desire for serious relationships.
Little research has been conducted on older generations and their participation in cyberspace. A common perception of older people, generally speaking, is they are computer illiterate, possess no computer, or they have little or no interest in the services provided by the internet. However, after conducting our research we have concluded the internet is a viable and useful resource for older people. Although the lack of profile pictures among the oldest cohorts infers they are not as tech-savvy as youth today, they are engaging in the same virtual spaces as young people. Pearce’s work on the baby boomer generation and online gaming noted the significant percentage of baby boomers participating in online gaming, particularly a high rate of women. She also discovered through interviews with informants that “adult gamers tend to socialize and game with peers instead of younger people,” who are viewed as immature (Pearce 2007:148). In addition, baby boomers expressed a desire for more mature companionship in their gaming communities, as well as courteous and pleasant social interaction (Pearce 2007:150,157). In our research only women tended to prefer to develop a relationship with peers whereas men preferred younger women. Men’s and women’s desire for a more committed relationship, such casual dating and serious relationships, in the three oldest cohorts (41-50, 51-60 and 60+) could be indicative of Pearce’s conclusions that they seek mature companionship online, where desire or a long term relationship connotes maturity in an online dater.
The friends list section on the Mingles.com profiles seems to operate in many of the same ways they do on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. In their study on the affects of friends’ appearance and behavior on assessment of Facebook profiles, Walther et al. state, “the physical attractiveness of one’s friends’ photos, as seen in the Facebook wall postings presented on another individual’s profile, had a significant effect on the physical attractiveness of the profile’s owner” (2008:44). We can tie this back the initial argument made above that the pictures in a dating profile, whether they belong to the profile’s owner or their friends, influence how a person perceives a profile. In our research, men had more friends than women, all of them women who tended to be younger than their male friends. This could have a positive affect on how a man is perceived, since men are generally allowed by society to cavort with younger females. However, this type of behavior is not expected or appropriate for females although there seems to a slight shift regarding this construct. Walther et al also discusses this sexual double standard in his findings, stating misbehavior displayed on Facebook profiles makes men more attractive, but has the opposite effect on women (Walther et al, 2008:45).

Conclusions

Ranging from profile pictures to essays, age and gender identity constructs are apparent throughout daters’ profiles. We found similarities between online dating sites and other virtual spaces, e.g. online games, and virtual worlds. Profile pictures act as a mechanism through which daters not only express their identity but experiment with different identities as well, and this can have implications on the behaviors and interactions of online daters. Similar to avatars, people can change their appearance in the pictures they post, changing perceptions of themselves to better negotiate relationships online. Age affects the technology employed on online dating sites and as a result impacts interactions online. In our research we discovered that the younger generation tends to use the more technological features of online spaces to socialize and reach more people; older generations used these features less frequently. In addition, we found that young people preferred more casual relationships while the older population desired stable, serious relationships. Lastly, we observed how the friends listed on a dater’s profile forms an impression on those viewing it, and depending on the gender of the owner of the profile, may create a negative image of the owner. Males tend to have greater freedom than women in regards to the content they post and the friends they list on their profiles, owing to the sexual double standard.
As we have conducted research pertaining to age and gender identities on online dating sites, there exist completely different realms of online dating we have not discussed. We only researched the heterosexual population, leaving out homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals from our study. Through studying different types of sexuality, we might have drawn conclusions relating to the heterosexual population. In addition, we did not discuss the affects of race and ethnicity on identity construction within online dating sites. Our sample was predominantly white, leaving out significant parts of the population. Our restricted access to closed websites such as Match.com also created limitations to our research as well as our inability to conduct interviews with online dating informants. These limitations should be addressed in future research on identity construction and impression management on dating websites.

Bibliography

Del-Teso-Craviotto, Marisol
2008 Gender and sexual identity authentication in language use: the case of chat rooms. Discourse Studies 102):251-270.
Ellison, Nicole, Rebecca Heino, and Jennifer Gibbs
2006 Managing Impressions Online: Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11:415–441 .
Ito, Mimi et al.
2008 Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. Chicago: The MacArthur Foundation.
Messinger, Paul R., Eleni Stroulia, and Kelly Lyons
2008 A Typology of Virtual Worlds: Historical Overview and Future Directions. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research 1(1):1-18.
Pearce, Celia
2008 The Truth About Baby Boomer Gamers: A Study of Over-Forty Computer Game Players. Games and Culture 3(2):142–74.
Standage, Tom
1998 The Victorian Internet. New York: Walker and Company.
Walther, Joseph B. et al.
2008 The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep? Human Communication Research 34(1):28-49.
Whitty, Monica T.
2007 Revealing the ‘real’ me, searching for the ‘actual’ you: Presentations of self on an internet dating site. Computers in Human Behavior 24:1707–1723.
Wu, Weihua, Steve Fore, Xiying Wang, and Petula Sik Ying Ho
2007 Beyond Virtual Carnival and Masquerade: In-Game Marriage on the Chinese Internet. Games and Culture 2(1):59–89.
Yee, Nick and Jeremy Bailenson
2007 The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior. Human Communication Research 33(3):271–90.

Exploring Art in Online Communities

2009-05-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

Exploring Art in Online Communities

Stephanie Hu
Madelyne Oliver
Kevin Pham
Geraldo Raygoza
Gwen Stacy

The advent of the virtual world poses challenges for the art community within the physical world. Artists who showcase their portfolios in galleries, coffee shops, and museums have shifted over to the Internet where their artwork reaches a wider network of people, leading to broader exposure. This exposure is crucial for artists who make a career of their art because it enhances their prospects of selling their artwork and earning an income.
In this exploration of World Wide Web, many social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Friendster have allowed people from separate locations around the world to develop close social ties, or to reconnect with a high school friend. Joseph Walther in his article comments that a social networking site like Facebook has “a million new users establish[ing] accounts each week”, attracting 52 million people worldwide (Walther 2008:532). So if communities are building rapidly in these online spaces, in what way does the artist and his or her art use the Web? We explore this question as a group of five undergraduates who are also artists. While each member of the group has taken on a different virtual online site that is aimed at creating or expanding a pre-existing art community, our focus is on the function of art on these online art communities. Is the art influenced by the social aspects of a website? How does the art in return influence creating social bonds? As users create a profile and log on with the intention of promoting their art, this intention evolves to expanding his or her own personal social network. However, inevitably this naturalized norm of socializing or building a network traces back in a full circle to the reason he or she logged on the website—the art.

Frame of Mind

What can be said about social networking sites and online art communities?When building a social community there is usually a medium, or space, for the community to communicate with and/or in. There are examples of this in the physical world- church communities, clubs at school, and sports teams. These communities communicate in the physical space of the church, the school building, or the field. The medium is verbal as well as physical communication. In church, it is often about the religion in which the community has collectively identified with. For the others, it is the theme of the club or the play of the game.
Online the space is the internet itself, and because of its ambiguous location the community becomes dependent on the medium to glue the community together in the virtual “space.” In this research the space[s] that communities have agreed to identify with are we art-related websites. This medium is heavily visual, with a textual interface. The cue is at first visual as the artwork initiates the attraction and introduction to art-networking sites such as Flickr, Tapsmack, and DeviantArt. Other sites such as Myspace and Facebook, which are less targeted towards artists, also participate in providing personalized community. This is accomplished through the broad functions, applications, and freedom of usage on the sites.
According to J. B. Walther, author of “Interpersonal effects in computer-mediated interaction,” there is a SIP theory (social information processing theory) in which people manage to find ways to use their environment in any means available to create a presence, identity, or impression, even when nonverbal cues are not present (Walther & Parks in “Too Much of a Good Thing? The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook,” 2008: 533). In art websites the cues that are mainly depended upon for social interaction initiation are visual because the environment is artistic at its core.
Aside from establishing that art websites have these social factors, we can see that these websites have drastically influenced the success, accessibility, and limitations for the artist. Chris Robertson, author of Majon International, one of the world’s top internet marketing companies writes in his article, “The Advantage of Interactive Online Art Communities,” that:
In the olden days before the communications revolution, it was a few assorted experts, art critics and art galleries that decided what was art and how desirable it was. Anyone who did not have access to those experts and galleries had essentially no chance to have their art seen and discussed by an audience outside of friends and family (Robertson, www.abcarticledirectory.com/Article/The-Advantage-of-Interactive-Online-Art-Communities/207558).
With the web, instead of waiting to be discovered by an art collector or gallery owner, artists can display their art on their own terms in their own online art gallery. In this manner fame is not guaranteed, as Robertson points out, but “it provides what many artists desire most: getting feedback from peers and enthusiasts and to be able to make their art potentially available to millions, no matter where on the planet they may live” (1). For example, when I surf through a new online community, I can click on any photograph and am instantly in contact with the artist. I can comment on their art, chat with them, buy their art directly, or interview them. This instant access to endless varieties of art, all gathered in one communal space, where any viewer only needs to click to interact with the artist, is revolutionary in itself and should not be overlooked.

Methods

For the purpose of this research, we did not want to be selective by narrowing our scope to one website source. Instead, we chose five primary websites, two that are art-designated in addition to the two largest social networking sites on the web: Myspace and Facebook. Our five websites included: Myspace, Facebook, Tapsmack, Flickr, and DeviantArt. Each member of the group was responsible for taking a website and creating an account. As such, we became active users of the sites and active artists of the sites. We promoted our own artwork for the necessity of truly fulfilling the role of an artist using these social networking sites. In addition to this, we regularly updated our accounts, posted news, joined groups and chats to gain acceptance within the online community and explore the functions and applications within each website. Our primary method was participant observation as we observed profile pages of other active users, top artists, artwork, and even our own status- as it significantly grew due to the accustomed habit of logging in. From this we found that many artists used these sites as a middle ground for their own personalized sites. Those jump links were then also explored and observed. In order to explore how these websites shape the artist’s success, it was crucial for us to present our research directly and in the lingo used by the community on message boards and in chat rooms. This was most effective on Myspace and journal postings. On Facebook in particular, joining art groups composed of artists was effective because contrary to our original assumptions, their artwork was not posted in a photo album and uploaded to the site. Once joining the art groups it became clear that Facebook was not favored as an ideal space for an artist to showcase her artwork due to its emphasis on social networking. However, applications such as posting an event, where artists could locate an art show held by their fellow Facebook friends, was utilized heavily as a form of building a presence within the art community. Within online art communities like DeviantArt, observing activity on artists’ profile pages with high activity rates, “Deviations,” “Features,” “Favorites” and “DeviantWatches” were all crucial for understanding the ways in which an artist utilizes the online space. Most importantly, the best results were yielded from participating in the activity of commenting on artwork or responding to comments made—which created a life of its own—threads of conversation that revealed much about social dynamics and the role of art in these online spaces. On Flickr, having a profile and being a part of many different groups was crucial- as was expanding one’s social network within the site as much as possible. Through the constant exploration of the various features on the site and the close observation of social norms, we are able to witness how Flickr flourishes under both its artistic and social aspects.

Findings

Facebook

During the several weeks we followed art communities on Facebook, we observed several different types of actions. Facebook allows individuals to start groups based on different themes. Part of our research included joining different art groups to observe how they operate and to see how artists used these sites to promote their own art. One thing we noticed was that these art groups do not operate as a place for artists to showcase their work. None of the groups have wall space where members uploaded their own artwork. In fact, the only function that groups did employ within the group page itself was the wall. The wall served as a place for members to chat amongst each other about art; however, most of the sites had only a few wall posts, and others hadn’t been used in months.
Withing a couple of weeks after one member of our group joined one of these groups, the member started to receive messages. Messages appeared to be the one constant medium of exchange among these groups. It was surprising that all of the messages had the same theme—art shows. It appears that the real purpose of these groups was not to post pictures of artist’s work, or to chat within the group, but as a ground to publicize individual artist’s art shows. After receiving several invitations to shows, the member of our group started to befriend some of the artists. As this member of our group perused their profile pages, she noticed that only about half of these artists had photo albums dedicated to their artwork. In several Facebook chat interviews the member of our group asked why this was so, and received replies including “Facebook really isn’t the place where I post my art, I use other sites for that... I just use Facebook to tell me friends about my upcoming shows.” There appeared to be a consensus that many artists did not feel that Facebook was the best place to display their art. As one female college student reiterated, “On Facebook I just talk to my friends, and they have already seen all my work- so there’s no real need to post it again.” Conclusively, Facebook’s “events” and “message all members” functions are generally the most useful and popular tools among artists using Facebook.

Flickr

One member of our group has been a member of Flickr for almost a year now, and in this time its complex social nuances have gradually revealed themselves. When this member of our group first started, she assumed that Flickr was just a medium for users to upload photos to the web and share their albums with friends, family, and the occasional stranger. However, as she explored further, she stumbled upon dozens of artists and photographers whose Flickr profiles generated thousands of hits a day, and for whom an image could yield up to 400 comments within hours of its upload. The images were amazing, the member of our group conceded—however, the member of our group could not understand how another artist with similar talent could have such drastically lower view-counts and comments on his photo-stream. Another mystery to me was the phenomenon on Flickr known as “explore.” Through a complex, secret algorithm, Flickr calculates the “interestingness” of every upload based upon “where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic content and stories are added to Flickr” (http://www.Flickr.com/explore/interesting/). The photographs deemed “most interesting” by this algorithm are then conducted into the venerable pages of “explore.” This is a highly discussed and highly sought-after honor within the Flickr community, and a quick glance through the pages of “explore” will reveal some of the most fantastic images Flickr has to offer.
I quickly realized that to “make explore,” one must first establish a network of loyal “contacts,” or friends and fans of your work. These are the people who would provide the views, comments, and “faves” that would elevate an image’s “interestingness.” The more you comment and “fave” others’ images, the courtesy is for them to return the favor. Slowly, an increasingly wider social network is established through this process, until every image you upload will have at least several obligatory comments from your contacts praising your work. In this way, the social and artistic aspects of Flickr are inextricably linked, so that rarely can one succeed without the other. Only the most brilliant and effortlessly talented image-makers on Flickr can flourish without being social, and only the most sociable and comment-happy members on Flickr can succeed without having much talent.
As an online art community, Flickr has evolved to somewhat of a popularity contest amongst artists vying to become the most “interesting” photographer on Flickr. Because of the conveniently social and often competitive nature of online art communities, it is now easier than ever to gain widespread popularity on Flickr, whether you truly have talent or not.

DeviantArt

When one member of our group first logged onto my account under my DeviantArt avatar name “thinkmadcrazy” to upload photos of her artwork, her work was added to three other users’ “favorites” collection, and she received four comments and sixteen messages—all within the first several minutes. This member of our group did not know these other members personally, but because her art was uploaded to a public viewing platform with instant access, her artwork acted as her agent, attracting future contacts. The art initiated our first introduction and further social interactions. As a beginning DeviantArt user, or a “newbie,” this member of our group wanted to further explore the purpose of networking with other artists and how these social interactions affect the art. One feature in particular on DeviantArt is the message alert system that functions similar to a “newsfeed” on Facebook creating a sense of immediate intimacy within this art community. On Facebook we have what Clive Thompson, in his article “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” calls “ambient updates-” which on the ‘Newsfeed’, “are all visible on a single page…they’re not really directed at you. This makes them easy to skim, like newspaper headlines” (Thompson 2008:5). Clicking on this alert system built into the site, called “DeviantWatch,” this “skimmable” inbox is divided into smaller categories: deviations, journals, news, polls, feedback, comments, replies, and activity. It is within this forum that most social interaction occurs.
“Deviations” are the images of artwork from other artists that pop up in your deviation inbox every time she or he has uploaded a new work of art. These works range in traditional art, digital art, photography, literature, artisan crafts, designs and interfaces, animation, manga, anime. In this way, the art remains the primary foundation for taking an initial interest in other artists. By clicking on an image that sparks interest, one is led immediately to the artist’s profile page where further text and visual information can be exchanged. However, under “Activity” and “Comments” was where the member of our group found herself having more immediate conversations with other artists.
Just having her artwork added to many DA users’ favorites also noticeably sparked a sense of excitement within this member of our group. In that moment she became more concerned with how other artists viewed my artwork, their thoughts or opinions, which were revealed in detail in the ‘comments’ section. While viewing and reading the comments, she noticed that conversation was often initially focused on the art, but often evolves into a free-form discussion on other topics.
The act of checking favorites, adding other members, and comments shows that “individuals are concerned to explore how it mediates between persons after publication. Indeed, the ease of online publishing means that they can devote most of their attention to how the weblog is received” (Reed 2005: 230). Within the space of “Comments” particularly, how art is received becomes a crucial stimulus to social interaction. These concerns of public feedback is crucial for developing closer ties such as “adding” other members or even buying art from that artist. Social interaction evolves from the subject of art to a more socialized textual atmosphere, yet still traces back to being about the art.
This member of our group also noticed that constructive criticism of the artwork is always in a very positive tone. It has become the social norm for DeviantArt users to comment positively on others’ work, while negative or hateful comments are often looked-down upon. This tendency to comment and communicate constructively regardless of the quality of the artwork and skill level of the artist seems to be unique to online art communities, and further establishes a communal bond that is centered on inspiring and creating art.
Functions such as commenting, adding members as favorites, or “watching” someone, all allow for a constructive community within a forum of ever-expanding social networks. However, because these social ties are founded upon the sharing of art-pieces, the community inevitably remains centered around the art itself, building relationships and expanding networks along the way.

Tapsmack

Tapsmack is a young, up-and-coming web site that fulfills the roles of social networking and marketplace. As a social network, Tapsmack brings together non-artists who have ideas for art pieces and artists ready to showcase their talents by fashioning those ideas into visual art. As a marketplace, Tapsmack allows all users, referred to as “Smackers”, to vote on the best ideas and designs. All Smackers have the option to then purchase the designs for use on actual products such as clothing and tattoos.
Unlike a social networking web site, TapSmack does not have a “friending” system in place or a ready-made network to join upon registering. However, TapSmack is not simply an art website either; while TapSmack allows Smackers to maintain a portfolio of their artwork, TapSmack does not emphasize only art showcasing or sharing. In addition to presenting ideas and designing them into a visual artwork, all Smackers can vote on their favorite designs by clicking either the “Love It” or “Like It” button next to the design being voted. They can also give feedback on designs and ideas by commenting on the respective designs or ideas’ web pages. There are also incentives for Smackers to continue participating as both Artists and Idea Creators and contributing to the growth of TapSmack. First, TapSmack establishes a rank of Smackers based on seniority. In order to move up the ranks, a Smacker would have to earn SmackCash, the TapSmack “currency” which is used as participation “points” rather than actual cash- by posting ideas and designs, voting on designs, selling designs, and inviting friends to join TapSmack.
Some people are concerned about the commoditization of art, as demonstrated in the activities on Tapsmack. However, Tapsmack is a young web site with good potential as a worthy enterprise. Sales and consumption of art are made directly between artists and consumers. Tapsmack also encourages online participation in order to form an intimate community within a common space. Non-artists, in particular, are encouraged to participate and contribute their visions and ideas. In this way, Tapsmack becomes a community in which the central focus is on generating art for the purpose of both showcasing talent and making money. Through comments, votes, and criticism of the art created, a social community is born that regulates and perpetuates the art that is created. The art originates as the central theme of discussion, and through the social functions of the site, it is either rejected as a concept or fully realized through commercial sale.

Myspace

Tattoos, as a form of art and business, have grown exponentially in popularity. Since the explosion of the Myspace community, a number of factors have contributed to the expansion and accessibility of the tattoo industry. With over 110 million monthly active users, tattoo artists have gained massive clientele potential. Internet search engines such as Lycos have revealed the popularity of tattoos, as it ranked “tattoos as the number two most requested search term on the internet in 2002.”
Myspace has provided a useful medium for tattoo artists to further their client base, network with other artists and get a better sense of “what’s being done out there”. As opposed to displaying photos of the artists themselves, most default pictures and avatars are pictures of the artist’s work. This allows for judgment based solely on merit, as people do not know what race or sex the artist is. Race and sex are not identity cues, as Wagner addressed in the article “The Skin You’re In”. Clicking on the avatars will likely reveal a profile page complete with shop location, hours, contact information and fliers for art shows. The “blog” section will normally exhibit merchandise such as sketchbooks, t-shirts and tattoo machines. Most notable is the “photos” section, containing portfolios displaying hundreds of tattoos and paintings the artist has done. In a sense, Myspace serves as a facilitator of business and advertising for the independently contracted tattoo artist, all created and personalized by the artists themselves.
Whether or not Myspace has “improved” the tattoo industry is an issue of debate among tattoo enthusiasts and artists. A 41-year-old veteran tattoo collector told a member of our group, “It’s given stupid people the ability to annoy a larger number of tattoo artists at one time.” Another tattoo collector said, “Well, for one the internet makes art much more accessible, and a lot easier to be plagiarized”. After hearing snippets of random people’s two cents, one member of our group decided to attempt to contact and conduct interviews with two world-renowned tattoo artists. Surprisingly, they responded and provided insightful information.
One of the artists felt that Myspace had not given him more clients or made him any busier than he was before Myspace, but has allowed for easier and more effective communication with customers from other countries. However, just as people believed the transatlantic cable would bring about positive world peace, the same cannot be assumed for Myspace’s impact on the tattoo industry. “Ever since people have invented things, other people have found ways to put those things to criminal use” (Standage 2007:105). An apparently negative influence of Myspace on the tattoo industry happens to be coming from the younger generation of tattoo artists. These upstart young artists have had access to worlds of artwork on Myspace. What results is the assumption that the profession of tattooing is an easy industry to enter. Thus, the youth within the community do not learn the ethics of the business or the way of the industry, disrespecting the veterans who paved the way before them. Many steal designs and plagiarize the work of other artists, making the older, more experienced tattoo artists reluctant to help their younger counterparts.
However, the connectivity and accessibility offered by Myspace has also raised the standard within the community in terms of quality and creativity. One artist told me that in the 70s and 80s, tattoos were generally simple and small. Now, the current standard of tattoos would have seemed impossible back then. Myspace has raised awareness about the incredible works possible in the profession, and has raised the bar for everyone.
Furthermore, other renowned artists also felt more positively about Myspace. One artist felt Myspace greatly helped his career as an artist by allowing him to network with thousands of other artists- resulting in more clients, more friends, and more opportunities to travel and work at different shops.

Conclusion

Through our explorations of the five websites—Facebook, Myspace, DeviantArt, Tapsmack, and Flickr—we discovered that art functions as a visual focus to initiate social interaction and relationships. As time progresses, the focus may shift slightly away from the art as social bonds are formed and networks of contacts are expanded. However, community attention will inevitably redirect itself to focus on the artwork within the community, and the primary reason most users log on remains for the purpose of sharing and distributing art.
Chatting with other artists, joining groups, commenting on artwork, and participating in buying or selling are all useful features and sometimes distractions within these spaces- however the art never leaves the online scene. Despite its advantages of providing a sense of community, feedback, and a space for the artist to reach a wider audience, online art communities have their drawbacks. For instance, plagiarism, blatant art theft, and cheapening artwork have become more rampant because of the internet. Furthermore, the social aspects of online communities can also detract from the art when users become too focused on gaining notoriety and popularity within the community, and pieces can become cheap ploys to generate hits.
Consequently, online art communities both benefit and detract from artists in a circular motion. The art will initially attract viewers and social contacts, but can evolve to the point where the quality and integrity of the art is compromised. However, with time, most members within art communities will re-balance their attention and harness the social and interactive aspects of the community to benefit their work.
This varies from our initial assumption that online art communities were just becoming networking grounds for socializing. We did not fully realize the complex relationship between an online social community and the character of the art within it. However, it has become evident that the internet has exerted great influence on the art world in more ways than one, and only one thing is for certain- the art community will never be the same.
Were we able to do things differently, we would probably have conducted more interviews with members of each site in order to gain insight into how other users view the complex relationship between the internet and the art world. Also, we would probably have focused more in-depth on one or two main online art communities, rather than dividing our resources between five vastly different communities.

Cyber Mobs

2009-05-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

Cyber Mobs

Khuyen Lam
Brian Tan
Victor Shen
Gloria Law

Prelude

When we found our first informant through a message board, one member of our group asked him if he could answer our questions regarding “trolling.” There was a long pause until he finally responded:
“Interview me is your first step. PayPal me twenty-dollars is your second step. Getting an A is your final step. Trolling is an art it’s hard to explain... It’s like robbing Van Gogh when he is in the Denny’s bathroom. Trolling is a form of expression like dance or writing music. The fanfare is to make people feel like they’re meaningless.” After that, we knew the project would be a long and arduous affair.
As the internet grows increasingly relevant in our everyday lives, it is important to understand the phenomena and cultures it is cultivating. One particular interest that our group decided to focus on is a behavior called “trolling.” The description of this nature is debatable, but through participant observation, interviews and research, our group was able to understand that this cultural scene resulted from “renegades” of these internet communities who disrupt and harass other users for amusement and/or notoriety.

What Counts As Trolling?

While setting down the basic outline of our research, our group often had trouble differentiating between different terms. Words such as “trolling, griefing, flaming, and spamming” are thrown around and used interchangeably at times which made it difficult to conduct research. Also, it was necessary to establish a common language to be used for interviewing. Prior to this, every time someone was interviewed about trolling, we had to first verify that their idea of trolling matches our description. This was a slow process; we often had to stop so that the person being interviewed could explain why each term meant what it meant to them. It was necessary to define trolling for the purpose of our research in order to expedite the process of gathering data. Prior to the interviews we would explain that regardless of what each term meant to them individually, we would be using the term in this particular sense.
Even though we established a common definition for trolling, we still asked what trolling meant to each person. The results often held true to our assumptions: trolling is when someone makes a post that is outrageous, hoping to get a rise out of other users for their own enjoyment. The targets vary, and the troll’s methods vary, but generally it’s making other people angry so that the troll can laugh at them and feel superior.
Oftentimes, the targets are “anybody who falls for it easily.” According to the people doing the trolling, these people are usually newbies to the site, of lower intelligence, have a superiority complex, or are trolls themselves. As one informants said, “Most of the time I am trolling I am doing it because I am bored and need something to do to amuse myself. I pretty much target anyone who displays a weakness which I can capitalize or is in a situation I can manipulate.”
Despite of what the informant above stated, however, there was a surprising find: trolls often troll other trolls. This makes trolls quite different from your typical playground bullies: instead of a group of trolls banning together to pick on a single person, many trolls explicitly expressed their distaste for ganging up on a single target. The trolls we interviewed did not like working together with other trolls and most enjoyed trolling trolls the most. When we asked why they did this, we had expected them to respond that it was fun as long as they felt like they were getting the better of someone else. However, the responses were overwhelmingly about status. These trolls trolled other trolls because it gave them more satisfaction to compete and win over an opponent of a similar level and mindset.
However, when we asked one person to clarify how this could be done, there was no distinct answer. Apparently, not knowing is fine as long as you think you’ve the upper hand and its fun. Thinking more on this issue, trolling trolls could very easily become an endless cycle, since so many different kinds of responses could be categorized as trolling. Troll A could post as a pseudo-naïve character, asking an outrageous question and expecting serious responses from people who don’t “get it.” Troll B comes in and tries to Troll A by responding in a furious and completely serious manner. Troll A will then respond thinking that they’ve found a sucker, and the cycle could continue forever. How would you know that you’ve won? For this question there was no distinct answer.
The question of when trolling occurs was met with some rather unexpected answers; I had originally meant the question to ask for specific times, such as right after someone tries to sound smart in a forum. However, those being interviewed took the question to mean something else and we realized our folly of expecting trolls to need a reason to troll. Most trolls troll when they are bored and want to have fun by messing with other people. Only one person interviewed said that they kept a specific alternate avatar strictly for trolling. Some troll only when they come upon someone who seems like an easy target, and will easily take offense, or there was already an ongoing troll attack that they choose to join in. Others purposely go looking for victims when they have time to kill, or start new threads in forums with outrageous headings to bait people into responding. Sometimes these trolls spend hours of their day continuously feeding this thread.
Contrary to what trolls would like to believe, their victims are not really offended for long. While trolls feed off of angry, excited responses, oftentimes once the victim realizes that they’re being trolled most of their anger dissipates. Rather than staying offended, most victims are just embarrassed that they fell for what the troll said as truth. Once it is clear to these victims that their attacker was just trolling for fun, and that they didn’t really believe in the things they said, they leave the thread quietly. We feel that this is the best and only thing people can do, since trolls get their laughs from making you post angry rebuttals.
Yes, there are still victims out there who know that they were trolled, but they are still deeply offended. These people tend to be perceived as taking things too seriously, and that only leads to be trolled even more.
Since websites thrive by having more people on it and using it, I was concerned over whether or not trolling would cause major damage. In theory, once there were enough trolls to hinder most people from using the site, the website would slowly die as more and more people leave. Most of those interviewed denied this would happen, including several victims. Trolling is not meant to incur real damage, and those who troll really believe that they’re not doing anything wrong. Even though their actions lead to their victims feeling less about themselves, trolls truly believe that they are righting the world with what they do. Alternately, when I asked whether or not the activity of trolls seriously hindered the intended activity on the website, most of my interviewees agreed that it did and that it was a real danger to the website that trolls were getting in the way.

Where Does Trolling Occur?

With the development of the internet, it has evolved into separate clusters, each with a multitude of forums where relevant topics may be discussed. As these hubs for information have flourished, so have those who would subvert these communities. Trolling is a text based harassment that has found a home primarily with in forum communities; however, not all forums, also called boards, experience this plight.
For trolling to occur, some basic requirements exist: the community must have a focus on text based communication, the community must also have the freedom to express themselves fairly openly without too much restraint (i.e. not predetermined responses), and it is typically large enough to have a degree of unfamiliarity between all the members.
By our definition of “trolling” as opposed to commonly seen negative behavior (i.e. griefing or flaming, etc.), we have determined that the desire to psychologically or emotional attack someone exists in text based communities, as other forms of interaction would add other incentives for this negative behavior. Without the freedom to express a person’s ideas we would not see the behavior we call “trolling” as with predetermined responses and created to limit the amount of communication and are generally geared toward a productive and positive community where negative behaviors and impulses are shunned.
Lastly, for the behavior we “considerer” trolling to apply a degree of unfamiliarity must exists between those involved. When this personal barrier does not exist, we see many of the negative aspects taken in a different light; such as an inside joke. When these comments and behaviors are treated in a humorous light, we no longer see the “attack” that we have defined trolling to fall under, so we do not treat those comments as instances of “trolling”. This is reminiscent to a passage Jennifer Mnookin wrote in a publication concerning the emergence of law in one of cyberspace’s first virtual worlds, LambdaMOO: “Remember, LambdaMOO is supposed to be fun. It’s a game. Can’t we all lighten up a bit?” A lash-back to new rules enforced by the administrations of the game, due to text-based harassment.
So long as these requirements are satisfied, trolling tends to exists in these communities; however, the frequency of trolling and whether or not trolling flourishes in the community have plenty of other markers. As trolls differ from one to the next, it is impossible to properly grasp each trolls habit; however, there are a few common situations in which trolling tends gather towards.
Seeking to incite responses out of a community, trolls tend to find a niche in forums that have strong feelings or forums that tend to have a bias regarding something. This “something” is vague precisely because it appears that forums for almost every topic exist somewhere on the internet; this “something” can range anywhere from gaming opinions, political views, religious beliefs, etc. A common method trolls use to incite a response in these situations is to simply place a comment or post that is opposed or opposite the general bias of a forum; many users that are associated with the forum will quickly reply to demonstrate their views and this situation is perpetuated. Another common situation that allows trolling to occur is the “question forums”. These forums are generally utilized for help in certain questions and the trolling of these forums has split into two broad categories: deserved or underserved. Underserved trolling applies to trolls who purposefully give useless advice (i.e. “Do a barrel roll!”) or comments merely to insult and put down the help seeker; this type of behavior is generally not accepted nor appreciated by most communities.
Deserved trolling applies in a narrowly defined margin, where trolling is applauded and appreciated because the question may have special circumstances attached to it; such as, questions that are forbidden to be asked as stated in the rules of a forum community or else questions asked for so often that a special post or sub-forum may exists to handle inquiries of those type. Trolls that attack these questions are accepted because it is perceived that members of the community that fail to conform and follow the rules are detracting and hindering the community. These two situations have developed into natural attractants for trolling behavior; however, just as there are natural attractants for trolls, some communities present a natural deterrent for this behavior based upon its structure. One prime example is smaller internet communities. As previously stated, trolls are more prevalent the larger the community. This reason cannot be solely attributed to the odds of interacting with the same members, because of open registration the ease in which a troll can create and “alt,” which means alternative accounts, for negative or positive purposes does not account for the absence of trolling on smaller communities. In some ways, it alters the presentation of an individual. In Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson’s writing, they posed the question: “Virtual environments, such as online games and web-based chat rooms, increasingly allow us to alter our digital self-representations dramatically and easily. But as we change our self-representations, do our self-representations change our behavior in turn?” The anonymity and “appearance” that was created for the sake of trolling most likely influences the attitude and behaviors of the individual.
Another heavily prevalent factor that helps maintain the level of trolling that appears upon various internet communities is the interactivity of the administration with the regular members of the community. In online forums where the administrators are not shadowy overlords dictating rules and presenting penalties, but utilize the forum as it was its original purpose, the sharing of ideas, those forum appear to have the least trolling activity. The two most plausible reasons for this lowered trolling activity are either the moderators are constantly dealing with the trolls as they will come across them in their own forum use, or trolls in such communities do not exists because of the fostered good will between all members and staff that appears to be created. Trolling appears to permeate all internet communities in a shape or form; however, trolls are far from the random attacks, rather they have a governing method.

Methods

For our original research, we used two methods to intimately understand trolls and trolling behavior. Initially, we interviewed three individuals with whom one of our team members are friends. Through these connections, a level of trust had already been established, so we sent a preliminary set of open-ended questions for the individuals to respond to via instant messaging. Since the questions were grouped together, the respondents answered our questions very quickly like a questionnaire. Also, there was little opportunity to immediately follow-up on their responses. Unfortunately, none of them have responded to our second set of questions which were composed to gather more in-depth responses. Our team member speculates that the friends did not perceive our research project to be serious work.
Secondly, we analyzed the text of an online forum where trolling occurs to better understand the context of these incidents. We briefly looked at the layout of the messages and the thread hierarchy of the website along with the additional features the forum might have such as indicators regarding the popularity of a particular discussion. Then we inspected the semantic organization of the website and compared its intended forum discussion topics to the messages posted on the forums. We identify the troll message as one that is completely off the topic of discussion or the topic of the moment that evolved from the leading thread. From the posting of the troll message, we read the responses proceeding it. Some of these messages were addressed to the troll, while some later responses were reactions to them. However, there were responses that were ambiguous to whom they were addressing.
Also, we attempted to contact trolls and a few respondents through the forums via the private messaging feature if it was available, which is usual on forums that require an account name. Unfortunately, after introducing our research project to our prospective informants, they did not respond. We speculate that they ignore the private messaging notifications for a few main reasons. The first major reason is that the message received notification is not displayed prominently when the user logs on. There was probably no improvement on this feature because it is rarely used. Second, the users may have read our message, however they may have felt that our message was off topic to the discussion. Some may have wanted to forget about the trolling incident and allocate their efforts towards their interests at the forum. Third, we did not gain enough trust with the informant despite guarantees of anonymity. Since we recently created new accounts at the forums, we may not have established enough of a reputation to identify ourselves beyond our message. With a lack of reputation around the forums, our intention for interviewing trolls may have seemed suspect. Lastly, the user may only created the account for a particular set of purposes: to troll or respond to trolling. Also, some users set up an account to troll over a set period time and then abandon it. So the user may not have seen our message at all.
It is difficult to define distinctions among flaming, griefing, trolling. Due to the growing popularization of Internet access and increasing unique users joining online forums, the definitions among flaming, trolling, and griefing have very little precision that distinguishes them from each other. This occurs as a result from the recent emergence of these phenomena, the lack of a central authority to define such a recent activity, and the multiple understandings of hostile online behavior. Although Wikipedia seems to emerge as a center of authority regarding knowledge about recent phenomena, there is a pervasive lack of reflection on the methodology of their definitions. Since these terms are undergoing debate and still gaining a consensus on their precise meanings, we will attempt to outline some criteria that might distinguish these activities. Julian Dibbell, a writer for the Wired Magazine, wrote, “Griefing, as a term, dates to the late 1990s, when it was used to describe the willfully antisocial behaviors seen in early massively multiplayer games like Ultima Online and first-person shooters like Counter-Strike (fragging your own teammates, for instance, or repeatedly killing a player many levels below you).” In some ways, trolling is a variation of griefing, except that it primarily uses a text-based form. The first criterion to consider is the number of participants involved in the activity. For all of these, the act can be performed by one user, but there can be a group of users that perform this anti-social behavior through signaling with the hostile message itself or coordinating outside of the site of the attack. Moreover, the number of those affected by the act should be considered. Flaming is believed to target only one user on a personal level, while trolling and griefing targets multiple users usually on an impersonal level. However, there can be cases where trolls and griefers seek to disrupt a particular user’s experience throughout the site.
Next, the site of the attack should be considered. Flamers use many online channels of communication, such as chatrooms and e-mails, to attack the user. On the other hand, trolling and griefing seem be contained in a forum or graphical virtual world, respectively. The last criterion to contemplate could be the level of annoyance that the affected users experience. An attack from flamers appears to be inescapable as they send continuous amounts of hostile messages from as many channels as possible, which disrupts the user’s ability to use those affected channels. Due to the impersonality of most trolling and griefing incidents, users can leave the certain parts of the site and ignore them. However, frequent repetition of those anti-social acts will decrease the appearance of social cohesion within those virtual worlds, and thus detract from their social utility.

More Trouble Shooting

A difficult issue that our research pertained to the subject matter; trolling is a behavior that is based off of wiles, mischief, transient users and deceit—many of our interviewees did not believe that we were being honest, and felt that we were trolls. In other cases, there were a lot of interactions that seemed fruitless. As one informant, nicknamed “Snapper,” wrote, “You already asked me these. S-stop. I am n-not a troll. Who else are you going to ask these to? If they’re a troll none of them will give serious responses.” One group member, who served as a field researcher, responded, “Like you?” After a short while, the informant began to cooperate and said, “Then.... they are not.... masters of the art. The art of “trolling.” I only troll defensively or people I don’t know. “The Art of Troll” ~ Tun (sic) Szu.” At which the researcher responded, “Alright, that’s enough.” It was difficult trying to cope with hours and hours of trying to find informants, and once that opportunity comes, the informant does not yield the results desired. However, after trial and error, we realized uncooperativeness was not necessarily “useless information,” as it is still a part of our data.
In some interesting situations, there were some interviewees who claimed they were trolls, because they were excited to have their names published in a paper. As one informant asked, “Will I be on this as KK51 or anonymous?” However, the researcher responded, “Sorry, but I don’t think it is ethnical for me to put your screen name on this. I have to cite you as anonymous.” The interviewee was disappointed and responded, “But I want to be on this as KK5.” Unfortunately, after this exchange, he ignored further follow-up questions. Again, while frustrating, this behavior was still a useful incite. Our perception of what was “useful information” or not was influenced by the fact that some of our group members had a myopic gaze, which means that some data that may be significant to a research might be lost because the researchers are already well-integrated in the field they are studying in. However, thanks to the use of detailed field notes, we were able to go over the data in detail.
It was interesting how there were some individuals who vehemently denied that they were trolls. While acting as a participant observer on a forum, the researcher noticed one member that acted extremely brash and insulted everyone on the forum in a ridiculous and exaggerated manner that resembled many other trolls she had previously interviewed. She sent him a private message and explained that she was conducting a research on trolls, and outlined in detail how he matched the description of a troll. However, he adamantly denied that he exhibited any behaviors. Before the conversation evolved into an argument, the researcher ignored him. It is unclear whether or not he did that because he wanted to troll our research, or because he honestly believed that the way he acted as fine.

Conclusion

Though the research was arduous, it was fruitful; however, because trolling is a modern phenomenon that is changing each day, we cannot ascertain that our definition of trolling and explanations for why it exists is absolute and universal. Arguably, we can make the argument that most individuals that engage in this type of aggressive and anti-social behavior are heavily motivated by jovial intentions, despite of the fact that their actions may seem extremely negative and brutish.

Citations

Dibble, Julian
2008 Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: But the Blame on Griefers, Sociopaths of the Virtual World. Electronic document,
http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-02/mf_goons?currentPage=all, accessed March 19, 2009.
Mnookin, Jennifer
1996 Virtual(ly) Law: Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO. Electronic document,
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html#Law%20and%20Politics,
accessed March 19, 2009.
Turner, Fred
1998 Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community. Electronic document,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/,
accessed March 19, 2009.
Yee, Nick and Bailenson, Jeremey
The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior. Electronic document,
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118533557/PDFSTART, accessed March 19, 2009.

Appendix

Figure A—”Trollz,” Encyclopedia Dramatica
1 This username is a pseudonym for the purpose of this research paper

The Cyber Generation: Today's Children and Adolescents on the Internet

2009-05-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

The Cyber Generation: Today's Children and Adolescents on the Internet

Jessica Cha
Kelly Forster
Miko Hoshino
Merusha Nasoordeen

Introduction

Since its inception, the Internet has been a realm for those seeking possibilities. It was originally a space for wealthy adults, based mostly on text, but now has been transformed into the hip new place to be for the younger generations. For the past five years, there has been a large influx in the number of children and adolescents interacting with cyberspace as the graphics became better and a large number of services became available to the general public. This has made for a growing business market in developing online games, virtual worlds, and social networking sites. There has been a niche for online games for children as children as young as six are on the Internet playing games. In essence, the adolescents and children of this day and age are the “cyber-generation” as they are more savvy about online technology than many young adults.
This paper will seek to address the issue of how children and adolescents in the new “cyber-generation” use the Internet and for what purposes they use it for. The paper will proceed by explaining the methods used to obtain information on the usage of the Internet by the “cyber-generation.” It will then go into detail of one of the most popular children and pre-teen online spaces, Club Penguin. Then, in sum, a discussion will be held on how children’s and adolescents’ differing races and genders affect their use of the Internet.

Methods

To obtain information on children and adolescents on the Internet, personal and group interviews were used. In an effort to address issues of race and gender, children and adolescents from a minority church youth group and a predominately Caucasian San Diego middle school were interviewed. In an effort to protect all the children involved in the interviews, their names are changed for the purposes of this paper and all had parental consent to participate in the study.

Interviews: San Diego Middle School

In order to get a strong grasp of how pre-teens use the Internet a group of four girls and one group of five boys, all between the ages of eleven and twelve, were interviewed. The majority of the students were white and came from an upper-middle class background, which reflected the surrounding neighborhood. It came as a surprise that the children were willing to speak about the Internet and were enthusiastic about sharing their experiences of the Internet.
The girls started using the Internet around the age of seven or eight with their first website being Webkinz and Club Penguin. The two girls who had used these sites said they had out grown Webkins, which both girls described as a place only really little kids go, but continued to play Club Penguin. One of the girls described how, when she was using Webkinz, she had used Google to do research on what pet she might be able to own. In addition to using virtual worlds, some of the children used messaging systems. At least two of the girls said they used AIM (AOL Instant Messaging) on a regular basis. Normally, the girls chatted with people they already knew, but one of the girls mentioned that she once had a conversation with another girl from England.
When asked what they thought about their Internet activity, the girls gave extremely interesting and varied answers. One girl claimed to have “outgrown email.” And a few stated, quite dramatically, that they would “die without the Internet.” Universally, all of the girls were concerned with their safety when engaged with the interview. Each girl was terrified that if they chatted to an unknown person, the person may end up being a forty-year-old perverted man. They all brought up the possibility of abduction and rape if they engaged in dangerous behaviors on the Internet and, as a result, did not talk to strangers. When asked where they had acquired their fear of old, perverted men, they identified their parents as the source for the idea and saw these stalkers as serious threats.
How their relationships had changed with the Internet was harder to gauge because they themselves were not sure about how their relationships had changed at all. The Internet had been a part of their lives for a long time and it was hard for them to imagine a life without it. However, many of the children had mixed feelings about the Internet and how it affected their relationships with others. Some claimed that they had been able to form friendships with individuals from school that they would have never considered talking with in the physical world. However, some claimed that the Internet had exactly the opposite effect. She said that “there are people that I don’t know that I hate now because they were mean to me on the Internet” (Interview with Sixth Grader: 2009). It appears that the Internet is a place for children and teenagers to expand their social circles, break up cliques, make cliques, and bully.
However, because these children are minors, there was strong parental supervision of the girls on the Internet. The parents of these girls used interesting methods to regulate their child’s Internet use. One of the fathers worked with computers for a living and had set up a program that monitored what sites his daughter visited. Another parent made a MySpace account to regulate how their daughter used MySpace and who she could become friends with. Oddly enough, the parent had allowed their daughter to lie about her age in order to get an account in the first place. Still other parents refused to allow their children to engage with social networking sites, such as MySpace or Facebook, until they were sixteen. Furthermore, there was one extreme case where the father did not allow computers in the home at all.
The boys’ experiences of the Internet were different from the girls in distinct ways. All of the boys interviewed were between ages eleven and twelve and had started exploring the Internet from the ages of five to eight. In the beginning, all of them used “little kid games” that featured a prominent main character, such as Arthur or Barney. Only one of the boys interviewed said they played multiplayer online games, such as Poptropica and Runescape, and the rest played single player PC games, such as Legos and Indiana Jones. However, despite the differences in gaming, they all watched Youtube regularly. When asked how they had initially started exploring the Internet or games, many of them could not remember. They said that they felt as if they had always been on the Internet. Others identified a friend or brother that introduced the game or Internet to them, though it was more common in games than for the Internet.
When it came to social networking sites there was only one boy who had a MySpace profile. Though he had lied about his age to obtain one, his parents knew about his page and monitored it regularly. The other boys did not have one and mentioned that their parents found social networking sites inappropriate. It seemed, though that parents had given much of the control of viewing websites to the boys as their only stipulation to the boys’ use of the Internet was to not look up or look at porn. Every one of the boys stated that, at one point or another, their parents had made this a prerequisite for their continued perusal of the Internet.
However, despite the increased leniency given to boys, the boys were still preoccupied with their safety on the Internet. They worried about sex offenders finding them online and engaging in inappropriate behaviors. As such, they said that they never made friends with people that they did not know. Similar to the case with the girls, the main source for this behavior and anxiety was the parents. Because the boys did not talk to strangers or people that they did not normally converse with, boys did not find that the Internet changed their relationship with their peers or family members. They felt strongly that they would have been friends with the people they spoke with online, regardless of the online connection.

Interviews: A Church Youth Group in Torrance, California

The group of children and adolescents interviewed at a small church in Torrance was mainly comprised of ethnic minorities; more specifically, of first generation Asian-Americans. Many of the children interviewed live with a single parent, though not due to a divorce, and reside in a low socio-economic neighborhood. Conversely, many of them attend private schools due to student visa issues. The participants of this study were between the ages of eleven and fourteen.
Girls in this group were mainly preoccupied on the Internet with Club Penguin, if they were under thirteen, and social networking sites along with a chat service, usually ages thirteen to fourteen. All age groups visited Youtube, though they did not post up videos or comment on others’ videos. The girls felt that the Internet enhanced their relationships and enabled them to be social at a level that they deemed to be optimal. With the Internet, they could stay connected to their friends, make new friendships, and talk to their peers without using having their parents monitor their talk time. Since many of them had immigrated to America, they used the sites to stay in touch with friends that they had left in their previous country of residence. Girls used social networking sites mainly to discuss their social activities and look at pictures of each other that they posted.
Boys, on the other hand, used the Internet mainly to game, usually on massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). They often visited and played World of Warcraft. Though a majority of them had profiles on a social networking site, they did not use it for their main social activities. In fact, they barely used it at all. W stated that he used them only because everyone else used them and he would feel like “a loser” if he didn’t have one. Like girls, the sites were mainly used to stay in touch with friends that they could not physically meet otherwise or talk to people, usually girls, that they could not normally speak with in the physical world.
In terms of social relationships, girls felt that the Internet did not impact their relationships detrimentally. If anything, it enhanced their social relationships. Because of the lack of gaming, the girls used social networking sites and chat services to gossip and talk to friends. With the improved ability to socialize, girls liked the fact that they could carry on multiple conversations at once and inform a large crowd of friends as to what they were doing or what they wanted to say without talking to each one individually. Though they did say that there was more drama because they gossip could spread quickly, some did admit to a sort of enjoyment of a constant, upbeat social world. Furthermore, they felt that boys were more willing to speak with them online because they could not actually “see” the person face to face.
Boys felt that the Internet impacted their social relationships in very specific ways, especially in regards to speaking with girls. Gaming allowed them to connect with their peers and set a common interest that they could talk about. A majority of the boys agreed that games allowed them to overcome language and cultural barriers when around their peers at school. This allowed them to make friends easier and fit in with the cultural norm. In terms of social networking, the boys acknowledged that it greatly uninhibited them around girls. Because they could premeditate what they wanted to say and play off bad comments or rejections, they felt that it made them bolder. They also felt that girls were more willing to talk to them online because they were able to keep their conversations separate. Furthermore, they felt that the Internet allowed them to keep up on the friendships that that they had left in their home country.
Parental control, for both genders in this study group, was relatively lax, possibly due to the technological and language barriers between the parents and the child or adolescent. A small minority of the participants, only about two, admitted that their parents knew about their online activities. There was a general feeling of consensus between the children and the parents that as long as their grades remained high and they were not partaking in dangerous activity, such as porn or chatting with strangers. Every single one of the participants had access to a computer and the Internet at home, though none of them had parental control software to limit their experience of the Internet. None of the participants expressed concern over online activities and when asked whether they worried about their safety on the Internet , they were puzzled. They felt that the Internet was a relatively safe place because they could be anonymous towards strangers. Furthermore, they did not believe that there was a high probability of being approached by a sexual predator on the Internet as long as they were not engaging in dangerous activities.

An Analysis of Virtual Spaces for Children: Club Penguin

Imagine the winter wonderland of Antarctica. The continent is frigid but beautiful, there are massive glaciers jutting up from the ocean, pristine snow, and, of course, all those multicolored penguins. Though Club Penguin never states that it is set in Antarctica, it is clear that this is were the virtual world takes place. That is where most penguins live after all. There are a few discrepancies between the icy country/continent and the world of Club Penguin. The whole world is covered in snow but there are trees, ski lifts, a pirate ship, as well as a downtown area. In this virtual world there are mini games to play against other penguins. By playing these games the penguins receive coins. The coins can then be used to buy an igloo to live in or clothing and there is no shortage of variety. There are clothing stores all over Club Penguin that have quite a rage of themes. One could dress as a pirate or a ninja or choose from a huge assortment of different styles of regular clothes and accessories. The other incentive for getting coins is so that you can buy a “puffle”. A puffle is a kind of pet that is basically a small round ball of fur that comes in various colors and follows you around. In order to buy anything however, one must be a paying member. Access to the world and playing the games are free but in order to buy an igloo, clothes, or a puffle Club Penguin requires a monthly fee of around six dollars. Between the bright colors and the cute graphics it is not surprising that this game is extremely popular with the preteen and younger age groups and was bought by Disney for 700 million dollars.
What seems to be Club Penguin’s biggest strength is the protection it claims to provide for the children using it. There are two kinds of chat that kids and parents can chose from “Standard Safe Chat” and “Ultimate Safe Chat”. According to the Club Penguin privacy site Standard Safe Chat “allows players to type their own messages to other users. Every message is filtered to allow only pre-approved words and phrases, and block attempts to communicate a phone number or other personally identifiable information” (Club Penguin Parent’s site). To go even safer there is Ultimate Safe Chat which “limits what users can say to a predefined menu of greetings, questions and statements, as well as emotes, actions and greeting cards. When it comes to chatting, these users can only see other Ultimate Safe Chat messages” (Club Penguin Parent’s site). There is also an area for parents to check on their children’s accounts and see what they are up to and even set up how many hours their children can play in one day. What we found strange was that when one member of our group signed up for an account Club Penguin never asked for age verification. The site states that Club Penguin was created for 6-14 year olds but is open to all ages. One would think that people over eightteen would be discouraged from playing.
Though Club Penguin at first glace may seem like a silly little game for children, it is in fact a pretty complete world. It has its own time zone, Penguin Standard Time, so that children playing around the world will have an uncomplicated way to figure out when to meet. There is a newspaper that is almost entirely based on user submissions of original poetry, comics and advice columns. There are events that take place throughout the day such as dance parties and sporting events. The penguins even have a place to live, their igloo, that they can decorate themselves. Do not be fooled by the colorful cartoonish world; twelve million children live in this world daily and some take it fairly seriously.

Discussion and Analysis

Gender

In just a matter of a few years, there has been a great change in entertainment available for children and young teenagers. The 1990s had Barbies for girls and Legos for boys as the main sources of entertainment. However, as the late 1990s came about, technology changed the types and expenses of entertainment that were available to the youth. Computers and technology went from being a “relatively hard to use, almost esoteric technology, to an everyday domesticated tool.” (Tufekci, 3)In the 90s, there were very limited options as to how one could engage with technology or the Internet . Nintendo, the square, gray box that connected to the TV set, was the game system of the 1990’s time. The graphics available on Nintendo, the sole gaming device, were nowhere near “high tech” as those that can be found today. AOL (America Online) and the instant messenger service were the only sources of communication, which quickly became the “must be on” website. What the 90’s offered was nothing fancy, but in those days, what was available was something incredible, and what we have available now was unthinkable back then. Slowly but surely, children have had access to a variety of new things to keep them entertained. New computer games, online social networking sites, and virtual worlds are far more popular than ever before. Children are now spending more time on computers playing games, socializing, and networking with others, rather than the old fashioned way of actually “playing” in the physical world.Although the activities that children are partaking in today are different from those from a few years ago, it is interesting to see that the hegemonic gender order ideology is still being structured and shaped by our society. It has been shown that “from early on, research found consistent differences in types of use, with girls being less represented in programming and game playing.” (Tufekci 2008:3). From our interviews and data, we were also able to see that most boys (that spent time on computers) enjoyed playing games (such as World of Warcraft) more than spending time on social networking sites. On the other hand, it was evident that girls spent more time on social networking sites (such as Myspace and Facebook) and virtual worlds (such as Club Penguin and Poptropica) than online games. It has been also been proven in other studies that “girls game less often than boys and may be less interested, knowledgeable, and comfortable with STEM than…boys.” (DiSalvo, 131) [STEM: Science, technology, engineering and math] True to their gender roles, the passivity of girls and aggressiveness of boys are reflected strongly in the uses of the Internet they partake in. Perhaps this is due to the purity of their gender characteristics in the early stages of their life. Social gender order is something that is learned, not something that is natural. Boys are taught to be tough and strong, while girls are taught to be gentle, and nurturing. Stereotypically, boys are the ones that are powerful, aggressive and adventurous; girls are the passive, emotional ones that enjoy talking, and sharing gossip. As one can see from the data that has been gathered from the study, boys and girls are still participating in activities that are “fit” for their gender. They are engaging in activities that are appropriate for their gender to identify themselves with what society defines as appropriate. This shows that technology has changed the activities that children participate in, but our society still teaches children the same lessons about gender order generation after generation.After analyzing data that has been gathered, we found that girls and boys used the web for different purposes. Though the differences in online activity was clearly evident between the genders, “most youth use online networks to extend the friendships that they navigate in the familiar contexts of school, religion, organizations, sports, and other activities.” (Ito 2008:1) Girls enjoyed using the sites as another means of socializing, as they liked to communicate (via comments and messages), share “gossip”, and look at pictures. Boys also used the Internet to form relationship with fellow boys, but they did this by bonding over the web and playing games. Today, “gaming has become a pervasive social activity” where boys can “casually share technical and media-related knowledge.” (Ito 2008:26) This shows that boys form this sort of “relationship” with one another, but do so in an acceptable manner because they are often performing acts that are considered acceptable. They use gaming as a means to form bonds with other boys without crossing boundaries, where they can have close relationships but avoid any sort of social labels.
It can be concluded that behaviors and gender norms are still the same as decades ago. The only real difference is the kind of activities the children are engaging in today. Culture still shapes these meanings and sets a concrete standard of what is considered suitable for both genders, but it is with the use of our modern day technology. There is no right way to act like a boy, or a right way to act like a girl, but media and culture plays such a big part in structuring what is considered normal, that it makes it seem to be almost natural. It is evident that there have been a lot of changes in children’s activities in the past few decades, but it is clear that the hegemonic ideologies have remained the same.

Race

In our research on children and the level of their interaction with cyberspace, we looked at two groups of children. One focus group was chosen from a mostly White middle class school. The other was a group of Asian children who regularly attended a church. We could not however look at children of other racial groups. After interviewing the children, we noticed some differences in the answers we received. We speculate that these differences rise out of the different socio-economic conditions of the children.
Most of the Asian children Jessica (one member of our group) interviewed, both boys and girls, expressed that their parents or guardians monitored their Internet usage very little. Their parents either did not know English and could not therefore understand what their children were doing on the Internet or, they understood what the Internet is about but trusted their children to be doing the right thing. Many of the parents enjoyed certain aspects of the Internet that enable them to stay connected with family and friends, but at the same time were unaware of their childrens’’ activities.
Most of the White children Kelly (one member of our group) interviewed, both boys and girls, mentioned that their parents ’didn’t stop them directly from using certain sites. They do have programs on their home computers that monitor Internet usage. All their parents know and use the Internet themselves. The father of one girl has a Myspace to protect her Myspace. Both girls and boys mentioned that their parents had warned them against sex offenders. Even the boys were extremely aware of the potential danger of an online predator.
Comparing the results from both focus groups, we find that the differences in the children’s usage of the Internet can be tied to their parents level of Internet awareness. The parents of the Asian children were less aware of their children’’s activities on the Internet. Most of them hail from another country and therefore their understanding of a lot of American popular media is minimal. Their major concerns are that their children are doing well in school and are not getting into trouble. While the parents of the White children are all English speaking, native born Americans. They have lived longer in America and know more about the potential dangers that are lurking about, and therefore are able to take more precautionary measures with their children.
Surprisingly, when the topic of talking to the opposite gender was brought up with both groups, it was Jessica’s group of Asian children that mentioned how they use the Internet to talk with the opposite gender. This may be due to the fact that ’Kelly’s group ranged from ages five to ten whereas Jessica’s group of children were thirteen or fourteen years of age. This might contribute to the awareness of how the Internet could be used to interact with the opposite gender. The boys mentioned how they use Facebook “to network with girls,” and that it is “easier to talk to girls on SNS sites because they are more willing to talk”, and that it is “sort of less personal than calling.” They use sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Gchat, MSN messenger, and AIM to scope out whether a girl likes them or not. One boy even mentioned that it was “very cheap” and that with the Internet there was “no need to go out and hang out” and that they could “talk for a long time without parental intervention.” When speaking with the girls, they mentioned how it was “easier to talk to boys here and get them to talk,” and that they think “it is because boys are shy.”
Across the board, however, both groups used social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace to network with people they already knew, either close friends or people they had seen at school or church and wanted to get to know more about. They have become closer friends with people they would not have talked to otherwise. “People already know many of the individuals they view on Facebook. More than 90% of Facebook users employ Facebook to stay in touch with or stay abreast of the activities of longtime acquaintances...” (Walther 2008:30). The children also use the Internet “to build friendships and romantic relationships as well as to hang out with each other as much and as often as possible” (Ito 2008:15). Social networking sites are an extension of the interactions that children engage in while at school.

Conclusion

The Internet has allowed children from all ages and a wide array of racial backgrounds to expand their social networks, to experiment with online gaming, and approach potential romantic interests. In an age where parents believe their children’s safety is continuously at a decline, more and more children are spending time at home, and not outside playing with the neighbors, as was common in the past. In times like these, children are turning to alternate methods of play and socializing. The Internet offers them a place where they can enhance their world experiences. However, the same dangers that faced children in the physical world also exist in cyberspace. Protecting our children requires knowledge, awareness, and open-mindedness. We want our children to capitalize on what the Internet has to offer while at the same time maintaining a safe space where they can grow and learn. It must be established that children’s experience of the Internet is vastly different from how the older generations experience it. Their early exposure to the Internet allows them to be increasingly complex in their usage of it. However, gender and racial influences still influence and create distinctions on how certain groups of children use the Internet. Almost stereotypically, girls and boys use the Internet for different purposes. How much of this is due to parental influence and personal preference is still up for debate. However, it is certain that regardless of how much has changed in children’s entertainment, the gender roles and race determine any child’s interactions with cyberspace.

Works Cited

"Club Penguin - Parents: Parent’s Guide." Club Penguin - Waddle around and meet new friends!
09 Mar. 2009 .
DiSalvo, Betsey J., Kevin Crowley, and Roy Norwood. Learning in Context: Digital Games
and Young Black Men. Games and Culture 3(2):131–41, 2008.
"Interview with 6th Graders." Personal interview. 13 Feb. 2009.
“Interview with SSEC Youth Group.” Personal Interview. 10 Feb. 2009.
Mimi Ito et al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital
Youth Project, 2008.
Tufekci, Zeynep., Cotten, Shelia. and Flow-Delwiche, Elizabeth. "Internet Use and Gender, Race
and Class: The Digital Divide in the Era of Youtube and Facebook" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Sheraton Boston and the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, MA, Jul 31, 2008. 2009-03-04
Joseph B. Walther, Brandon Van Der Heide, Sang-Yeon Kim, David Westerman, & Stephanie Tom Tong, The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep? Human Communication Research 34(1):28-49, 2008.

Family Intimacy on Facebook

2009-05-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

Family Intimacy on Facebook

Ali Cresap
Melissa Flores
Stephanie Lewis
Cynthia Lopez

For many college students, the routine is the same when accessing the Internet. If checking your Facebook profile isn’t the first priority, it is safe to say it is the second priority next to email. However, as the popular social networking site continues to evolve, new issues arise for its users. Originally targeted toward college campuses, Facebook attracted thousands of students as a means to connect with their peers and create an online identity. Two years after its creation, Facebook opened its network to anyone over the age of thirteen with an email address. This greatly impacted the dynamics of Facebook; not only could a college peer ask to be your friend but so could your professor. An even more controversial friend request is one coming from your parent, a common phenomenon with the growth of older users. As Facebook evolved into an open social networking site, it has raised issues of identity and intimacy for users who have parents using Facebook.
Inspired by a book of headshots with basic biographical data distributed at Harvard every year, ambitious undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg created the social network site ““Facebook”” in his dorm room in February of 2004. Initially open to Harvard undergraduates, Facebook spread like wild fire: “within a day it had signed up 1,200 students; within a month half of the undergraduate population…by September 2005, Facebook was claiming that 85% of all students at the 882 colleges it supported had Facebook profiles, 60% of whom logged in daily” (Grimmelmann 2008:6). Facebook was an undeniable hit among college students. As students registered for a Facebook profile they uploaded heaps of personal information and pictures. In this way students created an online identity. In addition to creating their own identity, students were able to explore the identities of their friends or others in their school’s network. Facebook was the “way students found out what everyone around them was like and what he or she was doing” (Thompson 2006). In this way, through the database of online depictions of oneself Facebook began to form an intimate community of users. As Facebook evolved, the mini-feed was created in September of 2006. This altered Facebook in a way that allowed users more recent information about their friends without need to search for it as it was displayed on the user’s homepage. In his article, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” author Clive Thompson illustrates how such immediate, personal, incessant online contact has created “ambient awareness.” Ambient awareness is described as the feeling of being physically near someone and the ability to pick up on their current mood, while not being physically near them at all. As the mini-feed altered the intimacy of the networking site, another change sparked who one could be intimate with on Facebook.
Simultaneous with the creation of the mini-feed was Facebook’s movement in September 2006: registration for anyone. This created the opportunity for parents and their college children to become friends on Facebook. As youth, members of the digital generation, join social networking sites they are “coming of age and struggling
for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid reconfigured contexts for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression” (Mimi Ito et al. 2008:5). Social networking sites for younger generations create an opportunity to create an identity online and socialize with increased intimacy of ambient awareness. However, the tables turn with the possibility that your mother and father can view this online identity. Where do parents find their place within the social networking site? Why are they interested in it? And how do they feel about viewing their child’s personal information if allowed to? With 175 million users on Facebook and the fasting growing demographic being users over 30, issues of intimacy and identity within nuclear family members are continuing to occur. This paper will attempt to outline the way in which parents and children interact on Facebook. It will demonstrate how the expansion of Facebook to a network that allows anyone to register alters issues of identity and intimacy between children and their parents.
Within this research paper are the outlined methods we used to gather our data. These methods led us to results which could be categorized into three groups: parents who rejected their parent’s friendship request on Facebook, children who left their parent’s friend requests pending, and children who accepted their parent’s occasionally modifying their profile. It should be noted that within this research paper the term “child” or “children” does not refer to users in their adolescence rather users who are out of high school who have parents on the social networking site.

Methods

The foundation for the methods was rooted in two Facebook groups called Facebook and family and Have your parents friended you on Facebook? Group invites were sent to all of our friends but specifically targeted those who we felt might be able to contribute to our research, i.e., friends who have accepted relatives. A message was sent with the group invite asking people politely not to delete or reject our invite without first reading it. In the basic info section of the group page we specified that we were UCI students conducting research on social networking sites, specifically Facebook, and the effects it had on family relationships. We also specified that all posts made on the group wall or discussion board could be used in our research project unless they specifically asked us not to use the information they provided. Group members were also encouraged to notify us if they had any questions or concerns.
To get a discussion going, we posted a set of questions on the wall of each group. The questions were straightforward and kept simple to encourage group members to participate:
Facebook and family
1. Have you been friend requested by relatives, e.g., mom, dad, child, grandparents, aunts, uncle, etc.? Did you add them? Why or why not?2. Was there any hesitation in adding relatives to your Facebook accounts?3. Have you modified your Facebook so that they only have access to certain things on your account?
Have your parents friended you on Facebook?
Student survey:
1) Have your parents/family members “friended” you on Facebook? Did you add them right away or are they still pending? Why?2) Did you block any part of your profile page in order to hide information from your parents? Why?3) Why do you think your parents have a Facebook page? Do you think they want to spy on you? Do you think they have it just to network and communicate with their friends?4) If they are still pending or you denied them, do you think it hurts their feelings?5) Do you think parents should be allowed to have a Facebook?
Parent Survey:
1) What motivated you to create a Facebook profile?2) Do you use it to keep in touch with your kids or to network and communicate with friends and co-workers?3) Do you feel you are spying on your kids/checking up on them? Why or why not?4) If you have not been accepted as a friend yet or your child denied you, did it hurt your feelings?5) Do you feel that you know your child better after seeing their profiles and pictures? Did you become closer?6) How do you think your children feel about you having a Facebook?
During our fieldwork, we found that we had to modify our methods for gaining information on more than one occasion. People were not as compliant as we had hoped, or expected them to be. Our strategy of forming a group that our friends could join was off to a great start. However, we found that although people were adding to the groups, many were not participating in the discussions, and the ones who were kept their answers pretty concise. We modified the questions a few times and sent out messages to our friends asking them to please help us out, reminding them that this was an actual assignment. Of course the majority said they would participate, but not many of them did. We did get a few great responses that contributed to our findings but we felt we needed to try a different strategy to obtain better results. We turned to interviews and online chatting. We found this method to be more useful, as people were more open and elaborated on their answers in a one on one conversation. In addition to the online groups and interviews, research through literature about social networking sites and family relations were found through article databases like Jstor, new websites, (specifically The Washington Post), and Facebook groups who protested parents accounts.

Results

As previously mentioned, the results our methods uncovered were placed into three categories: parents and children who decided not to be friends on Facebook, children who left their parents pending, and children who accepted the friend request and sometimes modified their profile while doing so. Through the results it became apparent that when asked to be a friend by their parent on Facebook the issue of their online identity was questioned. This is interesting given the fact that most often a parent is a relationship considered more intimate than some of the friends users add.

Parents and Children who are not friends on Facebook

This category of results describes parents and their children who both have Facebook accounts but have chosen not to be friends. Of the research we collected through our Facebook group there were two sets of parents and children who had chosen to not be friends. One set of participants in this category was a mom and a daughter, the daughter stating, “I wouldn’t want my mom to see my partying pictures, my account is personal, kind of like a diary, it’s for the world to see but not my mom.” The mom made no comment in response to her daughter rejecting the friend request. The daughters opinion of strangers being able to see her profile is illustrated by the fact that, “approximately 80% of one college’s Facebook using sample indicated that total strangers on their own campus view their Facebook profiles, and nearly 40% believe that total strangers from other universities view their profiles as well” (Walther et al. 2008:31). While the daughter was comfortable with strangers seeing her online identity, that relationship with her mother was unacceptable. The second set of participants in this category was a mother and a son. The son commented that, “I rejected my mom because I feel like she’s too old to be on Facebook…I told her she’s not allowed to add any of my friends either.” In response to her son’s rejected friend request the mom stated that, “I wasn’t sure if he would add me but I didn’t realize he would be so weirded out by it.” While both children were uncomfortable with the invasion of privacy, an interesting point can be made about the second participant’s desire for his mom not to add his friends. As illustrated in the article, “The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep?“ users on Facebook can use other user’s profiles to seek information about a third party. Further information gained on another’s site is, “considered more reliable than self-disclosed claims of the same nature. Thus, in a Facebook profile, things that others say about a target may be more compelling than things an individual says about his- or herself.” Attempting to keep his online identity private from his mother, the son was smart in asking his mom not to add his friends, as they could lead to more valid information of the son’s online characteristics.
Further data on this category was collected through the news website Washington Post and Facebook groups protesting parent’s access. As demonstrated in a Washington Post article, “When Mom or Dad Asks To Be a Facebook Friend” many children who rejected their parent’s friend requests did so because they felt it was an invasion of privacy. However, Facebook groups banning parents were a bit more ruthless. Such group opinions varied from it being hilarious, to parents being too old, to it being nosy, intrusive and outrageous. As illustrated the main point within this results category was the fact that it was an invasion of privacy, users didn’t feel their parents needed to see the life they conducted online.

When Parents Were Left Pending

When someone is “friended” they must either accept the request or deny it, otherwise the request is left pending. In analyzing the relationship between parents and children on Facebook, we wanted to uncover how many students hesitated before adding or denying their parents, and the reasons for doing so. A few informants left their parents pending for a few days before deciding to add them, while another child left his mom pending indefinitely and with no intention of accepting her request. The majority had the same reason for hesitation: they needed to modify their profiles first. One informant elaborated on this fact in the student survey by stating, “Yes, my mom did friend me and no I did not accept it right away. There are a lot of pictures that I felt she would not like to see. I don’t hide anything from her and she knows that I’m a little bit of a wild child, but there’s a difference from knowing and then actually seeing. So I actually added her to my limited profile!” Another informant similarly mentioned that she “blocked any drunken pictures, etc.” from her mom. Surprisingly, one child did not have any embarrassing pictures to hide. His reasoning for leaving his mother pending was strictly a matter of privacy: “I’d rather her not view my pics/comments. She trusts me and all but I don’t like it when she asks me questions about my personal life; it kind of weirds me out.” He felt that leaving her pending was not as harsh or extreme as completely rejecting her friend request, but did not plan on ever accepting the request.
For the most part, children left their parents pending in order to hide pictures that might get them into trouble, but this decision also had to do with profile comments. Facebook allows users to control every aspect of their profiles in terms of what other users are allowed to see, but it is impossible to control what comments are written. These comments or “wall posts” as they are referred to on Facebook, can be just as incriminating as photos depending on what people write. “Postings by other people on one’s own profile reflect the character of the individuals who made the postings, [but] it is also possible that observers’ reactions of those others may affect perceptions of the target profile maker as well, even though the profile maker his- or herself did not initiate or condone the postings” (Walther et al. 2008:29). In other words, comments contribute to the overall image of the Facebook user. The male informant previously mentioned did not want his mother scrutinizing the comments posted on his profile for two reasons: he could not control their content and they could be easily misunderstood. Facebook does allow users to privatize the entire “wall,” but in his case it was easier to leave his mother pending, thereby keeping his profile unchanged and inaccessible. As members in this group also felt the need to protect their privacy they also unveiled the need to hide the way others create their online identity from the intimate real life relationship with their parent.

People Who Accepted and Sometimes Modified Profiles for Parents

Much to our surprise we found that the majority of people that had accepted relatives as friends didn’t modify their profiles. Of the 20 responses we used for this part of our research, 14 responded as having nothing to hide from their family. Some of the responses were:
“I’m not forced to put anything I don’t want to on Facebook or MySpace. I can choose to put whatever I want on my profile, if there was something I felt was better left unknown by certain people, I would leave it out all together. Why risk the chance of information you don’t want people to know getting out.”
“I didn’t find a need to modify. It’s a great way to keep in touch.”
“I keep no secrets from my mom, she’s my best friend. I have no problem giving her access to my college life. But she has mentioned that there are some things she wishes she hadn’t seen, like pictures of me wasted with a drawing of big cock on my face that my buddy drew. That was a crazy night.”
“I know my parents use Facebook to keep tabs on me and I am ok with that. I think it’s cute. I don’t restrict them from anything. I figure they might as well know what I’m doing…which sadly isn’t much.”
“None of my relatives on Facebook have limited access to my info. Most of them are cousins, around my age so we have this unwritten rule that we don’t rat each other out.”
The remaining six responses stated that they had modified their profiles a bit but gave different reasons why:
“Initially I had gave my mom open access to my profile so that she could feel as close to me as possible being that she’s in Chile. But that changed quickly after she began punishing me for things she would see on my Facebook profile, specifically my pictures. She would leave comments in caps followed by exclamation points under certain pictures. She was doing it so much that I became nervous when I’d log on. I put a stop to that quick style. I felt bad because my dad’s cool but I had to restrict him because my mom would over power him.”
“Haha yesss! I have her on my limited profile that way her and I can still chat amongst one another, but also so she doesn’t see my whole life at school.”
“I’m trying to get my sister to join Facebook; she lives in Honduras with my mom. Once she joins I will probably modify some things on my profile. Mainly my pictures just because I don’t want my mom to worry about me or the things I do.”
From our research we found that most of the students who had relatives on Facebook didn’t modify their profiles. A popular response among them was that they felt it was a great way to keep in touch with family. They saw Facebook as a great way to share their experiences with relatives who may be spread out across the globe. From the users who did modify, we found that the main feature they were keeping their relatives from was their photo albums. Most of these users felt that their pictures said more to their relatives than anything they could write on their profiles. A fundamental aspect of identity in a social networking site is, “the mutability of our self-representation in online environments” (Yee & Bailenson 2007:272). The ability to change your identity in an online environment and as a result change your behavior is described as the Proteus Effect. This is useful in understanding why children might modify their profile when allowing an intimate relative like a parent to view it. Since the parent knows their identity in the real world, the online identity might not match up and for this reason might create the need for modification. Some said they modified out of respect for their parents while others said that their parents didn’t need to know everything about them. As for who were the relatives who were restricted to limited access, in our small sample we found parents to be the ones who were the most restricted. Most of the users felt comfortable with aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings having unlimited access but not parents.

Conclusion

In the opinion of many undergraduates, it may seem unreal to imagine parents having any kind of social life. Some assume the reason behind a parent creating a Facebook account is simply for the spying privileges that they will receive. This fact may be true in some cases but does not seem to be proving true in all. Among the many that were interviewed, most parents admitted to liking Facebook as a social network and using it for the same reasons students stated. As is the slogan on the homepage of the Facebook network, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” Parents can use Facebook as a great way to advertise for business, create awareness of a problem, and reconnect with old friends and classmates. Indeed Facebook has an eager and growing community in the 30-year-old and older user. One interviewee remarked, “Yea, my dad and his co-worker were having a bet to see who could have the most friends on here. My dad’s winning so far.” Overall it has become apparent that parents enjoy Facebook for the same reasons that their children are attracted to it: to connect socially. A contrast noticed within the research was the students desire to branch out to find new friends and acquaintances, especially within a college environment for which the site was originally created. It is important here to note that although the patterns of the parents and their kids may differ slightly, the idea is still the same, and both choose to utilize the site in similar ways.
A last detail to mention is the fact that a lot of parents do create Facebook accounts in order to become friends with their children, but it’s not for the reason many kids assume. With a lot of child-parent relationships now being separated and strained by the rigors of college life, Facebook provides a quick and easy way for parents and their children to stay connected. One parent wrote, “Sometimes seeing what pics or videos or quotes they choose to post helps me feel I know them better. Being able to post quick updates sometimes brings our far flung kids and me closer.” It is in this sense that we again see the reality of ‘ambient awareness’ in the fact that while parents may not necessarily be in physical proximity to their kids they can still keep updated and maintain close ties, as well as kids staying updated about what’s going on in their parent’s lives. However while parents seek to maintain this close relationship with their children, children are presented with the task to allow or reject their parents from their online identity.
In the end this study yielded many fascinating results and brings up even more questions for future studies. If this study were to be redone some things that may have been overlooked would be brought to light. One of the corrections we would choose to make is changing our methods of research, more importantly our interviewing techniques. While we found the Facebook groups that were created to be very helpful, one thing we would have changed was the fact that both parents and their kids were invited to the same group. A separate group for each would have been more helpful in getting honest answers from each party. The way in which the questions were set up allowed both the parents and kids to view each others’ answers. Also we would have liked to do more face-to-face interviews and collect a broader scope of both parents and their kids to interview. The results of our findings showed that there were many different responses to parents and kids “friending” each other. We found responses such as flat out rejection, holding an invitation as “pending”, the alteration or limitation of profiles, as well as genuine friend acceptance. Through all the varying responses we found that in some way or another, the relationship between a parent and child did play an important role, especially in relation to the child’s online identity created through their pictures, “about me” and wall. Further research has pointed out the different uses that parents and their kids have on social networking sites, but when it comes to Facebook, children and parents have a lot more in common than they think.

Bibliography

Digital Learning
2008 Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. Electronic document, http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-WhitePaper.pdf, accessed March 1, 2009.
Grimmelmann, James
2008 Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy. Iowa Law Review 95(4).
New York Times
2008 Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. Electronic document, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?_r=3&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin, accessed March 3, 2009.
Walther, Joseph B., with Brandon Van Der Heide, Sang-Yeon Kim, David Westerman, and Stephanie Tom Tong
2008 The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep? Human Communication Research 34(1):28-49.
Yee, Nick and Jeremy Bailenson
2007 The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-representation on Behavior. Human Communication Research 33(3):271–90.

Facebook.relationships

2009-05-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

Facebook.relationships

A research article for Anthropology 128C: Cyberspace, Power, and Culture

Introduction 2-3
(The Abstract. AEMEA formation, research background, data methods)
Broad Relationships 3-5
(presented by Ms. Ej Cruz)
Professional Relationships 5-7
(presented by Mr. Emmanuel Arreola)
Friendships 7-8
(presented by Ms. Avi Jayasekara)
Family Relationships 8-10
(presented by Mr. Anton Sisante)
Romantic Relationships 10-12
(presented by Ms. Melissa Obregon)
Citations 13
Data 14-24
(some of the ethnographic data attached)

INTRODUCTION

Unlike the days of the telegraph, as described in The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage, Facebook allows a means of extension to the individual’s network so that it spans out to far regions of the world. With the telegraph, individuals were only able to express their communication through beeps, dots, and dashes1. The relationships that stemmed between individuals during these days were only familial, professional, or romantic. There wasn’t much room to expand to a network of relationships. Now that we have Facebook, individuals have the ability to network with people on the other side of the world using many different forms of communication, and create a vast array of relationships.
Facebook is an online social-networking medium developed by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his classmates in 20042. These people made it possible for internet-users from any part of the world to rekindle and connect with old friends and/or family, find love/continue love through an online medium, get a fresh update on a co-worker, or randomly meet people in and/or out of a network. The user of Facebook is represented through a user profile and the individual may choose to “add a friend” from anywhere they wish on Facebook…so long as the other individual accepts the friend request. This commutation is of great importance; because of this distinctive feature, individuals now have a mode of classification as to what type of relationship has been developed between one individual to another. In a sense, the “Facebook relationship” has emerged.
The AEMEA group chose to conduct research specifically on these distinguished “Facebook relationships.” The group rigorously researched, conducted work, and theorized upon whether these Facebook relationships contribute to the strengthening or weakening of the relationship because of the usage of the Facebook platform. AEMEA’s strategy to collect data consisted of the utilization of their individual Facebook networks. Interviews were sent to many individuals from their array of Facebook relationships as well as joining groups that have had conducted Facebook research in the past. Personal face-to-face interviews were also sought out. “Survey Monkey” was the model for statistical data, and some members of the group exploited synchronous forms of online communication such as AIM to gather information. A Facebook Group was created between members to share data with one another.
AEMEA decided that Facebook relationships can be sliced into five categories: broad relationships, professional relationships, friendships, family relationships, and romantic relationships. From this point on, it can be understood that the relationships mentioned in this article are part of the observed Facebook platform3. The regional range of the Facebook users that AEMEA observed consisted of networks such as: Orange County, Saddleback College, and UC Irvine. The people observed were between 11 to 60 years of age. We shall start with broad relationships as the first topic, since it is the most general and branches off to more localized relationships.

BROAD RELATIONSHIPS

The AEMEA group based broad relationships upon the following characteristics:
Individuals have no ongoing communication history of friendship
Individuals aren’t particularly self-disclosed with one another, but share a mutual network
Individuals have shared a past friendship, but have lost touch
Individuals may have met once or have never met the other in the corporeal world
There are two ways these broad relationships can be strengthened or weakened. The first way is through a mode of observable preconceptions between the mutual friends. These preconceptions are the public information the individual chooses to disclose to their public, their network of mutual friends. Through this, the mutual friend has the ability to do a “background check” on their broad relationship networks. These observable preconceptions are quantified by the amount of activity the individual spends on Facebook. The most ubiquitous of these preconceptions is the Facebook status updates. The choice of this feature was obtained through the Facebook research group portal4 and a YouTube video called “Facebook Fever,” through a user known as Zippy5. Through this exclusive feature, the mutual friend can view preliminary sketches of their broad relationships and form an implicit bias in the broad relationship.
The status updates feature on Facebook are simple sentence boxes where users constantly express their thoughts or what they’re feeling to their public at a certain point in time. The AEMEA group researched the effects of status updates on broad relationships. An interview that was conducted by one AEMEA member through AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) group chat questioned three of their friends who used Facebook often and kept a numerous network of broad relationships. The three individuals had a total of at least fifty added friends to their account. They expressed mixed emotions when asked about status updates. “Some [status updates] end up being funny, so funny that I laugh my pants off… but most of the time—these people’s updates are all about fml, fml, FML!6 It just gets played out, I don’t need to know if your life sucks. Tell me something I don’t know already, like…who’s your new boo!7”
These findings show the impact an individual can create without initially speaking with their mutual friend beforehand. When the mutual friend updates their status, mutual peers can become turned off with their personality just by reading the sentence box. This is especially true when the individual updates their status in a negative notion. One of the three peers who were interviewed on AIM group chat added, “You really get a feel of what the person is like through their status updates. From the news feed, I’ve received status updates every hour by one person updating things like ‘text me,’ ‘I’m bored,’ ‘who wants to hang out tonight,’ My reaction?...l0ner!8” The mutual friend who views these status updates internalizes an etic perspective about their mutual friend due to these Facebook status updates. What is fascinating about the status updates feature is the underlying biases that can lead to the strengthening or weakening of the relationship before actual interaction!
The second way a broad relationship can determine strength or weakness is through the asynchronous communication features between mutual friends on Facebook. Data was derived from Facebook groups that had already done Facebook research in the past through questionnaires and surveys. AEMEA found that the most common type of communication used in Facebook was the wall post.
Wall posts are sentence boxes that enable the mutual friend to write a message to the other while it is viewable to the public. Through wall posts, individuals that share a broad relationship can write a quick, “hello” to each other. Eighty percent of the interviewees from a Facebook note questionnaire have stated that their relationship with a mutual friend had strengthened through the continuous use of the wall post. They also informed AEMEA that although they had initial preconceptions about their mutual friend, it was the actual interaction that declared a strong or weak relationship. Sometimes, with frequent asynchronous communications, the broad relationship can be developed further if mutual attraction is present. As stated in Mimi Ito’s article, Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Finding from the Digital Youth Project, these little hellos and emoticons can escalate into further relationships such as romantic relationships or close friendships 9. The remaining twenty percent suggested that Facebook neither strengthened nor weakened their relationship but acted as a supplement to their broad relationship. These twenty percent of users shied away from disclosing too much information on Facebook’s public portal. Users stated that they’d either use the Facebook platform for their mutual network if they had a question about school or if they were also going to an event that will be attended by their same network of peers. Facebook users asserted that the only way they would be bothered by their mutual friends on Facebook is if they constantly kept posting messages onto their wall and replied on the features through their Facebook even when they wouldn’t respond back. A Facebook user coined the term, “Facebook creeper,” for these types of friends.
AEMEA was able to define how to strengthen, weaken or keep a neutral basis between mutual friends on Facebook. We find that it is through observable preconceptions and asynchronous interaction. We will now move onto a more defined relationship on Facebook: Professionalism.

PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

An interesting aspect of the social networking site known as Facebook has been its ability to attract users from different social networks and settings. Interestingly enough, it has found its way into the workplace as mode of communication between co-workers and supervisors. As stated in the Facebook’s press release, “Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers”11. In regards to this statement, the AEMEA group questioned how has Facebook improved or strengthened the working relationship of others? Or has it had the very opposite effect and instead has negatively impacted these relationships?
AEMEA conducted personal interviews consisting of two past co-workers, a current co-worker, and a past and current supervisor of one of AEMEA’s group members. Each interviewee was “friends” on Facebook with their co-workers and supervisors. In discussing whether or not Facebook had improved the way they communicated and interacted, all had the general consensus that Facebook had a positive but not significant impact on their working relationship.
As Interviewer A stated, “it’s nice knowing and keeping in touch with what is going on in their personal lives, but I don’t think it changes our working relationship at all.” Interviewer D went further on to say that “what goes on in people’s personal lives online (i.e. status updates, wall posts, picture albums, etc.) really never becomes a topic of conversation at work.” When interviewing person C, interviewer C commented that Facebook “in my opinion, helps the working relationship because it’s another way to connect personally outside of the workplace.” In hindsight, there was a general conclusion that Facebook was positive on working relationships as it provided a venue into personal lives but all of them agreed that it did not significantly change the work setting. As Interviewer B elaborated, “it’s just nice seeing another side to my supervisor outside of work.”
An aspect where Facebook has had an impact on professional working relationships is the topic of privacy. How does ambient awareness and privacy affect the professional relationships in the work environment? It was interesting to note that though the interviewees appreciated the fact that they were able to communicate on another level through Facebook, many chose not to. As suggested by the data from the surveys, 75% of them agreed that a working relationship on Facebook differed significantly from other social networks seen. Respondent 1 commented further that “I’m not as active on my supervisor and co-workers profile as I am with my other friends where I comment on photos, make wall posts, etc.” An interesting note from the data collected was that 83% of those that agreed that working relationships on Facebook differed from other social networks also agreed that privacy was the major reason why. Respondent 4 said that “it’s awkward being friends with your boss on Facebook because you don’t know how it will affect your job.” The data collected and answers showed that while having access to one’s profile was one way to connect on a personal level outside of work, it did not significantly improve or weaken the working relationship.
So with this ambient awareness of co-workers and supervisors and the risk of no privacy, I posed the question to my survey respondents and interviewees: does having a working relationship on Facebook prove to be beneficial? The general consensus from my interviewees responded yes and surprisingly so did my survey respondents. Ambient awareness was found to be a positive outcome from Facebook because it helped gain a better understanding of those at the work place. Interviewer E provided more insight as she commented that “I understand why people are having bad days at the office or why they looked so stressed; Facebook sometimes helps me know how to act around them.” This comment is reminiscent of the Clive Thompson article in which he described ambient awareness as having an “omnipresent knowledge.12”
Though many of the interviewees agreed that Facebook has had no significant impact, the benefit of ambient awareness has had positive effect on the relationships seen at work. Thus, with data collected, Facebook has indeed helped improve the communication in the work environment as suggested by its press release statement.

FRIENDSHIP

While both broad and professional relationships have been affected through Facebook, a more personal relationship that has been impacted both negatively and positively is friendships. It is clear that as a social networking site, Facebook has opened many new avenues for new friendships to form and foster. Merriam-Webster defines a friend as “one attached to another by affection or esteem13”. With this definition of a friend, Facebook opened up a new world of opportunities for people to keep in touch with friends and make new ones. However, with all these changes and ways to make new friends, how has Facebook changed the way that we, as a society, interact with our pre-existing friends? Has our communication with these friends deteriorated or strengthened through Facebook?
AEMEA questioned interviewees if they felt facebook made a difference in the way their friendships are viewed. All 4 responded yes, they did in fact feel as if facebook had made a difference in this. One interviewee responded, “I have a broader definition of the term friends. Without Facebook I probably would only consistently speak with my family and one or two people on occasion. With Facebook I speak to people the same sparse amount but with a much larger base so it seems like a lot more. Basically Facebook allows me to have the ideal friend spread out through many people”14. From Survey Monkey, 70% of the respondents felt that Facebook had changed their relationships with their friends.
However, when AEMEA changed the question slightly and questioned interviewees as to whether Facebook has strengthened their friendships, only 40% said yes, 50% said sometimes, and the other 10% said no. One survey respondent says “If anything, I think that Facebook has weakened relationships. Sometimes it feels as though you reply to wall posts or messages simply to reciprocate, as if it were to ensure equal exchange rather than a message with an inherent purpose”15. Another suggests, “I am not naturally outgoing, so I do not keep friends that easily. Facebook allows me to keep in touch with people without all of the hassle that a phone or face-to-face conversation would require”16. In one of our class readings the authors suggest that “online social networking systems can help individuals to maintain a larger number of close ties than people can typically maintain without such technology, as the systems allow people to check one another’s sites for updates, reflect new activities, as well as to facilitate brief verbal exchanges through asynchronous wall postings”17. The ability to communicate so easily has both positive and negative outcomes. Like the author says its more than typically possible, so one has to think when does this kind of communication become too much.
AEMEA questioned Facebook users whether or not they preferred Facebook communication over physical gatherings and telecommunication devices. 40% of the respondents said yes, 50% said sometimes, while only 10% said no. From these findings, it is clear that Facebook has made face to face interactions a rare occasion. Interviewees responded “Phone calls and personal meetings in general are becoming obsolete in this generation, as there are many passive ways of communicating nowadays”18. When AEMEA surveyed the Facebook users as to whether they think this bothers their friends, 80% responded ’no,’ they do not tell me that they do it just as often, and so they probably prefer it [Facebook communication] themselves.”
While communication between friends is rising, face to face communication is falling dramatically. Staying in touch has become easier, but only through the words that appear on the computer screen. The survey respondents do not seem to feel, that this is a deterioration of their friendships; rather, they express that Facebook has created avenues for some to express themselves more due to shyness, personality trails or time constraints in real life. One respondent commented, “Asian's are not that open. They're very insecure. They will be much more comfortable when they don't see the face of the person”19. This ability to express themselves more openly crosses into other relationships, such as those with family, as will be further explained.

FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS

The easy accessibility of Facebook allows users an alternative approach to keeping in touch with family. In particular, there appears to be a significant increase in the amount of kinships maintaining interfamilial connections through Facebook. This has been revolutionizing the way communication between family members is established to build potentially stronger relationships.
To demonstrate this, one of AEMEA’s group members obtained opinions on the idea of familial relationships on Facebook from several family members within his own kinship and compared this to the consensus held by a group of Facebook users who are not part of his own lineage. Using the participant-observation method, the AEMEA member was able to conduct seven open-ended interviews with various family members who have profiles on Facebook. Such members ranged from those that he regularly keeps in contact with to those that he has never even met in person. The open-ended questions were created on a Facebook Note that tagged 25 family members whose ages ranged anywhere from 14 to 68. Answers from this sample group represent this age range. Since the type and strength of familial bond he shared among those of interviewed family members on Facebook greatly varied, the information obtained can be used as a model for one type of kinship found in Facebook. For future reference, all family members cited will be given aliases to protect their identities.
For Facebook users that did not belong to his family, a survey was posted on a note that everyone within his Facebook networks would be able to view and access. The survey listed the same questions sent to family members albeit with pre-determined answer choices that survey takers would chose from. From this data, 16 anonymous surveys were collected whose collective answers represent a random population.
When asked whether Facebook was a useful tool in improving relationships between family members, 84% of his familial respondents believed that Facebook has generally strengthened such relationships. The other 16% believed that no significant change occurred between their relationships. Among those that felt Facebook has improved relations cite that the website acts as a convenient medium to keep in touch with family overseas. In particular, one family member, Teresa, explains that with Facebook, “You don’t have to pay for long-distance phone calls to know what is going on with your family members living far away from you.” Compared to the random group, 93% reported no significant change between them and their own family members while the other 7% reported a significant improvement.
A follow-up question asked whether there were significant communication differences between different networks (friends, family, coworkers, etc.) on Facebook. 84% of the interviewees explained that depending on the family member, communication can either be comparable to that seen among their own friends or conducted more respectfully if directed towards an older member. The remaining 16% felt there was no significant difference in communication between networks. Additionally, every member felt that in general, communication among kin did not differ between cyberspaces and physically in person. Similarly, 70% of survey participants thought communication among family members compared to other networks depended upon both age and closeness to that family member. On the other hand, 30% cited there is less intimacy with family members on Facebook compared to friends on other networks.
Another question that was asked considered the effect of ‘ambient awareness’ on familial relationships. Ambient awareness in this context is defined as the information a Facebook user indirectly obtains about another user – i.e. status updates, pictures, notes, etc.20 In this case, 71% of the interviewees as well as the general consensus among survey-takers believed that ambient awareness provides an opportunity to learn more interesting, intimate details about family members that may not have been learned otherwise. However, a couple of family members found the concept of ambient awareness creepy and voyeuristic to a certain extent. One respondent, Roger, reported, “To me ambient awareness is almost like stalking because people get to know everything that’s going on with me!! It’s almost scary.”
Despite this, Facebook is still highly regarded as a useful tool for maintaining and even strengthening familial relationships. 81% of survey respondents claim that the benefits for having family members as ‘Facebook-friends’ outweigh any negatives. Even censorship does not seem to be much of an issue affecting the decision to befriend any particular family member. 100% of family correspondents do not enable privacy restrictions for photos or profile content. Similarly, 50% of the survey takers leave their profile as is, free for any family member to view. Although it seems “young people tend to avoid their parents and other adults while using social network sites”21, such a generational gap seems to be closing as more people are starting to use Facebook to maintain a large multitude of contacts. Given enough time, it would be interesting to see whether having family connections in social networking sites becomes an expected norm. In the meantime, the trend of having romantic relationships on Facebook may even be closer to achieving that social norm.

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

Facebook has had a large impact on various facets of our society. Not only has it impacted friendships, familial relationships, and relationships between employees but it has also played a large role in romantic relationships. Some of the roles it has played are enhancing long distance relationships, creating jealousy, and affecting the status of a relationship. The first area that it has impacted is the quality of a relationship. According to the survey, 85% of people in a long distance relationship believed that facebook had a positive influence on their relationship. During an interview, Boyfriend A stated “Facebook has enhanced my relationship with my girlfriend of 2 years and is part of the reason we are still together.” Throughout his interview, he explained that being able to see his girlfriend through pictures she had posted on her Facebook gave him a feeling of closeness. He stated, “I felt like I was able to be there with her through the past year because she would constantly update her photos of events that she had gone to and places she had visited.” In addition, Girlfriend K explained that being away from her boyfriend was made a little easier through Facebook because she was able to make posts throughout the day and see what he was doing during his year away at school through pictures. Overall, Facebook has been able to strengthen long distance relationships by providing another form of communication for individuals through wall posts and picture sharing.
However, not all participants in the survey and interviews agreed with Boyfriend A. Compared to those not in a long distance relationship, 60% believed that it did not enhance their relationship. In addition, 55% reported that Facebook had promoted distrust and jealousy. Girlfriend P explained throughout her interview that she monitored her boyfriend’s Facebook daily and would check what types of comments and private messages he was receiving and from whom he was receiving messages. 45% of females in a relationship accessed their boyfriends’ Facebook account at least twice a month. In addition, there were 15% of individuals in long distance relationships that felt like Facebook did not enhance their relationships. According to Boyfriend T, he felt that Facebook enhanced mistrust between his girlfriend and him. When asked about the effect facebook had on their relationship he stated, “it has made me paranoid and worried…I find myself constantly looking at her page, status changes and pictures to see if there is anything she may be lying about.” He went on to discuss that the distance between them has created problems within the relationship because he is able to see all the pictures that are posted from different parties and he questions some of the pictures where there are other men. Thus, data regarding whether or not facebook has strengthened or weakened romantic relationships reveals that it mostly strengthens long distance relationships and tends to create jealousy and mistrust among romantic relationships that are close in distance.
Facebook has also affected the status of one’s relationship. According to the survey, 62% of individuals reported that their relationship status on their Facebook accounts was changed within 48 hours of becoming an official couple. This reveals that in a way, people view Facebook as making a relationship official. Girlfriend C explained in her interview that her official anniversary with her boyfriend was the day he changed his status on facebook. In addition, 73% of surveyed individuals reported that they changed their profile pictures when they were in fights with their boyfriends and 50% reported changing their relationship status within 48 hours of breaking up. The status one has on Facebook is thus extremely important and defines, in many cases, one’s relationship.
Facebook has also created deception within relationships. According to the survey, 38% of individuals had multiple Facebook accounts. One individual in the interview stated that he had one account for his friends and another for his girlfriend and their mutual friends. Throughout this interview subject M revealed a very in depth scheme that he had going on. At the time of the interview he was in a relationship with two other girls and in order to keep them from finding out about each other he created multiple accounts. In one account he had girlfriend #1 and their mutual friends, and on another account he had girlfriend #2. Each account was set to private which disabled others from viewing their comments. When girlfriend #1 became suspicious he reassured her that nothing was going on and gave her the password to the account he had made specifically for her. Thus when she would check his account she never found anything suspicious because it was all on the other account she did not have access to. Although Facebook has strengthened relationships by creating new forms of communication, it has also increased jealously, distrust and deception within other relationships.

CONCLUSION

While each relationship within facebook has been impacted in its own unique way, it is safe to say that Facebook has had the ability to reach all social spheres. Thus, AEMEA’s findings have shown that relationships on Facebook find a strengthening and/or weakening of their relationship through the extent to which it is used. The Facebook platform can strengthen, weaken or have no significant effect on a relationship. Much of the effect that Facebook has had on relationships depended on the individuals themselves, and how they interacted with one another through facebook. While it is true that new technologies like facebook has opened new paths of communication, in the end it is how we as a society utilize these opportunities that make a difference in current standing of our daily relationships.

Footnotes:

Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet, Preface and Chapters 1–8 (pages vii–144).
Lev Grossman, Why Facebook Is for Old Fogies, Thursday February 12 , 2009. Time. www.time.com.
Consider in the Facebook platform only. Corporeal relationships can be defined in a multitude of ways.
Mutual Friends in this article are not to be mistaken for the “mutual friends in common” feature on Facebook.
Facebook.Com, Groups: “Facebook Status Research!” Stephen Pihlaja.
Christine Gambito, HappySlip, Youtube, January 15, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV4PNwpqsCc .
“FML” is the equivalence of “fxck my life” or “for my love.”
“Boo” is the equivalence of lover, sweetheart, boyfriend/girlfriend.
“l0ner” is the equivalence of outcast.
Mimi Ito et al, Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, 2008.
Facebook Press Release. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet.
Clive Thompson, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. New York Times, Sept. 7, 2008.
Merriam-Webster.com, Definition for “friend,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/friend).
Avi Jayasekara, Personal Interview, AOL Instant Messenger, Chat, (February 27, 2009)
Survey Respondent, Survey Monkey, www.surveymonkey.com, (February 23, 2009
Survey Respondent, Survey Monkey, www.surveymonkey.com, (February 24, 2009)
Stephanie Tom Tong, Brandon Van Der Heide, Lindsey Langwell, Joseph B. Walther, Too Much of a Good Thing? The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(3):531–49, 2008.
Avi Jayasekara, Personal Interview, AOL Instant Messenger, Chat, (February 23, 2009)
Survey Respondent, Survey Monkey, www.surveymonkey.com, (February 27, 2009)
Clive Thompson, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. New York Times, Sept. 7, 2008.
Mimi Ito et al, Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, 2008.

Enthnographic Data:

Answers from Facebook Users via Notes Questionnaire: (names have been changed)
Has the social network of facebook strengthen or improved your relationship? Has it weakened it? Give a brief story.2. Are there certain communication differences between how you communicate with the different networks (your relationships between people) you have within facebook? (ie: how do you communicate bff vs. friend vs. coworker vs. family vs. schoolmate)3. How does you communication change from facebook to the way you communicate with them in real world (ie are you more open, closed...)4. How does ambient awareness affect your relationships (ie status updates, pictures, wall posts, notes...)5. Do you have different types of censorship/restrictions for different people and what determines it?6. what kind of communication do you utilize the most within facebook (wall posts, msgs, graffiti, picture comments, status...) and how does that differ from real world?7. How do you feel when people you aren't as acquainted with (mutual friend, distant friend) leave you wall posts, respond to your status, and all forms of communication media on your Facebook? Why do you feel this way?8. What is your reaction when you add a family member (nuclear family, relatives) to your Facebook? Does it cause any conflicts?9. Can romantic relationships be strengthened through Facebook? Can it be weakened through Facebook? How and why?10. Why do you have a Facebook?

Lyle Forgenburger:
Facebook has yet to do anything towards my status in life. I haven't use it to it's full potential and I am sure it would have some rewards and consequences.2. I communicate to everyone on Facebook equally which is for fun. 3. I tried to synchronize my behavior exactly on the internet with real life: Cheezy easy!4. My relationship seems to be improving as I am using ambient awareness at a minimum level. I wonder what happens if I go max?5. You know the "Give happiness to others, and happiness is given back"?6. The Instant Message Feature, Inbox, and the Status Change.7. Depends what they leave me.8. No. They respect my privacy. We have the if you see it, "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.9. I have no idea. Never been in a romantic relationship online, so I really do not have a say here.10. Better than MySpace, and I can find my buds relatively easy.

Surge Smith:
1.I feel like I'm more in the loop with FB. People use it more often and give it a lot of input. Also, the Birthday function is pretty useful.2. Not so much. I type to them the same way that I would speak to them.3. Just about the same--if at all, less closed as there are some things that I wouldn't want everyone to read.4. Once again, I just feel like I'm more in the loop and know more about others.5. Nope--I should, but I don't have sensitive material on my FB, or at least I don't think I do.6. Wall posts definitely. It's less personal, not in real time, but just as convenient as a text message. It's like having a pause button for a conversation.7. It gives me a false sense that others are interested in the mundane things that I do. But it is appreciated that people take the time to comment. All in all, it feels good--seriously, like a drug.8. Haven't had an issue at all as it doesn't seem any different from adding friends.9. One phrase: Facebook stalking.

Riley Whittier:
If anything it's given me an easy way to communicate to other friends of mine in a widespread fashion. Such as the Apac mixer event is much easier to invite everybody to through creating an event. And many of the apac'ers use their facebook often. Definitely helps. Although the electronic nature of facebook weakens friendships and relationships; Through normal activity the relationships still build. Overall it strengthens more than weakens because I can reach people in a quick manner. leaving them comments and posting pictures giving us more conversation and things to talk about.
No there is not. I communicate the same amount through facebook that I would normally with the person. I could see why this question is of concern. The boundaries for me, because I'm an open person are disregarded.
I am not more open; but I may be more wordy than How i normally speak and I may type things wrong which I would not say that way. (internet slang) Otherwise there is no significant difference.
it keeps me updated on whats going on and shows me what people want to share with others via status updates. fills me in on what i can talk about with people next time I see them. etc. I can understand that it may have negative effects as well; for me Its strictly informational to conversational.
no
6. It used to be graffiti but its mostly just wall posts. Nothing different than in the real world. I.e. i just said happy b-day to Nate bone on facebook. but i also called him friday and will greet him to lunch when we go to eat.7. basically it's saying they'd like to know me better. no harm in that. It's filled with positive vibe and I encourage it.8. It could have conflicts if there are things people want to hide from family members. On my personal level with family members I do not mind. I may not want my mom to add me but luckily she doesn't have one. Then she'd know if I was really studying or was doing something she would not approve of.9. This is an extremely subjective question and they can do either. in my opinion it depends on outside of facebook interaction more than in facebook interaction that determines the strength of the relationship. Facebook is merely a minor factor in this equation.10. To do these sorts of things. converse; communicate, express and share.

Taylor Freeman:
1. Facebook hasn’t made too big of an impact on my life yet, only because I don’t use it often enough. However, because of the birthday reminders on the side I now don’t’ forget to greet my friends on their birthdays, if that counts as improving my relationship with the social network.2. yes, I think there is a big difference between how I communicate with the different networks. I think that I put more of my time and attention onto my best friends through facebook, rather than just a schoolmate. For example; a birthday, my best friends get A LONG comment but my schoolmate’s just get a simple “happy birthday! (:” or something small like that.3. I am more closed when it comes to communicating on facebook, because it gets broadcasted to at least a hundred people.4. My relationships improve when I use ambient awareness.5. I don’t have different types of censorship or restrictions for different people.6. I use wall posts and statuses most within facebook. I’m not really sure how it differs from the real world.7. I mean, I guess I feel somewhat good when people I’m not as acquainted with leave me stuff because that means that they go on my facebook and it shows that they somewhat care.8. Haha, adding family is really awkward. More than half of my friends on facebook ARE my family, including my mother and grandma. But it causes a little bit of conflict because that just means I can’t post some things I’d like to post afraid that they will read it. But other than that it’s fine.9. I’m not sure if romantic relationships can be strengthened through Facebook. It can be weakened if one of the people sees a tagged picture or a wall post that they do not approve of and it causes conflict. 10. I have a facebook because it gives me a way to communicate to everyone. Such as, my family in the Philippines, my friends that have moved away for college, and so on. It makes things a lot easier.sorry my answers are so long(: i hope this helps.

Alex Lipschitz:
1 It has strengthened the ones that I started it for. Most of my high school buddies are going to college out of state, and since no one writes letters anymore this is the only way to keep in touch.2. absolutely3. its hard to really communicate with them since body language and tone has so much to do with communication4. It does nothing for me.5. No6. whatever i feel like. I don't use one too much over another7. They leave. people come and go you just have to take what you get.8. I have like only two family members on facebook, and it has brought us a lot closer9. Can't really say. I don't think any of my relationships have be affected. 10. To keep in touch with close friends who have moved away.

Andre Von Swerve:
Facebook has definitely improved some of my friendships, mainly the long distance friends that I have lost touch with since high school or earlier. For example, my friend Simon has been stationed in Kuwait and Iraq for the past year and a half. I lost contact with him since graduating high school and through facebook I was able to keep tabs with him. I eventually met up with him and some friends during his holiday leave this past December.2. I communicate with different networks somewhat differently I would say. The only difference is I may be more rude or blunt to my closer friends just because they can take it and understand my intentions. However with someone I am just acquainted with I usually am a little more polite. For family members, it depends on age and generation. For example, I can talk to my 28 year old cousin Bill like he's my homeboy, but not with my 35 yr old brother.3. I communicate very similarly on facebook and in real life since it is a casual interface for social networks. One difference might be that I might sound more intelligent because every word typed online is just a rough draft of your brain... the words don't come out of your mouth until you click "POST"4. I think all the ambient awareness can have a positive effect on relationships. These are just additional ways to relate with one another. It's basically like a huge public yet private bulletin. My friend Warren and I, who I haven't kept in touch with for a few years, are now more connected all because of his status update saying "plays poker". Just like that I saw him the next week at a home poker game with 8 other people. Also, I never would have gotten into street art (wheatpasting, poster/sticker art) if it weren't for seeing my cousin's work on facebook. I rarely see him since he lives in Glendale, but through facebook I was inspired right away and am now closer to him because of it.5. I have censorships with different people, mainly people who are older than I that require more respect when spoken to. Not to say I don't speak respectfully to my normal peers, it's just that I speak more casually with slang. Some people may get offended but more commonly misunderstand what I am trying to convey. 6. The method of communication I use most on facebook is through private messages and wall posts. This differs from the real world because you can have a million different conversations at once without spending 3 hours on the phone with everyone. It is also different because you can comment about anything from anytime, but in real life comments may seem "random" or people may not relate right away because there is no photo or written record to base off of. It seems to me that it is just another form of digital communication which is prevalent in todays younger generation7. I may feel somewhat surprised only because I don't communicate with the person on a regular basis. However, I do take it kindly as an attempt to open or build a friendship in a way. It also depends if I see the person regularly or not. If someone doesn't say a word to me in the real world and they do on facebook, I figure they may just be shy or intimidated to speak with me directly. If it's someone that I have not met but have seen before, I would definitely feel surprised. There are a lot people in this generation that will have 1500 friends on myspace, and they won't even know half of them!8. My reaction is the same as adding anyone else. There are no conflicts because I don't post inebriated pictures of myself online.... not that I'm a party animal or anything, but I don't think some of my devout Christian/Catholic family members would appreciate a photo of me with a red face that isn't a sunburn!9. Romantic relationships can be strengthened through facebook in some ways because it is another method of communicating to your partner/spouse. Just like flowers and candy, text messaging sweet nothings, posting e-cards and personally edited photos are all different ways in communicating and showing affection to your loved one. Isn't communication supposedly the most important thing in a romantic relationship? However on the flip-side, depending on varying personality types, facebook can be a negative thing for a relationship. The main reason is obviously jealousy and insecurity. Because everything on facebook is public to your network of friends, every little word and detail is recorded and magnified since it can be read over and over. With this information available, some may feel inclined to play "detective" and question everything.10. I have a facebook so I can keep in touch with friends and family that I do not see nor come in contact with throughout the week. I'm more efficient in communicating through the computer since my schedule is pretty busy throughout the week. Facebook allows me to network with distant friends and relate with them in ways I never would have if I had done so through text and phone.

Estelle Rydorn:
2. Are there certain communication differences between how you communicate with the different networks (your relationships between people) you have within facebook? (ie: how do you communicate bff vs. friend vs. coworker vs. family vs. schoolmate)
Older family will call.
Younger relatives will email.
Some friends/family have stopped emailing me and just communicated through facebook.
They will still call.
3. How does you communication change from facebook to the way you communicate with them in real world (ie are you more open, closed...)
In FB, I will be vague.
5. Do you have different types of censorship/restrictions for different people and what determines it?
I opened an account for Micaela with the strictest privacy settings. Her account is through my email so I see who communicates with her.
7. How do you feel when people you aren't as acquainted with (mutual friend, distant friend) leave you wall posts, respond to your status, and all forms of communication media on your Facebook? Why do you feel this way?
That they’re actually paying attention.
I have a separate account for my real estate network. I decided to do that since I didn’t want them tohave access to my friends and family’s info and pictures.8. What is your reaction when you add a family member (nuclear family, relatives) to your Facebook? Does it cause any conflicts?
We’re still trying to get my daughter on [facebook]. 9. Can romantic relationships be strengthened through Facebook? Can it be weakened through Facebook? How and why? I don’t really communicate with my spouse through fb. He’ll use the instant messenger if he wants to catch me on. 
10. Why do you have a Facebook?
I was invited. Now I am glad to be in touch with friends I haven’t seen in decades.

Drake Johnston:
Has the social network of facebook strengthen or improved yourrelationship? Has it weakened it? Give a brief story.--Yes; it allows me to quickly communicate with people whose personalcontact information (phone number, email, address) I do not have and withpeople whom I don't normally have the chance to talk to (relatives wholive in a different state/country). Also, when there's a group project,it's friendlier and easier to plan out a meeting or event because of the"Groups" and "Calendar" features. I've recently been invited to ababyshower through Facebook. (lol)2. Are there certain communication differences between how you communicatewith the different networks (your relationships between people) you havewithin facebook? (ie: how do you communicate bff vs. friend vs. coworkervs. family vs. schoolmate)--Yes. Generally, I post a lot of (dirty and stupid) inside jokes on thewalls of close friends more often than people I meet through organizationsand classes. The information and comments that are posted on walls arethings which I wouldn't mind other people knowing. For family events, weall usually call or text each other instead of Facebook because it's alittle more private. I use messages and the chat feature for moreintimate, one-on-one conversations because there are certain informationwhich I'd like to keep between just me and the other person (usuallybecause I just want to get to know them better).3. How does you communication change from facebook to the way youcommunicate with them in real world (ie are you more open, closed...)--Facebook allows me to openly tease close friends while knowing that ourgroup of friends would probably see, comment and play along with theteasing, similar to when we tease each other in person. Honestly, I alsouse it as a tool to flirt with people I meet from class and it allows meto be a little bit more cautious; I have more time to think about what tosay so that I don't embarrass myself too badly.4. How does ambient awareness affect your relationships (ie statusupdates, pictures, wall posts, notes...)--It's an interesting and easy way to keep up with people's past, presentand future lives. The pictures are like puzzle pieces that lets me knowwhat a person's hobbies and interests are. Through the Status Updates, Ican figure out who would be available and willing to hang out overstudying. Through notes, I am able to experience the wisdom orridiculousness of a person's thoughts.5. Do you have different types of censorship/restrictions for differentpeople and what determines it?--Yes; it depends on how creepy the person is (seriously.. LOL). I set my"limited" profile for people (who really take on stalker status) I meet atrandom places (clubs, parties, etc.) whom I really wouldn't want to know.Also, there are family members and religious friends whose eyes I don'twant to taint and/or offend with my "party" side, so I limit the things Ipost (i.e. pictures, notes).6. what kind of communication do you utilize the most within facebook(wall posts, msgs, graffiti, picture comments, status...) and how doesthat differ from real world?--In order: wall posts, status update comments, picture comments andmessages. But it also varies depending on the person I'm communicatingwith. As mentioned, I often post lots of unnecessary jokes on walls anddo the same for pictures and status updates of close friends; I wouldprobably verbally communicate the same messages if we were in person. Icommunicate more on facebook with family members who are still in the PIthan email and the phone calls, but it's generally the same messages. When flirting, it's more strategic when using Facebook than in person;there's less of a need to improvise corny jokes or pick up lines or thingsto talk about.7. How do you feel when people you aren't as acquainted with (mutualfriend, distant friend) leave you wall posts, respond to your status, andall forms of communication media on your Facebook? Why do you feel thisway?--If it's just a mutual friend, I'd think it'd be a little weird butnothing more than that; I would probably just think of the person being ina friendly mood. If it were someone I met recently who seems to begetting too friendly, I'd get a bit creeped out (especially if the personis trying to flirt with me while I'm not).8. What is your reaction when you add a family member (nuclear family,relatives) to your Facebook? Does it cause any conflicts?--It doesn't start any familial conflicts or anything, but it puts a bitof a strain on me. I try to un-tag any scandalous pictures that would getmy parents or any other elder family member to lecture me about how I leadmy life during college.9. Can romantic relationships be strengthened through Facebook? Can it beweakened through Facebook? How and why?--Without a doubt, it's a great way to flirt and easily strengthensbudding romantic relationships. But it can also tear unstable romanticrelationships (by "unstable", I mean relationships which lack trust andcommunication). Any updates can evoke so much emotions, particularlyjealousy and anger, especially if the romantic relationship is longdistance and one significant other is socially active compared to theirpartner.10. Why do you have a Facebook?-- I have a facebook to communicate. lol. But specifically:(1) To keep up with old friends and family(2) To get to know new friends and acquaintances(3) To flirt (Hahaha... lame but true)(4) To be part of the social, virtual conformity/trend(5) To procrastinate on studying (like now)(6) To help friends out by doing surveys like these! =)

Buying Habits in Second Life Communities

2009-05-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

BUYING HABITS IN SECOND LIFE COMMUNITIES

Gustavo Esparza
Genie Luzwick
Alex George-Johnson
Joshua Liu

The economy in the virtual world of Second Life (SL) has been receiving more attention each year since the birth of its existence in June 2003. SL has an internal currency, which is called the Linden dollar (L$), curiously looking like the abbreviation of Second Life backwards. Although this is probably a coincidence, it is not too outlandish to say that the economy in SL, run by Linden Labs, is one of the main drivers of the world’s popularity and evolution.
There are many different ways to make an income in this microeconomy. The easiest and most straightforward way is to buy Lindens with real money through PayPal. The current exchange rate of SL as of 3/16/2009 was L$262 for one U.S. dollar although it fluctuates between 270 to 300 Lindens. Another method is by “camping,” which is waiting for goods to come to you rather than you going to get the goods. One can go seek out free virtual goods in certain areas, such as the Freebie Warehouse or Vienna Freebies. Another huge way is through becoming an entrepreneur; for example, starting your own Steampunk goggles retail store or Rollerskate store. You could get a wage laborer to manage your store when you are not present. You could also be that wage laborer. You could be a part of the, what some call it, unreal estate market by selling or renting land or houses like SL’s “Donald Trump,” Anshe Chung, who has already made over $1 million in assets in the virtual world (Reuters 2006). The average profit as of 2006 has been “less than US$10 per month, and about 90 percent made less than US$200 a month” per person (Reuters 2006). So, one can see, for many, it is not a game to support the funds needed for one’s life. It is first and foremost a virtual world.

Style

Overall, people simply purchase in game what suits their style of avatar. Residents could easily spend their entire time on Second Life and not put a single cent or Linden in this case, and still enjoy their experience. As discussed by Martin (2008) unlike some online communities and games, in Second Life, your avatar does not require you to satisfy any biological functions in order to stay alive, i.e. you cannot die (with the exception of battle simulator regions). “Virtual goods offer an exemplary case of this subsumption because they lack use-value and yet continue to be bought and sold at a rapid rate” (Martin 2008). In other words, though not necessary in the survival of an individual’s Second Life experience, people still spend real life money on clothing and other trinkets. Like the people we talked to in our Second Life research, we too soon found out that though not necessary, buying objects for our avatars to wear and use makes the experience more interesting. In Second Life there are many areas with stores that hand out free objects not surprisingly called “freebies”. But to own something that you actually paid for with Lindens gives you a bit of a social boost. To have money in world, you either have to work for it, as in real life, or just buy Lindens, with real currency on the Second Life website. By doing so, it says something about your avatar and as a person in general. It makes a person less of a “noob” because it shows that they are more dedicated to SL by actually putting your money and time into it; and by doing so, you are buying more virtual goods to stand out more as an individual. Thus to fit in more with your group, be it furries, etc., one “[accomplishes] this task is through the purchase of smaller but no less significant virtual goods” (Martin 2008). By buying objects that reflect an individual’s group in SL they not only look like what they want to be seen as, they become it.
“While buying a sailboat in offline life may allow individuals to associate themselves with sailing, it does not guarantee the skills necessary to safely take a boat out on open water. In contrast, buying a virtual scripted sailboat in Second Life allows the resident not only the feeling of being a sailor, but the ability to be one as well” (Martin, 2008).

Real Estate

Second Life can be a medium for individuals to achieve and own something they may never have a chance to in real life. One can easily own a mansion, a luxury car, a Picasso or two, etc, all for a fraction of the cost of one in real life. Property ownership in second life is a good way to show off an individual’s tastes and skills in building. Some people we talked to spend over thirty-five U.S. dollars a month to rent a plot of land in which to set up their virtual homes. “It is rare that individuals open their offline homes to anyone who wishes to enter, and yet virtual homes are frequently accessible to other users, if not the entire environment’s population” (Martin 2008). Those property owners we met were quick to welcome us to their homes and happily give us a tour. They were proud to show off what they had spent their Lindens on, or what they had spent hours building. One person showed me their four story gothic castle, nicely perched on the side of a cliff overlooking the virtual sea. The plot itself was a generous 8,000 square meters large. The owner stated that in SL she has her own castle and a small forest, but in real life lived in a small two bedroom flat in the “trashy” side of Sydney. The scene she described reminded us of Hiro Protagonist from the cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, “Hiro has a nice big house in the Metaverse, but has to share a 20-by-30 in Reality. Real estate acumen does not always extend across universes” (Stephenson, 1992).
Almost everybody Second Life we talked to wanted to own virtual property in game, but affordability was the top reason most chose to remain vagrant. “About ten years ago, when the Street protocol was written, Hiro and some of his buddies pooled their money and bought one of the first development licenses, created a little neighborhood of hacklers” (Stephenson, 1992). One way which people get around the issue is to find friends with similar interests and goals in Second Life, and pool money to own land as a group. This requires that individuals trust each other enough to be financially responsible for their monthly tier (rental cost) contribution to the land. One person failing to pay their part can jeopardize the whole group which can lead to the reclaiming of their land by ether the land owner (whom actually owns the land, just rents plots within it), or the Lindens; thus loosing building rights on the parcel. Trust is important in these quasi-business arrangements, as there is no legal way to hold somebody accountable if they fail to pay their rent or in some cases, run off with the group’s pooled rent money. “It is likely that players in these encounters do not know one another. Players routinely offer unsolicited help to strangers as well as responding when asked… A collaborative atmosphere of “respect” for all players is a desired aim articulated by many guilds and reinforced as players help others, mindful of help they have received” (Nardi Harris 2006). In World of Warcraft, as Nardi and Hariss discuss, helping others is a great way to form positive social bonds; the same applies to Second Life. One way that people help each other is to give another individual Lindens. One person stated that she gives “money to new players to help them buy avatar skins and shapes so they don’t look like such noobs and get treated better by other players who have been playing SL for a long time.” She also jokingly stated that she just didn’t want to see ugly avatars running around, but moved on to state that she found out that if she helped new comers to SL they would be her friends and in turn later help her out as well is she ever needed to borrow Lindens. Thus the golden rule is key to building strong social bonds; treat others as you would like to be treated.

Victorian Steampunk in Caledon

--“I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresent life by leaving out sex.” –Kurt Vonnegut (A Man without a Country)

To briefly explain what you are about to get into. Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and sci-fi that became popular in the 19th century. It is typically set in the Victorian era. It is set in a world where steam power is still widely used. This is what the world would be like if steam power won over electric power.
One thing I have noticed about this particular community in Second Life is its lack of sex-related paraphernalia. This fact allows for a more interesting pattern of buying habits. Don’t get me wrong, yay! sex, but seriously, it clutters the space. Anyway, in Interview 2 with Samuel, he told me that his most common purchases within SL have been brass goggles. If you’re not familiar with Steampunk culture, brass goggles alone can make someone be considered in steampunk attire because it is one of the culture’s main symbols in clothing. Samuel went on to say that he also has purchased “airships and boots,” although “[he] makes a lot of his own stuff.” I asked him how long he’s been on Second Life, and he said about 3 years. This makes sense because it takes quite awhile to learn how to make excellent clothing. As far as my eye could see, he had a pretty dashing avatar. Going on with the interview, Samuel explained that newbies typically buy “AVs [avatars], clothes, land, whatever the new fun item is.” JOEJoe, from interview 1, and Susie, from interview 3, thought that the most purchased item was clothing for avatars. Both JOEJoe and Samuel agreed that, although they do make some money in SL through mostly sculpting prims into objects, they do not make enough to cover their RL (real life) expenses When asked if males or females purchase more items, several did not have answers, but Samuel guessed that women spend more on clothes; however, he sees males purchasing quite a bit in Caledon as well.
JOEAll these interviewees agreed in their answers that free clothing could be of really high quality and that one does not need money to survive in Caledon. JOE went on to give me a whole folder of landmarks (places to teleport) of the best freebies he has found during the 2 and a half years he has been playing SL. He explains that all his clothes are modified freebies and that he has only spent “$8 in 2 years… expert cheapskate.” The two items he bought with those 8 bucks was his fox avatar for $3.50 and MystiTool (which is a hud with a bunch of tools on it) for $4.00.
I did not get the best answers when asking random people why they chose Caledon as their place to live. Most of them respond with, “it’s a cool place,” which does not explain too much. However, maybe the concept is that simple. They found a cool place, and they stuck to it. If it’s working for them, why change it?

Sex in Second Life

The sexually active population traverses racial, geographical and age boundaries not challenged by the other clicks of the game. The only criteria needed are to be over the age of 18 (a parameter that seems to be poorly regulated) and be a participant in the erotic community. This participation comes in many forms. The bulk of our research came from interactions with those that actively participate in the marketing of various services, including sex and the selling of sexual products and animations. In asking a series of open-ended questions, we found that the motivation behind many of the erotic dancers and virtual prostitutes varied greatly but their desire for income remained consistent. No matter how great their drive was to gain Lindens, the monetary unit in Second Life, their spending habits were consistent with one of two options. They either spent all of their income on Second Life, keeping the economic cycle within the game running or they turned all of their Lindens into real world money. Although some contest that they partake in such personal acts because it mimics their real life occupation (in most cases, exotic dancers), others state that it is strictly for the monetary aspect. Second life acts as a means of gaining extra income. These claims are contradictory in that when asked “what is the most common use for the money you receive in second life?” The same avatars most frequently responded that the money is put back in the Second Life and used for various clothing upgrades, animations and toys.
On the other hand vast amounts of income can be made through Second Life’s sexual community alone. One gentleman (for the purpose of this argument he will be called Jim) became a millionaire by revolutionizing the erotic industry nearly single handedly. Jim has been lovingly dubbed the Hugh Hefner of Second Life and advanced the sex industry through his creation of numerous stores, selling a variety of intricately carved beds and sexual toys. Although he, as every successful avatar must put money back into the economy but this serves as a testimony this ever-expanding facet of the virtual world. Ultimately, we feel that the use for the money gained from the virtual world is based on the time spent in Second Life and the amount that is originally achieved. While we are not saying that escorts are any less prevalent than the sexual business tycoons, people such as Jim are clearly business minded and devote hours per day on the improvement their companies. Jim, for instance, makes approximately ten dollars per mass produced, and highly customizable bed not including the animations and apparel needed to perform on such an object. This is opposed to the average hourly rate of some of the most popular escorts of about 2000 Lindens (calculated escort business cards from varying locations). Although the prices are nearly the same Jim exhibits items that have a reusability factor, contrary to the escorts. To compensate for this difference many escorts equip themselves with the latest and greatest female and male anatomy and costume articles in order to entice their customers. But is there a factor that determines whether the Lindens gained in Second Life are put back into its virtual economy or spent in the actual world? According to many of the dancers and escorts that we interviewed the cost of the body parts, clothing and animations consumes most of their income. This however is a personal choice. I met an exotic dancer who stated that at one point Second Life paid her rent. She went through a period without it and since the economic recession she has again found Second Life as a means to an end. She earns on average 6000 to 7000 Lindens per night, approximately 750 dollars per month and a decent monthly payment on a home. Thus the decision to invest the money gained online was made out of necessity. I feel that this is a powerful drive. Those that play Second Life strictly for entertainment rarely have a need to convert their revenue to actual cash. They typically make less due to a lack of drive and therefore spend it on petty items rather than saving up for real world consumption. I feel that those that are driven to perform sexually explicit acts already are in dire straits and use second life as a way to make ends meet. There are exceptions to every rule especially in a virtual world. In 2007 the decision was made to move the adult industries to a particular section of the map with a specific tag that represents an 18 and older zone. For fear of the effect on the economy this has been under debate for years. The thought is that by taking the adult shops out of the regular, high traffic areas that it will have a dramatic effect on Second Life’s economy. In our research we found that second life shoppers are very goal oriented. For example they know the item they want to buy, purchase it and move on. This is contrary to the window shopper of the actual world, who roams from shop to shop with a vague idea of the ideal purchase. Because of this idea we do not feel that moving the community would have such a drastic effect as predicted. This in fact might have advantages. By having all the shops of a particular genre in one specific area it would add a level of convenience not currently found in this virtual world. The idea that the services in these areas may be falling on to the screens of the younger generation is a very real possibility. But the fact that the designers of second life are defending the erotic industry says a lot in itself. It acknowledges the idea that sex sells, even in virtual worlds and that the economy would not be the same without it.
Second Life serves as its own economic world and the buying and selling of erotic services are a large part of this market. As there is a demand for anonymous virtual sex and sexual acts there will be avatars, run by real people, willing to supply this need. Many of my interviews tapped on the subject of privacy and the idea that although these intimate virtual acts are occurring, there is no real life information being exchanged and therefore one feels safe to participate without the weight of their inhibitions. Second life creates a market for the naturally sexual human population as well as the introverted shy types. This virtual world offers an environment safe from physical harm, STDs, and gives the buyer and seller a sense of control. If one feels like something inappropriate is happening or unsafe in anyway, all one would have to do is turn off the computer. The erotic services offered on Second Life appeals to all different personalities, which contribute, to its extreme popularity and thriving financial system and fast cash flow among members.

The World of Furries

Social structures and cultures both exist in the real world and in online communities. In the online community Second Life there lives a community of players known as furries, who are either play as anthropomorphic animals or as feral animals. These animals include hybrids, of various animal races, mythical creatures. The furry culture is subcategory of second life society.
In SL we interviewed, conversed, and spend time with various furries to get a better understanding of the culture and to be more specific their economic tendencies in the world of second life where RL, or real world, money is exchanged for digital commodities such as avatars, clothing, accessories, and role playing items. Since 99% of the goods that are available on second life are produced by the players, the money is transferred from one player to another to another (EGC 10). Furries were a population of interest due to their high occurrence in the literature on SL, and that they are part of a population which other than nation of origin does not have a representative population, but has many appearances in cultures such as the Kemono art in Japan, Indian animal spirits, and Greek mythical creatures such as sirens. Our interest originated from modern anthropomorphic art in the mass media where characters such as “Tony the Tiger, Bugs Bunny, Sly Cooper, Starfox” whom are all characters seen in everyday life. To interview furs we began our research off of SL in a furry art community which is similar to deviant art, but the primary users are furs who are posting their own work without the fear of being trolled. Through this site we managed to join a forum and interview two members prior to engaging members of the SL community in SL. After the interviews we continued on to participant observation and informal interviews about the community. This course of action was taken because we were more familiar with the forum setting, and my account on the forums had built enough of a reputation through posting and time on the forums to not be seen as a griefer or a troll by the community. The furry community is primarily an internet based community that rarely congregates outside of conventioneering, and fur suiting due to the negative perception of furs through popular culture and RL mass media.
We have found that the furry community is stereotyped as perverts or furverts as they are more commonly called. I have found this to be a semi truth because most of the furs that I had interviewed were in clean zones where no adult material or adult role playing allowed. While exploring an island there was a specific warning against “yiffing” or having fur sex publicly, having their adult parts on, which are attachable phalluses out in these public areas. Generating these objects was allowed, but they were not allowed on the AVs (avatars). My informants from my multiple interviews did clarify that there is a sexual side to the furry community where one informant stated that “furry simulations are all about sex”, and another informant stated that his income from SL was partially through the selling of digital sex toys such as butt plugs/pony play tails. This informant continued to expand on his market of accessories that he had sold to reap a profit which he had used for his own expenses. The economy of second life has a major market for accessories, avatars, and clothing. As in Snowcrash’s Metaverse your avatar can look any way you want it, through customization and the utilization of various in game features which allows a user to program their own clothing, avatar, accessories and even homes. The Metaverse continues to have similarities where individuals who “can’t afford their own custom made avatars… have to buy off-the-shelf avatars” (SC37). Furries in RL only have the option of becoming their “fursona” their fur’s character by dressing in a fur suit, but in second life the player has the ability to bring out his or her fursona to life through the self customizable and user generated systems that also open a market for avatar, clothing, and object builders. Avatars also come in off the shelf versions which can either be customized through tinkering, or recombination with different parts that are on the market. When purchasing avatars, Lindens, the digital currency of SL, are transferred from one account to store owners account. The avatar that I had purchased was 500L which is roughly two dollars US. This avatar was chosen for me by another fur who wished for me to fit in better and live my SL furry social life as a golden anthropomorphic fox. Although the amount of two dollars is relatively low being in a furry avatar is like the repertoire that I had accumulated on forums by posting. A furry AV made engaging furries much less awkward due to the fear of griefers, and the possibility of being out of character in a role playing environment and being thrown off the island in a cage. The furry community that I had experienced was a very open and friendly environment in SL. All of the furs that I had met were very friendly to other furs and always welcomed a new person teleporting or appearing in the area. There was a good deal of role playing where individuals were shooting guns which took out a life meter in the game and exploded random default wood cubes all over the screen. The individuals whom we were able to come into contact with assisted me in de-noobing myself by adding a profile to my character, and had even given me the locations of places that I would be able to purchase new clothing to fit in better.
The community of furries on second life is growing due to the large population of furs already online and in the game. The ability of furs to express their fursonas in an environment where they truly are not exposing themselves in RL makes SL and the internet a gateway for self expression. The self expressive environment opens a market targeted at the furs in SL. These markets include various body part shops, accessories, animations, avatars, and clothing. Each of these different stores is capable of producing income and the proliferation the economy in Second Life. Although there seems to be a large market and many things that can be done in SL, the most common activity that I witnessed was standing around and conversing in the presence of people like themselves, which was the primary activity that the people we interviewed engaged in when they would log into the world of Second Life.

Conclusion

A big and weighty question in which to ask right about now is if SL’s microeconomy will flourish and become the next “big thing.” If so, why do we not model our real life economy after this evolving system? Sure, it has its flaws, and a lot of those flaws have to do with SL’s server rather than the economy itself. If the server was to crash, transactions could be lost; money could go up into thin air. The government is already benefiting from SL. Although Lindens specifically cannot be taxed, when the money is converted into U.S. dollars, the person who converted the money will be taxed. So, if the government is already taking notice to this online virtual economy, there must be some merit. Bills are in the process of being put through legislation that will put more controls on virtual economies such as Second Life’s. Maybe the microeconomy will not become what we use for our base system, but it is quite possible that it will become an integral part of our whole.

Citations

Reuters, A. “Surge in High-end Second Life Business Profits.” Thompson Reuters, 2006. http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2006/12/05/surge-in-high-end-second-life-business-profits/
Reuters, A. “Anshe Chung battles ‘PR Hype’ with some of Her Own.” Thompson Reuters, 2006.
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2006/11/29/anshe-chung-battles-pr-hype-with-some-of-her-own/
Martin, J. “Consuming Code: Use-Value, Exchange-Value, and the Role of Virtual Goods in Second Life.” Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. 1(2), 2008.
Ondrejka, C. “Escaping the Gilded Cage: User Created Content and Building the Metaverse.” 2004.
Thomas M. Malaby, Coding Control: Governance and Contingency in the Production of Online Worlds. First Monday, Special Issue #7, 2006.
Freedman, R. “How to Make Real Money in Second Life.” McGraw Hill: New York, 2008.
Harris, J., & Nardi, B. (2006). Strangers and friends: collaborative play in world of warcraft.
Stephenson, N. (1992). Snow Crash. New York: Bantam.

Constructing and Manipulating Identity in World of Warcraft

2009-05-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

Constructing and Manipulating Identity in World of Warcraft

By Elizabeth Hill, Scott Maeda, and Aakash Mehta

Abstract

We examine the construction and manipulation of identity in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft. We describe construction of the individual player’s character in relation to the balance between appearance and tactical advantage. We then explore the interactions between character look and in-game societal perception while considering the ambitions of power and status. Finally, we analyze the manipulation of player identity outside the virtual realm, within open online platforms. In doing so, we uncover that complexities of virtual identity within World of Warcraft as they are shaped between three spheres of the individual, the private in-game community, and the public out-of-game internet audience.

Introduction

While one may like to believe that the individual’s sense of self is formed from the inside out, the construction of identity is rarely that simple. Rather, more often than not, identity is a complicated construction of inner perceptions influenced by external, societal guidelines. Likewise, the creation of a single player’s character within a virtual reality environment is far more complex than the initial customizable attributes of “race” and “class” may seem to suggest. The planet’s largest massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMORPG), Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft (or WOW), illustrates the complexity of identity development by way of its over 10 million active, international subscribers1.
WOW’s extensive user population engages in more than the surface game play of principally leveling up of one’s character from 1 to 80. The in-game experience is amplified with an additional assortment of comparatively superfluous recreational features. Thus, while a player is leveling, he or she may also choose to participate in otherwise diverting content that does not contribute to their leveling. These activities have a near endless scope and include selling and buying items on the Auction House, exploring unmapped territory, gaining reputation in cities, working in a separate profession, and creating usable items. To outline all possibilities for game play in the vast and diverse virtual reality of WOW would be cumbersome and nearly impossible. As such, the player experience consists of basic character leveling and extracurricular activities, in which the goals of both areas differ substantially. We maintain that, much like the real world, the visual aesthetic of a player’s character is formed through the balance of the individual’s tastes and practicalities, as enhanced and effected by the desired mode of game play.
In addition, once a player’s character has reached level 80, otherwise known as a “cap” on game play, more time and more options are made available for recreational activities. On top of the possible actions already listed, level 80 characters also have the opportunity to collect rare items for prestige or enhancement, engage in mutual “arena” combat with a fellow player, and enter high level dungeons in order to complete collaborative achievements. The change in player atmosphere that results from the max in leveling is also mirrored in the change between player interactions. Whereas a lower-ranking character may be more practical in their aesthetic choices in order to ease the difficulty of leveling, a capped or maxed character may turn their attention to earning prestige and status. Like the upper crusts of the real world, receiving and then maintaining power and renown are accomplishments worth flaunting to the right group of people; a similar philosophy dictates the collaboration and relations of WOW’s level 80 players.
The virtual world as an extension of the real world is a truth that makes itself clearer with the development and growth of new computer technologies. Likewise, the virtual atmosphere generated by World of Warcraft’s extensive base of 10 million worldwide users provides extensive insight into the construction and manipulation of player identity in response to the ever-shifting mode of game play. We have narrowed our study to the realms of “player versus environment” (PVE) combat, which requires mutual combat between players only and differs significantly from the more blitzkrieg-style realms of “player versus player” (PVP) combat. It is important to acknowledge the undoubtedly different player atmospheres that are fostered by these contrasting modes of game play; just as society mediates one’s own interactions within the real world. On PVE servers, our observations begin with a focus on the balance between visual appearance and character performance on the lower level spectrum. We then analyze the modifications and enhancements of a character’s aesthetic in response to ambitions of power and reputation. Ultimately, even as the edges of World of Warcraft’s universe seep out-of-game and into third-party realms on the internet, the motivation toward status and prestige does not wane.

First Sphere - The Individual Aesthetic

In the Metaverse of Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash, “Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you’re ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful… You can look like a gorilla or a dragon in the Metaverse” (Stephenson 1992:36). Unlike the Metaverse, the variation and scope of customization is comparatively limited to humanoid form in World of Warcraft. Furthermore, perhaps as a result of the heavy fantasy influences, players do not consider their characters as extensions of their real life self and thus avoid the term “avatar” and its apparently misleading connotations. However, Metaverse and WOW exhibit one similarity: an in-game player is ultimately limited in their character’s customizations primarily by the choices in equipment. Before a character makes its first steps into WOW’s virtual world, the options held to a player are in deciding its race, class, gender, skin color, hair, and facial expression. Even at this stage, a player is required to reflect on his or her own aesthetic inclinations while also considering long-term practical implications for their character’s effective and easy leveling. That is, while the choices of gender, skin color, hair, and face do not directly affect a player’s course of leveling, race and class act heavily upon successful game play; both attributes provide beneficial statistics when exploited properly. Referring to Figure 1, while the gender of the character doesn’t provide bonuses or additional skills, the particular combination of the Draenei race and the Mage class form a character that is defensive racially and strengthened by its offensive class. However, while a Draenei may possess appealing racial abilities, many admit with ignominy that the race is also aesthetically alluring as a female. As one anonymous player remarked regarding their Draenei preference, “The one thing you ALWAYS see on your screen is your avatar, so it might as well look good.”
Similar aesthetics are also applied to the otherwise superficial aspects of a player’s character. Short interviews regarding these minor features were conducted between 10 players, each leveling a character ranging from 20 – 40 with an average level of 36, and revealed some interesting trends among basic visual attributes. While the popular myth holds that female characters receive special treatment over male characters in game, this is apparently not the usual case in WOW. Those who create a female character purely expecting extra help or special treatment are “delusional,” as many interviewees mentioned. Furthermore, all players interviewed had acknowledged their skepticism concerning the “real sex” of those they had never communicated with over voice channels. Clearly, the ability to distinguish between the realms of the internet and reality is not lost to the players of WOW. In an effort toward gender neutrality, players tend to avoid assigning the gender pronouns of “he” and “she” to other characters. Rather, during text and voice chat, players refer to one another’s characters using two-syllable short hands of their respective screen names. This practice is especially prominent when communicating with other players during collaborative efforts, as it also eliminates the difficulty of attempting to type unfamiliar names or pronounce strange words. All in all, a character’s gender poses no tactical advantages and does not contribute to successful game play. Gender decisions align themselves significantly with an individual’s personal aesthetic because a character’s sex plays a less significant role on game play than the aspects of race and class. Likewise, the choices of hair, skin tone, and facial expression are purely aesthetic. Within a particular character’s race, the scope of selection for these aspects is significantly limited. That is, to continue with the example above, all possible expressions available for a female Draenei’s face are “beautiful” and “composed.” As such, a player would find their efforts toward creating an “ugly” Draenei woman significantly impeded. Skin tones and hair also demonstrate such limitations. However, players find that these aesthetic constraints do nothing to detract from the overall essence of the game. Rather, character appearances are forced into stereotypes of “good” and “evil” through their “attractive” and “unattractive” qualities in order to enhance the main premise of fantasy-war within the realm of WOW. Additionally, these strict controls on the appearance of skin, hair, and expression limit direct associations with real world ethnic or racial backgrounds. Thus, the fantasy adventure environment fostered by these aesthetic restrictions is one of deep immersion, further detached from the real world.
After deciding on relatively basic visual aspects, race, and class, a player in-game must then consider additional facets of his or her character’s appearance, all of which display a significant relationship to game play itself. We have condensed these aspects into the following categories: armor, weapon, mount. Regardless of character level, these are unavoidable facets encompassing the individual player’s aesthetic. A character must be protected, must be able to engage in combat, and must have a means of traveling throughout the world. While a player cannot opt out of these requirements, a significant amount of control over a character’s appearance is retained. The customization and manipulation of a character’s armor, weapon, and mount are borne from the considerations of in-game tactical advantage and personal aesthetic preferences.
During early game play, a character is required to complete “quests” or missions that follow a given storyline and background. As quests are completed, a character is rewarded experience as well as equipment replacements that improve and add to base statistics or “stats.” As a result, a character grows in strength and enhancements while leveling. Additionally, a character may find usable equipment on the bodies of dead foes that are considerably higher in quality. However, an item’s heightened stats are not the only features a player takes into account. In the virtual world of WOW, visuals also play an obvious factor; and as such, an item may need to be visually striking or appealing to warrant wearing it. A preference toward appearance may also lend itself to a player’s decision in furnishing a character with weaker equipment that “just looks cool.” Short interviews were conducted between five characters, ranging from levels 68 – 76, regarding the balance between personal tastes and gaming advantages when judging equipment. Allarea, a level 72 female Draenei hunter in Howling Fjord, expressed that “I always take considerable efforts coordinating my wardrobe. Ever since I was a tiny level 10. And probably even when I’m a full grown 80. Most of the time, you’re not even in combat. So what good are stats when you look stupid?” Referring to Figure 2, Allarea’s armor “wardrobe” is fairly consistent in color scheme, texture, and fit. “I was so excited to buy [that] black helm because not only does it have crazy attributes but it… matches well. So I didn’t have to use WOW’s extra option of hiding [my helm]. Yay!” Winkie, a level 72 male Draenei shaman, conveyed a similar aesthetic sentiment, saying that “I had improved damage, stats, AND abilities with these [leggings] but they were like frayed pirate shorts cut mid thigh. Damn they were ugly. I couldn’t bring myself to equip them.” However, rarely is a player forced to exclusively choose between one’s personal aesthetic and an item’s potentially generous benefits. Most equipment from a similar region coordinates relatively well and most items appear as impressive as they perform.
The relationship between look and statistical attributes is further complicated by the collaborations and interactions among players. Even in a more passive “player versus environment” setting, the immersive virtual reality of WOW grows from the necessity for group cooperation. As such, player attempts to balance personal aesthetics with the tactical advantages afforded by particular items also take into account the opinions of other players. Every player is given the option of “inspecting” another player’s character, if it is on screen. The feature reduces the physical appearance of a character down to the statistics and bonuses of armor and weapons. The option to inspect is available to all players regardless of server. That is, a need to inspect other characters occurs whether or not a player is fighting against others on a PVP server or fighting with others on a PVE server. We recognize that among these servers different motivations may determine the choice to inspect. Within PVE servers, intrigue or curiosity was cited as the most prominent reason for inspecting. “I might see something on someone that I’ve never seen before and that intrigues me,” Winkie noted at one point. Likewise, Allarea mentioned, “They may look pretty cool but I’d like to know if the quality of their gear is decent. Especially if they want to group [with me].” As such, the notions of a character’s appearance versus its playability are seen coming full circle.
Inspection also amplifies the importance of an item’s statistics and performance. The quality of an item is easy to distinguish during inspection because of a color-coding system. Items in green text are generally “good quality,” while items in blue text are “great quality,” and items in purple text are rare, “epic quality.” Understandably, a character that is equipped with several purple items is undoubtedly stronger than a character with green items. It would be difficult then, to justify equipping a green item against a purple item just because “it’s prettier.” Luckily, purple equipment is usually much more visually striking than green equipment. So much so in fact that many experienced players have noted their ability to inspect other characters without the inspection tool. “It’s just become second nature for me to sum up someone else’s skill just by looking at them,” Allarea noted. “Yeah,” Winkie chimed in, “I don’t inspect as often as I used to [when I was a lower level]. I’m more used to just knowing almost automatically if someone’s awesome or not.” Hence, the offered inspection tool does not mediate player-to-player assessments. Rather, it is simply a stepping-stool used as players gain quicker and keener judgments of one another.
Regions and territories throughout WOW vary on level of difficulty. Additionally, style subsets of armor and weapon are also related to particular regions. As such, not only can experienced players assess the skill level of a character by visual appearance only, they can also easily infer what areas a character has explored in the past. In particular, the higher-level regions of Northrend and Outland have certain styles of equipment that characterize their regions. Northrend weapons and armor tend toward very earthy tones, as seen in Figure 2, while Outland items possess an ethereal glow. Characters with items in these style subsets are plainly distinguished as higher-level; an easy inference to make without the need for inspection. In order to test the connection between character equipment and perceived equipment, we created a “quiz” online to test a player’s capability of accurately estimating the level of various anonymous characters caught on screenshot. Aside from preventing players from using inspection, the test contained low resolution graphics to blur the details of armor and weapon. 20 screenshots with styles similar to Figures 1 and 2 were given, each with the following choices of level range: 40 – 49, 50 – 59, 60 – 69, 70 – 79, and 80. The quiz was circulated among three WOW servers and over 50 players completed it, ranging in experience as indicated by Figure 3. The last questions of the quiz, purely for demographic insight, revealed that a majority of those quizzed were experienced players with several weeks of total playing time devoted to WOW. One may assume that this extensive amount played may have also given significant time to honing the skills of “automatic inspection.” However, the average score for level 80 players was 0.05 points lower than the average score for level 70 – 79 players. Furthermore, while only 66% of those quizzed had level
80 characters, no quiz takers scored lower than 90%; meaning then that no quiz taker got more than two questions wrong. One may inquire whether the high success demonstrated by all quiz takers in estimating various character levels was due in part to extremely apparent armor or weapon choices. However, while some screenshots included combinations of prominent equipment from specific regions throughout WOW, a majority of pictured characters were dressed in rather inconspicuous, generic items offset by one particularly stylized yet subtle piece. Furthermore, while a region’s armor and weapons may share similarities in texture and color that make them easy to identify, this is not to say that each region has items wholly distinguished in a certain style. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment throughout WOW and some will coincidentally exhibit a visual likeness to one another. That is, several forested regions will contain armor of greenish-brown shades with woody textures, which is expectedly acceptable. At the same time, quiz results indicate that a strong relationship between character appearance and assessed performance exists. Simultaneously, players must take into account their own appearance alongside the attributes of their weapons and armor while furnishing their own characters. The cooperative play environment fostered by the dynamics of WOW necessitates the inspection function and motivates players to assess one another.

Second Sphere - The Collaborative Aesthetic

The myriad role-playing features that comprise World of Warcraft allow vast customization of a player’s character and, depending on how they are exploited, reveal how a player chooses their character’s function in relation to game play. According to the study “Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft,” Bonnie Nardi and Justin Harris assert that there are “diverse types of collaborative play in World of Warcraft, ranging from lightweight encounters with strangers to highly organized groupings with well-known friends” (Nardi and Harris 2006:1). Players engage in numerous forms of cooperative play, with each player’s character fulfilling a specific role. The allowances afforded to players in constructing and manipulating their characters’ roles to suit collaboration in turn creates a powerful process of identity formation for players and their fellows alike. When a character is “capped” upon reaching level 80, the player no longer needs to consider the basic goal of leveling. Rather, more options are made available to them in pursuing otherwise superfluous objectives.
For example, while armor, weapon, and mount, are necessities for a leveling character, the player of a capped level 80 may instead turn his or her attention to achieving a special title. Character names are restricted to 12 letters in WOW. However, game designers have implemented a series of achievements that, upon completion, give a prefix or suffix to character names. Titles are a powerful visual component to the aesthetics and identity of players within WOW. Players can collect and choose between various titles they have earned or, in rare cases, choose to have no title displayed. A title, by stating or referencing the name of a particular dungeon or defeated boss, supply the prestige of complete series of quests called achievements, that once completed allow you to display a prefix or suffix to your character name. While all titles carry a sense of achievement, they vary in source. Some titles are attained through the completion of a particular dungeon or the slaying of a difficult boss. In these cases, a title displays a character’s combative strengths. A title may also be attained by mastering a certain profession; a passive ability which does not lend itself to combat. In such cases, these character titles flaunt complete control over a perfected skill and may lend a player more attention when in marketplaces and cities. There are even titles earned by those who have explored every square foot of the WOW map. Whatever the case, a player is limited to displaying only one given title at any one time and their decision over this title reflects an image they wish to portray to others. All cultures are based on notions of power and meaning embodied into a system of symbols (Boellstorff, 2009). Likewise, the titles of WOW culture are obvious symbols of power, displayed for all others to see. Power does not necessarily infer strength or command. Rather, as is the case with character titles in WOW, power is superiority. A player will flaunt their character’s title much like a peacock will flaunt his tale, displaying their particular assets and affirming their sense of supremacy.
The titles of WOW are enjoyed by players regardless of nationality or ethnicity. Players from around the globe in Australia, Canada, North America, and South East Asia all expressed an enthusiasm and respect for titles. Additionally, all players surveyed within this subject possessed at least one title on any one of their characters and conveyed an interest in gathering more. Thus, regardless of a player’s upbringing or respective real-world society, the sense of power and respect afforded by titles makes them an alluring accessory across borders. The general consensus among those surveyed was, in advertising a character’s specific achievement, titles generate an easily recognizable power differential, displaying to others a level of involvement, prestige, and performance in-game. As one anonymous player explained, titles are “a way for the kids to show what they’ve accomplished and [titles] place a ranking to which they can judge themselves and compare themselves to others.” As such, titles directly contribute to the formation and manipulation of a player’s identity.
While titles are superfluous and present no benefit to in-game combat, players with characters capped at level 80 can still pursue rare equipment and special mounts to enhance the image of their character. The mounts, or transportation, of WOW are a necessity for every player as they replace a character’s slow moving travel by foot. Mounts help to distinguish characters as their possession tends to vary from race to race. For example, the race of Orcs are known to ride wolves while the race of Humans are known to ride horses. However, game developers have made it possible for all characters of any race to attain a variety of different mounts, if the aesthetic desire is there. Mounts are expensive to acquire with in-game currency and require a high level of reputation and prestige within certain cities. As such, considerable work is necessary to gain the goodwill of a city, as well as earn the money necessary for purchase. However, the wide variety of mounts available to a player’s character is enticing, to say the least. A player may obtain a flying mount, a mount large enough to carry three people, or a mount that runs at speeds up to twice as fast as normal. As such, mounts represent a key aesthetic representation of a player’s character. The currency and effort required of rare mounts presents a distinct level of prestige and wealth. Like the automobiles of the physical world, the mounts of WOW are status symbols. As Jennifer Martin explained in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, players attempt to obtain rare points in order to “fill their need and desire for items that will allow for the appearance of status and uniqueness in the virtual world” (Martin 2008:1). Because of the difficulty inherent in their possession, mounts carry strong associations with power in WOW, contributing to a system of status symbols that are reinforced through competitive game play.
Likewise, armor is a necessity that can morph into a luxury. Regardless of level, armor can be obtained through four methods in WOW: questing, raiding, crafting and PVP combat. Questing, as discussed previously, is the simplest method for players to obtain armor. By simply following the storyline as outlined by game developers, a single-player can earn green and blue level equipment. However, once a character reached level 80, and the storyline stops, a player can no longer rely on questing for items. “Raiding” is cooperative group play that involves 10 – 40 players navigating a complex dungeon and slaying difficult “elite” bosses. Raiding is a complicated process that relies heavily on player coordination and contribution for successful completion. The navigation of the dungeon, as well as the complex strategy required to defeat bosses, necessitates high individual player involvement. However, the entire maze of a dungeon only contains a few elite bosses, each of which “drops” one randomly generated, scarce and high-level item when they die. Group players must then “roll dice” to determine who wins each item in a game of chance. As such, upon successful completion of a dungeon, only a select few players will be rewarded with prestigious rare equipment while all others simply receive “gold” or in-game currency. Typically, a player must “run” a dungeon multiple times before earning specific equipment for their character. However, a player may only run a particular high-level dungeon once per week. If a raid player fails to obtain their desired item, they must wait a full week before their next attempt. This so-called “time sink” further contributes to the fascination with and prestige of raiding equipment. In some cases, it is the rarity of such items that motivates hundreds of players to try their efforts and luck every day. As one Southern California player noted regarding the allure of raiding gear, “It’s another way to make your character personalized and unique, which is what MMORPG is all about to some people.”
If a particular player desires the essence of uniqueness, he or she may even opt to craft armor within WOW. Certain sets of skills or professions, when highly trained, allow a player to create certain pieces of armor. For instance, a blacksmith may construct chain-mail armor while a tailor may construct cloth-armor. However, the level of gear afforded by these professions, in comparison to raiding, is mediocre at best and does not carry with it any essence of prestige. Rather, outwardly prestigious armor can also be obtained through mutual PVP or player versus player combat. In such cases, players partake in “battlegrounds” to fight and compete against other players, either singularly or in groups. For every defeat delivered, a player is given “honor points,” or specialized currency that can be used in considerable quantities to purchase admirable equipment. PVP or battleground armor conveys combative authority over other players and a player who chooses to dress their character in such armor no doubt aims to suggest such sentiments.
Similarly, the “arena” is another system of PVP or player versus player combat. This distinctive aspect of WOW has fostered another subculture of competitiveness built on respect and trust. Small teams of two, three, or five, are “equally matched” by a sophisticated system to battle one another to-the-death. Unlike the larger combat of the battlegrounds, arena combat is more seeped in equality and belies a higher sense of skill and strategy. Furthermore, arena teams foster a sense of loyalty and intimacy similar to guilds. As Nardi’s Collaborative Play study indicates, “Players establish guilds which are named groups that socialize and play together … and can be designed to create somewhat customized play experiences” (2, 2006). In this same manner, arena teams are persistent groups of players rallied behind a special name and symbol. The specialized play experience, no longer focused on the basic goals of leveling within WOW, is alternatively centered on enhancing an arena team’s rating. Ratings are the combined scores of a team’s wins and losses. Furthermore, ratings are used to earn “arena points,” similar to honor points, which are paid out on a weekly basis. As to be expected, the combination of a team’s rating and arena points allows them to purchase certain items. However, only the highest rated teams, with a generous number of arena points, are allowed to purchase “Gladiator Armor.” Gladiator armor has become a symbol of skill and dedication throughout World of Warcraft, even among non-arena players. As such, the arena system significantly augment’s a player’s interaction with the virtual reality of WOW, fostering a sense of pride, allegiance, and proficiency among the “elite” players in World of Warcraft.

Third Sphere - The Out-of-Game Aesthetic

Most would categorize the player environment in World of Warcraft as friendly, with strangers and comrades alike joining together in mutual pursuit of similar goals. In “From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft,” Dmitri Williams and others explain that “players have an awareness of the benefits and costs of starting, maintaining, and ending friendships and interactions in World of Warcraft” (Williams et al. 2006:342). Over time, players gain experience and harness the fundamental skills necessary to become “great” so that they can accomplish more and gain the abilities to make themselves valuable within the community. Yet, this sense of greatness varies from player to player, and is the foundation for the competitive nature inherent in WOW. Even when a player has become capped with a level 80 character, they reach past the confines of their guild or server to attain reputation and renown by “playing outside” the game. These second party players, or SPPs as we have coined them, are involved within the WOW community in an entirely different sense. SPPs push the boundaries of WOW’s virtual reality by creating and sharing videos of their characters in combat, providing advice and input to others through forums, and participating in rankings systems on well-known gaming websites. As such, attempts by second party players to enhance the reputation of their fantasy reality characters has created another layer of virtual identity manipulated by online mediums outside the bounds of WOW.
To examine this trend further, we conducted a two question survey among 100 forum users who identified themselves as WOW players with level 80 characters equipped with elite gear. Firstly, we asked who would be more trustworthy: a player from an arena team that had just beaten you in combat, or a player from an arena team with their recorded game play displayed online. 74% of forum users overwhelmingly agreed that a player from an arena team with public footage of their combats would easily gain their trust. The phenomenon of trust being more associated to indirect strangers than those with which a player has had recent and close contact further highlights the growing prominence of the SPP experience. Secondly, we asked whether or not it is necessary to watch online videos of professionals and engage in forum discussions for a player to improve in WOW. 90% of those surveyed expressed that watching others and receiving advice are necessities “on the path toward greatness.” Clearly, many players see the outside mediums of WOW as tools to enhance their in-game success.
As one anonymous player wrote in a forum, “The max level turns into a tedious grind. You aren’t simply leveling anymore. Now there are honor points, arena points, raiding… All of this leads to the ultimate goal of obtaining better gear. The only thing that holds you back from your personal best is time, knowledge, and skill.” This is a similar situation many high-level players find themselves in. As such, eyes wandered away from the limitations of WOW, focusing on new sites that allowed players to “refine skills,” “improve personal game play,” and “play with others better than myself,” as expressed by the general consensus of five interviewed forum members. Many SPPs agree that in order to “become better,” one must engage with those who are better. As an extension of this understanding, in order to be viewed as “better,” one must establish and maintain a respectable identity within the outer, online community. This achievement is “to become known,” and provides a player with an intense following and grand publicity. Therefore, while a player aims to better their in-game performance, they also labor to achieve fame and a label of greatness.
Blizzard Entertainment has recognized that the realms of WOW have seeped out of the servers and into the internet itself. In response, official game developers created The Armory, which serves as a massive reference database for every character of every player throughout the world. The Armory operates in much the same way as inspection, providing a detailed textual inventory of a character’s equipped pieces. However, whereas the option to inspect a character in-game is limited to whether they are present on the screen, The Armory has no such limitations. The benefits of the Armory have made it an integral tool for second party player interaction that supplements the discussions and videos of forums and websites with indisputable statistics. As the 303rd ranked player in the world stated, “The Armory can be used outside a WOW server to see who the best players are, to model yourself after a better player, or to get [information] that assists you on your way to the top.”
Furthermore, the accessibility of The Armory to players inside and outside of WOW has enhanced the competitive sentiments of SPPs both within and beyond the originally intended spectrum of WOW. The characteristics of SPPs are not unique, however. The Armory is a testimony to the growing opinion that, in order to successfully enhance one’s performance, “playing outside” the boundaries of WOW has become essential. Such notions of self-improvement are also seen in the real world attitude that self-improvement necessitates looking beyond the scope of one’s local environment. Whether in the virtual world or the physical world, the innate desire for progress and perfection contributes to one’s personal identity and constructs an understanding of power wherein people will naturally rank themselves.

Conclusion

The vast virtual reality of WOW affords players, casual and serious alike, a variety of methods for constructing and manipulating character identity. Much like the real world, an individual’s sense of self is not simply fashioned from the inside out, but rather, is a complicated formation of internal aesthetics subjected to exterior social guidelines. As such, whether simply leveling or struggling to raid, the interactions between players strengthen and enhance the formation of character identity. Likewise, a player’s exploitation and expression of equipment, mount, and even title, provide deeper insight into the complexities of the in-game aesthetic. Yet ultimately, the collaboration of these elements reaches its limitations, as players stretch the boundaries of WOW in their utilization of forums and videos as well. We have uncovered that virtual identity within World of Warcraft is created and maintained through the spheres of the single player, the collaborative society, and the out-of-game public. Whether online, or in the real world, the desire for advancement creates perceptions of power in which individuals will inevitably be ranked, by others or themselves. As such, while we may have only scratched the surface of a player’s character construction in World of Warcraft, we are consistently reminded of the notions of power that comprise identity and culture.

Works Cited

Blizzard Entertainment. (2008). World of Warcraft Reaches New Milestone: 10 Million Subscribers. Retrieved March 1, 2009 from Blizzard Entertainment Web Site: http://eu.blizzard.com/en/press/080122.html.
Tom Boellstorff. (2009). Culture, power, cyberspace [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from University of California, Irvine Web Site: https://eee.uci.edu/09w/60400/Week1,%20Thursday.htm.
Jennifer Martin. (2008). Use-Value, Exchange-Value, and the Role of Virtual Goods in Second Life. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(2), 6.
Bonnie Nardi and Justin Harris. (2006). Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft. Retrieved March 1, 2009 from Web Site: http://darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/pdf/fp199-Nardi.pdf.
Neil Stephenson. (1992). Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books.
Dmitri Williams, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Li Xiong, Yuanyuan Zhang, Nick Yee and Eric Nickell. (2006). From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture, 1(338), 350-357. Doi: 10.1177/1555412006292616.
1 Official statistic from Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft website. Please refer to Works Cited as well.

Issues of Relationships Through Facebook as a Mode of Communication

2009-05-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

Issues of Relationships Through Facebook as a Mode of Communication

By Katherine Fitzgerald, Grace Liou, Jee Yon Shin, MayAnn Doan, and Nana Furusho

Introduction

The social networking site Facebook has changed the way that people interact with each other in many different ways. From its inception, Facebook has been a vehicle of communication and a way to be more connected to people despite geographical location or other barriers that might hinder such communication in the “real” or physical world. Facebook has become, however, more than its title as a “social networking site” implies. The relationships built on Facebook are not limited to schoolmates, as they once were, or college students. These relationships are not limited to the young, physically able, students, or any other category that might otherwise define a social space. Facebook and other similar sites have revolutionized the way people build and keep relationships as well as how they communicate. Facebook has, for the most part, improved communications and relationships and, despite some of the drawbacks, served as a generally positive tool for those looking to establish or maintain good relationships.
As with any new technology, however, there are some questions to be asked and answered about how this new form of communication affects people. Has it blurred the line between student and educators? Has it brought negative consequences for families – parents and children – for whom the constant flow of information may be too much? Or, perhaps, friends become too dependent on Facebook and less involved in the actual friendship – after all, why call or see your friends when all you have to do to see how they’re doing is check their Facebook status?
Then there are more serious, sinister issues to contend with. Is that humiliating picture your friend posted of you going to be seen by your teacher, your significant other, your mom?! Are people putting too much information in their profiles – address, phone number, present location – which could make them vulnerable to all kinds of trouble? These are issues that will be discussed; hopefully this research can shed some light on how, for better or worse, Facebook has changed the way we communicate.

Methods

Keeping in mind the time constraints and the enormity of the Facebook phenomena, we began our research by separating the topic of relationships on Facebook into five individual sub-sections, so each of us could focus on one area. We decided to explore the methods of communication on Facebook to foster the various types of relationships, the issue of privacy when it came to those relationships, the interaction between “friends” on Facebook, the communication between family members on Facebook, and finally the role of professional relationships between students and educators on Facebook. To facilitate the process of gathering more specific data in our respective sub-topics, we put together a general survey that asked basic questions about age and general Facebook usage. As it was a survey about Facebook users, we distributed the survey through our own Facebook accounts, using the snowball sampling method: friends that took the survey were encouraged to tag their friends to take the survey, and those friends would tag their friends, and so on. Using this method, we were able to receive responses from over a hundred people in a relatively short period of time.
The results of the general survey ended up being extremely important, we used the data found as a springboard into deeper research for our individual sub-topics. For the individual research, we used a variety of methods to gather data, including topic-specific surveys unrelated to the general survey. We also sent out detailed questionnaires and relied heavily on interviews, conducting them in several different ways. Some interviews used instant messaging and/or chats, while in-person interviews ranged from casual to structured styles. Finally, we put together all the data to formulate a conclusion, and our findings are explored in detail below.

Findings

Communication

The emergence of Facebook and other social networking sites has greatly changed how we communicate with those for whom we share a relationship. Facebook brings impersonal and personal relationships together on a single online platform. Specifically, Facebook enables us to reach people more easily and quickly. One student explains she “talked every day during class in high school, but after moving away to college in different areas it’s harder to keep up with friends.” Contacting people whose information such as phone number is unknown is yet another use for Facebook.
Users see Facebook as a convenient yet non-confrontational way to keep in touch, especially with people they haven’t contacted recently. However, the ability to check on others sometimes changes how people feel towards those they know. One person discovered a friend had become a go-go dancer from photos posted of her dancing nearly naked via Facebook. Another confessed examining friends’ profiles and activity on Facebook sometimes changed his perception of them; he would peruse things such as posts and interests. He argued, “I respected some less after… when they used vulgar or crude language.” Other times, he saw friends as “more sophisticated, bolder, more passionate… has led… to respect them more.”
Many surveyed individuals primarily use Facebook for unimportant, non-urgent communication or mass messaging. When asked if they preferred using Facebook rather than emailing, calling, texting, or meeting in person to keep in touch, 55% said ‘no’ while 26% said ‘sometimes.’ The findings show preferences depended on the situation. One person reasoned, on Facebook she “talk[ed] less closely to friends…. Whatever is placed on their wall might be seen by anyone, might show up in Newsfeed… to really talk… prefer to talk in person or on the phone.” She argued, “things like Facebook, email and instant messaging seem impersonal and it’s almost impossible to read a person’s ‘tone’ in text format.” With text, meanings may become lost in translation by the receiver. Another user stated he used Facebook to communicate with others when “not urgent… doesn’t need immediate response.” Although Facebook makes communication convenient, people still prefer more private means of communication for personal exchanges.
Facebook users utilize status updates to broadcast themselves to their audience. While some users don’t update their status, others update few times a week to multiple times a day. Ron* sums it up, describing status updates as “news headlines for people in your life.” This activity is strikingly similar to what Adam Reed discusses in My Blog is Me. Online communication since Reed’s article shifted from weblogs to status updates, but same concepts still apply. For instance, Reed discusses how weblog entries were irregular, “posted as often as five times a day… other times twice a week.” These entries consisted of things like musings, confessions, links-based commentary (Reed 2005:226).
Of those surveyed, many believe status updates enable them to casually keep up with those they don’t see often. Reed had the same idea of weblogs “capturing a person’s impressions almost as they occur” (Reed 2005:227). One person argued status updates made her “feel like I know the person better, because I know some details about their lives.” She added that status updates “provide topics for conversation,” making mere acquaintances more relatable. One college student said status updates “make it a lot easier to say [things]… don’t have to repeat myself… allows me to share good news with a lot of people at once.” One high school student found status updates useful for homework. It served a convenient way to ask for help, and friends’ updates reminded her of due dates.
Others use status updates as therapy, expressing what’s on their minds. When Tom’s* ex-girlfriend updated with “AWEHLAGJAKL,” he confessed, “I’ve never seen that before… when I asked it was an explosion of angst/worry/depression… bad emotion bottled up and exploded in my face.” Like weblogs, status updates “provide a day-to-day account of passing moods and experiences… as it happens” (Reed 2005:226). Other users update out of boredom or purely to receive feedback. Others post statuses to share “inside jokes” among friends. Tom* admits he updated “to gain attention … I sometimes ask a question for the general Facebook community… ask questions to see what kind of reaction I can get.” He once posted an update “Tom is hoping for the sky to fall,” receiving an outpour of puzzled responses. Ron compares status updates to Twitter, which dedicates itself to short updates. Asked why he didn’t use Twitter, Ron replied, “cuz then no one would check it.” Ron wanted people to see his updates and respond. He added, “If no one saw it, would there be any point? I might as well write a diary.” Consequently Reed called weblogs “brain dumps,” a way to channel what’s on an individual’s mind while documenting the “stresses and strains” of life (Reed 2005: 228).

Friendships

According to the general survey, 93% of people said they used Facebook to contact and communicate with friends. Due to its popularity and pervasiveness, Facebook has enabled new ways for communication and changed the way friends are perceived.
The number of friends on Facebook demonstrates how the site has stretched the sphere of social relations. From the conducted survey, 48% of people mentioned they had more than 241 Facebook friends. Is it normal or even possible to have such a large number of friends in real life? According to Stephanie Tong, in actual life the average number of people managed in a sphere of social relations is about 150 people (Tong et al: 2008). Therefore, the 48% of people having 241 or more friends on Facebook have gone over this average by almost 100 people. This indicates how Facebook has widened social relationships and enabled people to maintain friendships with more people than those without Facebook.
In her article Tong mentioned, “At the same time, that which is labeled ‘friend’ on Facebook often does not correspond to the same label offline.” Asked when they normally added a person as a friend on Facebook, most people answered it was after they had met the person once or after several times. Offline, meeting with someone once or several times does not always mean becoming friends, but this is seemingly the definition of a friend according to Facebook users. In short, the data obtained from the surveys illustrates how Facebook has changed the perception of “friends,” mostly by transforming it into a shallow idea.
Comments received in the survey demonstrate that Facebook brought a change in people’s perceptions of each other. When asked how their relationships with friends have changed one individual answered, “acquaintances learn more about you without actually talking to you.” Thus, people who connect via Facebook share much more information about themselves than those who don’t use the site. This applies both to “friends” and “acquaintances,” people who barely know each other in actual life come to understand each other better. But do people notice that their relationships with friends have changed? According to the survey, 86.7% of people do think their relationships with friends have changed due to Facebook. Many believe Facebook affected their relationships with friends in a positive way. 76.9% of people agreed Facebook enabled them to contact friends more frequently. The same percentage of people also noted that Facebook helped increase their number of friends. Astonishingly, none of those surveyed thought the use of Facebook brought negative effects such as decrease in number of or interaction with friends.
While the survey showed people’s way of friendship have changed, it seems that people’s perception of the number of close friends have not. Tong mentions that “research on traditional social networks suggests that the number of people with whom an individual maintains close relationships is about 10-20” (Tong et al 2008) and results from the survey showed similar findings. Thirty percent of those surveyed thought 10 or fewer were close friends on Facebook and 57% recognized 20 people or less. Thus Facebook doesn’t seem to have an affect on close friends, since in both the actual world and Facebook most people retain almost the same number.

Family Relationships

Google the simple words “Facebook,” “family,” “adults” together and most of the hits coming up are articles addressing the wails of despair from the younger generation as their parents and grandparents sign up for Facebook accounts in increasing numbers. It comes as no surprise when we recall the fact Facebook initially began as a social networking tool for university students, then later high school students, before finally opening to people of all ages. Taking into consideration interactions between friends that occur on Facebook, it’s no surprise that family on Facebook seems to be a thing to bemoan. What sane person would want their parents and grandparents seeing the things they post on Facebook, whether it’s pictures from a wild party from the night before or a simple agony-filled statement conveying abject misery about the morning hangover?
If that’s the case, what explains our survey results? When asked the types of people they had contact with via Facebook, 56% of respondents asserted they used Facebook to keep in touch with family. "Such a high number is astonishing for people who supposedly didn’t want “the adults” – a term used to lump together anyone in the older generations, whether it’s parents, grandparents, or aunts and uncles – peeking into their social lives." The answer is this: most people forget the meaning of embarrassing adults isn’t limited to family; it can also mean siblings and cousins – people of similar age, the same generation – who can understand. Keeping in touch with family on Facebook doesn’t mean making a group where everyone can have a virtual family reunion, though some people do. Despite the enormity of what the phrase suggests, sometimes keeping in touch with family on Facebook simply means having your sister or brother as a friend, interacting with them as with any other friend. Generally speaking, this is a positive factor of Facebook.
For example, Mandy* discussed how Facebook was only a small part of her contact with her sister, but a positive one overall. “More important talks are held over the phone,” she asserted, stating she had a close relationship with her siblings and leaned on them a lot. Facebook wasn’t essential for them to be close, but it added a positive element to their interactions, “more just for the fun of stuff… casual talk… just like jokes and small stuff that creates humor.” While Mandy enjoyed the added element of casual interaction in between phone interactions, she made it clear Facebook was not instrumental in her communication with her sister. “I would still know her fairly well,” she said upon being asked what would happen if Facebook were no longer available to them. “It wouldn’t really matter…with family, no. With friends, yes.” For siblings, Facebook simply added another element to their interactions with each other – a positive element but not an essential, indispensable one.
In another interview, Cheryl* also stated Facebook was a positive factor in her relationship with her sister. “I actually do find out more about her through this type of medium,” Cheryl told me. “She seems to put herself out there for the world more…and for us, it’s making us closer.” While Cheryl also kept in touch with her sister through text messaging, she felt more comfortable with Facebook because their contact wasn’t specifically geared towards each other, but more general contact as with other friends, through status updates. “We really don’t talk too much,” she admitted, going further to admit this was the only sister really tech savvy enough to have a Facebook account, not the sister she was closest to. For all Facebook did in allowing them to know more about each other, it still hadn’t changed the basic status of their relationship.

Student-Educator Relationships

Since Facebook expanded to include everyone, a surprising number of teachers and professors have joined in order to keep in contact with their colleagues, current and past students, as well as friends and family. Sixteen percent of respondents surveyed keep in contact with teachers, professors, and teacher assistants through Facebook. When searching for Facebook groups that were created specifically for teachers and professors to join, hundreds of groups appear. Groups such as “High School English Teachers” and “Law Professors” have hundreds of educators joining with hopes of uniting with each other on Facebook. Even groups created by students that recognize specific teachers or professors have emerged on Facebook, similar to fan pages of famous celebrities (Image A). Facebook has redefined the “professional” or more formal relationship, changing the interaction and communicative style between educators and students.
Facebook transformed the student-teacher relationship, creating an environment more encouraging for students to interact with their educators and to build a more personal relationship with them. Tim*, a high school teacher for the past 25 years, found Facebook made it easier for him to get to know his students: “Facebook allowed me to connect with many more students, especially the more quieter and shy ones that I normally wouldn’t be able to connect with. You have so many students in each class that it’s too difficult to know each and every one of them, but Facebook allows you to do so.” Facebook is a platform that brings people together, allowing for the most unlikely relationships to develop and solidify. Facebook transforms these impersonal or formal types of relationship into more personal ones, redefining the educator-student relationship and roles.
Tim estimates about 80% of students in his classes are his friends on Facebook and keeps in touch with them regularly: “I like posting updates about when grades are available or when projects and essays are due. I also answer questions about homework or anything else that needs to be addressed. These kids check Facebook more than anything else, so I’m just doing what is more efficient and keeping up with the times.” Facebook creates better relationships between educators and students by promoting healthy new communication. With regards to keeping up with the times, Ito et al. argues that “youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions” (Ito et al 2008). Facebook and other networking sites are available for educators to utilize and incorporate their teaching methods, which can aid in developing better relations between them and their students. Tim* uses this new platform as a beneficial tool: “I’m able to learn so much more from my kids through Facebook because I’m able to build relationships with them outside of school. I get to really know who they are and what they believe and that gives me a better understanding of them, which makes me a better teacher.” Facebook is more than a social networking site these days. It can be seen as a bridge that closes gaps, which largely existed in the past between students and teachers.
Facebook allows for more intimacy between educators and students, but when it comes to boundaries, where is the line drawn? John*, one of Tim’s* colleagues working at the same school, shares how conflicting it is to know some students too well: “I see some of my students in drunken photos and ask myself what to I do with this information. Do I interfere? Do I talk to them?” He stumbles upon this moral dilemma many teachers and educators face because of this overload of personal information available and shared on Facebook. Though Facebook enhances the student-educator relationship, it also brings up boundary issues since it is a new level of interaction between teachers and students that has not yet been defined.

Privacy

The issue of privacy is paramount in any experience, whether in the online world or in real life. It is an issue of special significance and importance in any virtual forum or social networking site due to the vast amount of information available, information just a click away. In the case of Facebook, there were many aspects of privacy to look at in trying to understand the broader scope of how issues of privacy are perceived and its affect on people using the site. In constructing data collection, at the beginning there were three major aspects of privacy which seemed the most important to study: The notion of “tagging pictures” and being able to do so without the permission of others in the picture, how much information users made available in their profile, and users’ opinions on data mining or having their information sold by Facebook.
Surprising information came from this research. Eighty percent of those in the survey said they were “not bothered at all” by the idea of Facebook selling their information or data mining through the site. The same number, however, said that they were most bothered by “unflattering” or “embarrassing” pictures of them appearing on Facebook. Individual interviews supported the information previously gathered in the surveys. As *Elizabeth, a third year at UCLA put it, “Facebook pictures and tagging can be a really big deal. It seems like its stupid but I got in this really big fight over it. One of my [sorority] sisters kept posting pic[ture]s of us where she looked great but I looked awful, or I was wasted. I kept asking her to take them down but she just said no every time. I don’t talk to her anymore.” Elizabeth’s reaction is not uncommon. Among those surveyed, 80% said they have asked a friend to take down pictures of them that were unflattering. What’s even more surprising is the reaction of Elizabeth’s sorority sister is not uncommon – 100% of the same participants in the survey, when asked if they ever asked permission before tagging or posting pictures of other people, said no, and 60% said they would not take down a picture if they looked good in it even if a close friend asked.
These results are surprising and telling. While Facebook and other social networking sites started out as merely places to come together to keep in touch with friends and family, they have evolved to become something even more – an alternate identity, shaped by the information in their profile, the number of friends, and yes – the pictures. Some people rely on Facebook to convey an accurate sense of who they are or wish they were, so it is no wonder that pictures play such an important role. People who look bad in them desperately want them removed while those who look good in them feel the right and need to keep them up. Because this is the only part of privacy that affects their online attractiveness it is the part which users, specifically women, worry the most. While 80% of users have asked others to take down pictures, 100% of the women surveyed said they had asked a friend to take down unflattering pictures, and 90% said they would not take a picture down if they looked good in it.
Data mining, selling information, possible problems with having address or phone number or place of work in their profile are all issues that seem far away to most Facebook users. These issues don’t seem to affect them, while a bad picture posted by a friend is a real and constant annoyance. *Erin, a sophomore at UC Santa Barbara, had what she considers a “minor” problem with having too much information in her Facebook profile. “I put my address up in my profile and my number and stuff so my friends could always contact me or for parties. But this guy who lives in my apartment started coming over all the time ‘cause he saw on Facebook that we lived in the same complex…It got really weird. But other than that, I think the picture thing is worse.” This account shows that even among the people who have had bad experiences with “Facebook stalking,” the idea of bad pictures of them showing up is more troublesome. As in MMO’s, Facebook and other social networking sites can act as “new third places for informal sociability” (Steinkuehler and Williams: 2006) for which one’s online identity is crucial. In everyday life, one’s actual appearance is important in the social sphere and the representation of oneself through pictures can become just as important on a social networking site.

Conclusion

Facebook’s influence on the social habits and ways of communication for its users is, if nothing more, undeniable. It has, more than many other kinds of on-line services, connected people despite geographical boundaries, language barriers, and differences in age. Teachers can now be “friends” with their students – and contrary to the old saying – parents can be their children’s “friends.” Facebook has changed the way people interact with their siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. Because of the ease of use and the constant bombardment of information it is now possible to know exactly what your great aunt Millie (whom you’ve never met) had for breakfast and whether her toast was burnt. As Thompson writes, even in the early days of Facebook the idea of constantly updating it to reflect you at that point in your life – ‘“hating Monday,” “skipping class b/c i’m hung over”’ (Thompson 2008) – was popular because people could constantly change the digital face that they presented to the world.
The question that has been asked in this scope of research is: what are the long-term effects of this new “ambient intimacy”that has caused the explosion in communication? The research seems to suggest that, all in all, Facebook has been a much more positive force in people’s lives than negative. It has helped families stay in touch, helped students network with each other and discuss classes, helped teachers get to know students. Like any new technology, there is and always will be the possibility of abuse by some users, and has certainly caused problems for some people. Privacy issues have worried some, while others worry about the blurring line between authority figures and their underlings. The most important thing coming out of this research is that perception, especially in the online world, is reality. When asked if they felt unsafe on Facebook, the majority said no. When asked if it helped their relationship with family, they said yes. If the people using it are happy with the service, then they will continue to use it and the communication boom that has occurred with social networking sites will continue evolving to meet the needs of its users.

Bibliography

Mimi Ito et al.
2008 Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project.
Reed, Adam
2005 “My Blog Is Me”: Texts and Persons in UK Online Journal Culture (and Anthropology). Ethnos 70(2): 220-42.
Steinkuehler, Constance, and Dimitri Williams
2006 Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as “Third Places.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11(4): article 1.
Thompson, Clive2009 Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. New York Times, Sept. 7.
Tong, Stephanie Tom, with Brandon Van Der Heide, Lindsey Langwell, and Joseph B. Walther
2008 Too Much of a Good Thing? The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(3): 531–49.

Privacy Control for Facebook Photos and Basic Information

2009-05-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

Privacy Control for Facebook Photos and Basic Information

Livia Wang 26047920
Yuliya Yevdayeva 51137495
Anthropology
University of California, Irvine

Introduction

Ever since the early 1990s, cyberspace has revolutionized and redefined communication in the actual physical world. In cyberspace, anything is possible and the imagination is limitless. People can express themselves liberally such as sharing their opinions, interests, or philosophy to inventing a new identity or identities. Personal information whether real or fake and viewpoints are usually published in cyberspace to portray a certain persona. The availability and continues flow of information makes privacy a crucial issue for social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc (Ito 2008). Due to problems with privacy issues from the past, users of these personalized sites may now pick and choose who their audiences are when information is shared. People can have vigilant or laissez-faire attitude towards the privacy of their online identity (Zywica 2008).
For this research, the focus is examining privacy control on Facebook, specifically Photos and the Basic Information box. A person’s Facebook account is often seen as en extension of one’s being. As mentioned in class, when you create an account, you create an avatar. People form these representations of themselves with the understanding that their “friends”will use those representations to judge and evaluate them. Individuals’ audiences on Facebook are considered “friends” and can only be on that selective list if both parities mutually approve each other. The amount of information an individual’s audiences may have access to is controlled by the privacy settings of that individual (Zywica 2008).
History: Facebook is an online social networking site founded by Mark Zuckeberg and his fellow classmates from Harvard University in early 2004. Its popularity soon gained many big time investors’ support and by October 2008, Facebook has gone international to people as young as 13-years-old with valid email address. Facebook allows its users to create personalized profiles, play with a wide array of games, share photos and videos, make event announcements, be in different interest groups, and other applications (Zywica 2008).
According to the article "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy" by Clive Thompson (2008), Facebook is becoming the Big Brother of the Internet. With the development of the News Feed Thompson argues that, "Facebook had lost its vestigial bit of privacy. For students, it’s like being at a giant, open party filled with everyone you know, able to eavesdrop on what everyone else was saying, all the time". Also Matthew J. Hodge’s article “The Fourth Amendment and Privacy Issues on the ‘New’ Internet: Facebook.com and Myspace.com”, brings into question the legitimacy of these privacy settings and whether or not they violate American’s Fourth Amendment right.

Method

Facebook Photo: The research study on Facebook Photo Privacy is using the Naturalistic Research Approach and the data collected are qualitative. An interview survey was used to gather information on how and why people choose certain photos to be published on Facebook and what privacy settings are used. The questions were open-ended and related to privacy issues on sharing Facebook photos albums, tagging people in pictures, setting limitations of who can see the photos, and profile picture. There were a total of five questions along with a short description of the purpose of this research and a confidentiality statement; see Appendix A. For part of Question 5, we used a rating scale on the level of privacy they are permitting when using Facebook Photos and in life offline. The scale ranged from 1 to 5: 1 being very private and 5 being very public.
Participants: Participants in this research were “Friends” on Livia Wang’s Facebook. The questionnaires were sent using Facebook Messages to 25 randomly selected people from approximately 700 friends. Most of Livia Wang’s friends on Facebook were from Southern California in the Orange County and Los Angeles areas, with a vast majority between the ages of 20-30 years old.
Facebook Basic Information: To investigate Facebook users’ interpretation of privacy in regards to one’s basic/personal information, we used an interview method. Two offline personal friends with Facebook accounts were chosen for the interview. The interviews were held either on campus or by visiting the participants’ homes. Before starting the interview, the participants were informed about the reason for the research, why they were chosen, and confidentiality. There were no specific questions used; instead, key points are brought up for open discussion with open-ended questions. Information from the interview was recorded on a notebook for data reference, along with significant meanings of body language. The approximate time for each interview was 20 minutes.
Participants: The interviewees were female UCI students, ranging between 21 and 22 years of age. They are chosen from Yuliya Yevdayeva’s Facebook friends. After looking over several profiles, we chose these two because they varied substantially in the amount of information they disclosed on their Facebook profiles. The participants were given alias names, Amy and Beth.
Facebook Wall: The survey consisted of five questions regarding privacy settings and how well respondents felt their information was secure. It was intended to separate and analyze the different privacy settings allowed on Facebook. It also was intended to shed light onto how much the ability for others to see their history and postings navigated their Facebook activity.
Participants: We found participants for the Facebook Wall component of the research by asking ten different people to complete a survey we put together regarding their feelings of privacy towards the Facebook Wall. Since the survey was short and did not require that much writing, we had respondents complete the survey at the time we gave it to them. The respondents were all males between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two.
Results
Facebook Photos: Nine out of 25 people responded to the online Facebook interview survey. These nine participants answered all the questions and agreed to have their responses be used in this research. They were given code names to represent their identity: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I. The demographics of the participants are two heterosexual males, one homosexual male, and six heterosexual females between the ages of 20-25 years old.

Data from Responses:

1) All the participants browsed Facebook photos of their friends at least once a day to few times a day. 2) The responses for uploading photos on Facebook were to share them for admiration, socialization, attention, interest, and entertainment. 3) Privacy settings for photo album access were set differently for every participant as they restricted selective group or people for each album. The main reason for privacy control were to avoid negative drama. 4) The tagging and detagging were most commonly used to protect self-esteem and criticism from other people. 5) The participants’ had mixed opinions on their privacy level for using Facebook photos and offline. However, their ratings comparing Facebook and offline were within 2 points; see Appendix B.
Facebook Basic Information: The reason open-ended questions were used in the interview was to allow the participants to go off tangents and talk about privacy and Facebook liberally. Putting past anthropology knowledge to use, sometimes it is those tangents that provide the most crucial information and it is the interviewer’s job to roll with the punches and adapt to the person being interviewed. The reason for choosing these two friends over posting a survey on a Facebook group for random people is the level of accessibility with real life friends. The face-to-face interaction also provides information from not only from the participants’ responses but also their body language. The first participant, Amy, had a very restricted profile. The only information on her profile is her graduating class, date of birth, e-mail, and high school attended. In contrast, the second participant, Beth, had a very extensive written profile, which included complete lists of favorite music, movies, books, etc.
We were very curious to know how my informants viewed privacy on Facebook and how this view affected their choices of providing or withholding certain information on their profiles. When one member of our group asked Amy why she chose to reveal so very few details on her profile, she told us that she felt if she provided a lot of information on her page, people viewing her page would base much of their view of her on what they read in her profile. She told us that even though she is in a relationship, she left it out of her profile because those Facebook friends that she communicates with regularly on Facebook or in real life, already know she is involved with someone, and those who lost touch with her but remain her Facebook friends do not necessarily need to know. Amy went on to say that she chose not to state that she is conservative and a Christian because, in her opinion, that would invoke ideas of an ultra-conservative religious fanatic in those viewing her Facebook page.
We then asked her whether Facebook’s latest transformation led her to purge her profile of all details of her life She told us that that had a lot to do with it. Before the introduction of Facebook’s News Feed, she felt a lot more comfortable in filling out her basic and personal information, and if she chose to edit something, no one but her would know. News Feed changed all of that. Some see it as a positive change. Others, like Amy, see it as negative one. In “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” Clive Thompson states, “When students woke up that September morning and saw News Feed, the first reaction, generally, was one of panic. Just about every little thing you changed on your page was now instantly blasted out to hundreds of friends.” Like many other students, Amy felt uncomfortable and felt that even with all of the privacy settings, some things still made News Feed. Amy said that she restricted News Feed as much as she could and still information of her approving someone as a friend would get published. She expressed to me that she found it “annoying” and wondered why any one would find that interesting. Amy also mentioned that the only way she would start providing more information on her profile is if Facebook goes back to its “simplistic” ways.
Beth’s Facebook profile varied from Amy’s greatly. In contrast to Amy, who left a lot of information out, Beth filled in everything that could be filled in. In her Favorite Movie section she gave two lengthy lists of her “current favorites” and “all-time” favorites. Under her Contact information she included two e-mail addresses, her AIM screen name, phone number, and a link to her Myspace page. One member of our group asked Beth why she felt so comfortable displaying so much information about herself on her page. She told us that she does not mind providing her personal information because she wants to keep everyone updated on her life at the moment. She understands that not everyone will ‘get’ her based solely on her profile. She added that she got a Facebook account to communicate with her existing real life friends, and not to create new friends over the internet. We asked her if the idea of people seeing her updates via News Feed made her uncomfortable. Beth told us that at first she felt a little uneasy about it but eventually got used to the idea. She said that she was a little freaked out when News Feed first came out and that she felt that she had to monitor everything she did on Facebook so nothing private got out.
But now, she does not mind it at all. Beth is not the only one who went from disliking News Feed to eventually accepting it. Many had an initial shock before adapting to it. As Clive Thompson states in “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” after the initial backlash, “users’ worries about their privacy seemed to vanish within days, boiled away by their excitement at being so much more connected to their friends.” Overall, she has a positive feeling toward News Feed, but at times she does feel like she is stalking people. Beth mentioned that sometimes finding out that someone is no longer single or just broke up feels like a kind of ‘forced intimacy’ to her.
Facebook Wall: The results to the research were interesting. Through the survey we found that many people do not hold privacy to be of the utmost importance. Many of the interviewees were not even aware of the privacy settings available through Facebook. However, when it came to wall privacy everyone had their own feelings toward what they did and did not want other people to see. Most decided that when it came to their recent history it was not important for others to see whose walls they had written on. Many also admitted to deleting groups they've joined and accepted friend requests. For the most part it appeared that there was a sort of limited censorship towards the wall and it depended on how each person felt about each particular piece of information.

Analysis

Facebook Photos: The participants’ active use of Facebook Photos shows the prominence of this application on a social networking site. Especially for the younger generation, going online is built into their daily routine. Facebooking is an activity that fulfills multiple purposes from catching up with friends, sharing opinions, and entertaining oneself. As for using Facebook Photo, the participants’ reasons for uploading and tagging pictures is for acceptance, likeability, and sociability (Niedzviecki 2008).
These reasons may be correlated with motivations to boost self-esteem and popularity. According to Zywica (2008), the level of self-esteem and sociability is correlated with Facebook user’s level of privacy. Both social enhancement and social compensation hypotheses can be used to explain how people determine their privacy settings. Social enhancement is when people with more developed offline social networks enhance them with more extensive online social networks. Social compensation is when people who perceive their offline social networks to be inadequate compensate for them with more extensive online social networks.
These self-esteem characteristics may be associated with the need for popularity. Facebook is an environment where people socialize online so popularity status naturally exists just like it does in the offline world. On Facebook, people can share pictures of themselves, friends, landscape, etc. Personal expression through photos makes self-esteem an attackable target, as people can be supportive or critical in their comments. Since compliments are positive reinforcements that boost self-esteem and popularity, Facebook users are more motivated to upload and share pictures that will achieve social acceptance. Often these pictures are not only attractive and interesting to the user but also target their audiences’ taste. Through sharing photos, people with high self-esteem want to enhance their popularity, and people with low self-esteem want to compensate their lack of attention (Thompson 2008 & Zywica 2008).
For example, participant H has less than 200 friends on Facebook and her photo albums are open to everyone in the general public. Her profile picture and some of self-portrait album pictures are in very revealing clothing and implied nude poses. These risqué pictures attract a lot of attentions, especially from guys, some of which are not even her friends. Participant H’s response to the survey shows that she enjoys the attention and nice comments for her pictures as it makes her feel good about herself. In fact, she is a very studious girl who rarely goes out with friends. Therefore displacing attractive photos compensates for her lack of attention from people in the offline world.
On the other hand, participant I exemplifies the social enhancement theory as she has over 1,000 Facebook friends and shares selectively with them. Her photo album includes outings with different groups of people almost every weekend. Her response to the survey shows that she enjoys her social company in the offline world and sharing photos is like a “playback of how much fun [she] had with [her] friends”. Sharing group photos of her friends is enhancing her popularity in the offline world, as these pictures convey to her audience that she is fun to be with and has many friends.
Also users may selectively choose their audience to share the photos with. The implementation of the different privacy options to limit people’s access may be correlated with self-presentation, person’s effort to express a specific image and identity to others. For the participants, they have an image to portray and protect so they tend to share to people that will approve and value similar ideologies. For example, some participants have family members who will not find drinking an acceptable behavior so these audiences’ access to certain Facebook pictures will be limited. The participants are presenting themselves of a preconceived image to protect themselves from negative reinforcements such as punishment from parents for going out partying on a school night (Thompson 2008).
Besides controlling one’s own photo privacy, the tagging tool may also be used to control personal privacy in other people’s photo albums as well. This comes extremely handy for getting rid of a disapproving photo. Impression management may explain why the participants feel good about having Facebook users set up their profiles in order to suggest a certain image to viewers whether their real self, ideal self, or even made-up self. One type of impression management is ingratiation, which manipulates appearance, personality, or behaviors to project greater attractiveness. These behaviors are not always conscious or intended as the environment in the offline society often sets a mold to what attractive characteristics. People that fit the mold usually gain acceptance because others are more likely to want to befriend someone who portrays characteristics within the norm (Thompson 2008). .
Hence, the participants want to put up photos of them that persuade images that will impress their audiences such as popularity, beauty, athleticism, success, etc. Photos that hinder such portrayal will be detagged because unflattering images are privatized to eliminate its negative impact to self-esteem and likeability. Like participant B says “I don’t wants an ugly picture of me flowing around for everyone to see, eww!”.
The same concept of impression management applies of for tagging people as well. Some participants tag significant friends, places, or things pictures because pictures are the evidence of their life offline. People typically want to be associated with others with same ideologies. For this reason, the participants tag photos that affirm and support their online persona. For example, participant E works as a promoter for night clubs, so in order to convey her socialite qualities, she tags pictures of the celebrities and trendy spots. Another reason to tag people is to maintain or reinforce existing offline persona and relationships. For example, Participant C will befriend people he has shared a picture with on Facebook and give them limited access to his profile. The photos and tags help him maintain a relationship with people he meets offline (Zywice 2008).
The reasons for uploading and tagging pictures on Facebook are determined by the level of privacy users feels towards expressing themselves online. Some people are more public about sharing photos with their audiences than others. This can be seen from the ratings in Question 5 as participants compare their privacy level online and offline. The variations in the rating scales between the participants may just be due to individual differences.
Facebook Basic Information: One essential part of an individual’s image on Facebook is their written information about themselves that a user may or may not choose to post. This information includes things such as gender, relationship status, sexual orientation, political/religious views, and favorite movies, just to name a few. When filling out Facebook details, some of the information provides a window in which one can write anything they please. But other information, like gender for instance, only gives two options, where one box has to be checked off. With all of the available opportunities to express oneself in their written profile, some Facebook users choose to leave certain information out. This was seen by our group as an area of interest which we chose to explore further.
An array of reasons contributes to people’s decision to include or withhold certain information from their Facebook profiles, but one thing remains constant. The information that I got from my interviews seems to imply a link between one’s definition of privacy on Facebook and how much they are willing to reveal in their profiles. Some, like Amy, see the Facebook News Feed as a violation of their privacy; therefore, she is hesitant when it comes to divulging her life’s details in her profile. But others, like Beth, are now much more comfortable with the idea of News Feed and do not mind having their stories shared with their networks. It is this relaxed attitude toward Facebook privacy that allows users like Beth to provide insight into their lives without feeling violated.

Facebook Wall: This research is very important. It reflects the relationship between users wanting to show and know personal information and their desire to keep it private. According to Thompson (2008), the biggest problem Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, faced was trying to find a point of equilibrium between gossiping and confidentiality. At first many users were outraged by the emergence of the News Feed, which showed the most recent activity of all Facebook users. This led to the implantation of the basic security features, such as who could see one's profile and what they could see. Almost everyone accepted this new form of privacy. This shows that while people like reading other user's information, statuses, and wall posts, not all of them are comfortable with others reading their personal information. This was interesting to me because I thought that many people would want to keep all of their information private. In today’s time, where pictures of underage adults drinking and partying can have devastating consequences, I thought it almost certain that privacy would be one of the main concerns on the internet.
There are actually companies whose job it is now is to search through these social networking sites to find incriminating pictures of college athletes, offspring to celebrities, and other political figures. A great example of this was in October of 2005 at the Penn State vs. Ohio State University football game. After Penn State upset Ohio, thousands of fans rushed the field of play and the mob of celebration almost broke into a riot. The police were overwhelmed by this massive onslaught of fans and were only able to make two arrests that day. However, a week later the police received a tip that some of the college students had posted pictures of the game on Facebook. Using this information, campus police identified and referred about fifty alleged student offenders to the university’s office of judicial affairs. Social networking sites such as Facebook are becoming an increasing effective tool for law enforcement officers.

Discussion

Online technologies have transformed the way people socialize today. In the cyber world, people can engage in a board range of activities such as searching information, visiting chat rooms, downloading music files, corresponding over email, browsing blogs, playing in virtual worlds, and others (Williams 2006). Facebook Photos is like an online photo diary people may use share to their audiences for support, opinions, or communication. This makes browsing Facebook like the big brother of the Internet, recording every move its user make. As Zuckerberg explains that part of Facebook’s success is “stretching people and getting them to be comfortable with things they aren’t yet comfortable with. A lot of this is just social norms catching up with what technology is capable of” (Thompson 2008).
Limitations and Future Research: There are a few limitations that pose threat to the validity and reliability of the research for Facebook Photos. The interviews are gathered from a small number of participants, which diminish the results to be generalized to a larger population. Also it is difficult for the research to be completely objective since the data need to be interpreted and not quantified due to the nature of method that is used to gather data. Therefore future research may consider a larger sample size and quantifying the surveys so the results will be more significantly valuable. As for Facebook Basic Information, only two participants are interviewed due to the limited amount of time to conduct the research. Future research on this subject may include a much broader interviewee group consisting of both males and females.

References:

Ito, Mimi et al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. MacArthur Foundation: 2008.
Niedzviecki, Hal. Facebook in a Crowd. New York Times: October 26, 2008.
Thompson. Clive. Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. New York Times: Sept. 7, 2008.
Williams, Dimitri. Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as “Third Places.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11(4), article 1: 2006.

Appendix A:

I am conducting a research for my anthropology class. The purpose of this research is to better understand the issues regarding Facebook privacy, specifically on photo sharing. There is no minimum or maximum length of your answers to any of the following questions. Your response will be totally confidential in my research, and I will assign code names for you such as “Participant X”. Please answer honestly and your participation is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Questions:
1. How often to you browse other people’s photos on Facebook? Why?
2. Why you upload and share photos of yourself, others people, objects, etc. on Facebook?
3. How do you manage your privacy settings on Facebook Photos and how do you choose who gets to be on that limited list where they do not have access to those photos?
4. Do you privatize or publicize pictures of yourself on Facebook by the tagging and detagging option? Why?
5. Do you think your level of privacy is the same when using Facebook Photos and in the offline world, or are you more reserved in one environment than the other? Explain? Also using a scale from 1 to 5: 1 being very private and 5 being very public, please rate yourself for both using Facebook Photos and offline.
Appendix B

Identity Construction and Self-Representation on Facebook

2009-05-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

Identity Construction and Self-Representation on Facebook

Renée Estoisia
Neema Pithia
Claudia Rodriguez
Teresa Yu
Anthropology 128C
Professor T. D. Boellstorff
19 March 2009

Not long ago the general public viewed Social Networking Sites (SNSs) as novelties. They were thought to be only accessed by the technologically savvy individuals who knew the intricacies of virtual worlds and innovative technological devices. One of the most popular Social Networking Sites, Facebook.com, has grown exponentially, especially among college students. Facebook, created by Mark Zuckerberg while he was an undergraduate at Harvard University, was at first used exclusively at Harvard. It then expanded into the Ivy Leagues, and with rising popularity spread throughout the whole U.S. college system. Since then, the site has been made widely available by enlarging its user demographic to encompass everyone from ages seven to seventy. In a recent study done by a UC Irvine graduate student it was discovered that 85% of college students would consider themselves Facebook users. Such a large amount of Facebook users provides them the opportunity to meet an eclectic mix of new people, as well as the ability to stay in touch with new and old friends.
Because of the sheer size of Facebook and the possibility that anyone could view your profile, identity construction and self-representation become extremely important. The way people represent themselves in the virtual and physical worlds has similarities and differences. In the physical world people are able to be identified by their clothes, hair, mannerisms, and their use of language. In cyberspace people are likewise identified by language in what they write, and how they choose to visually display themselves. Although the virtual and physical worlds contain the same basic forms of self-representation, the virtual world is much more self-controlled and self-constructed. It is easier to stay in control of your online appearance and reputation because you can enter and leave virtual spaces at your own discretion. After sifting through numerous Facebook profile pages and talking to users, it becomes apparent that users share a commonality in the various ways they represent themselves on Facebook. These vary from the way people structure their privacy settings, to the way they represent themselves through their pictures, to what groups they identify with, and how they define themselves through text on their profile pages. Thus, Facebook is a space where people may construct and share their identities, rather than being just a platform where one “‘keeps in touch‘.”

Methods

For this project our methods consisted of participant observation, surveys, and open-ended interviews. Using these methods we interviewed and surveyed over fifty people as a group, in addition to observing several profiles of people in our friend networks. Some of the participants were our friends, relatives, acquaintances, and other people we did not know at all. Furthermore, each interview was tailored to the individual sections that we cover in this paper. There were a variety of questions we asked such as: what one’s Facebook means to them, what individuals’’ Facebook pages say about who they are when others view their profile, and whether they think it is an accurate representation of themselves. Survey questions were similarly tailored, but responses were collected anonymously by targeting random people in accessible networks (asking random friends or groups of people to take our surveys) both within and outside of Facebook. In all, the various methods used were effective in conducting our research because they allowed for a wide range of data to be collected from various sources.

Privacy Settings

The privacy settings on Facebook may often be overlooked by users on the Social Networking Site. However, the settings that are employed by an individual can establish his or her comfort levels with others and it may give insight into the introversion or extraversion of a personality. Clive Thompson, author of “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy”, explains how Facebook has become “the de facto commons – the way students [find] out what everyone around them [is] like and what he or she [is] doing,” (Thompson:2008) which can be exciting for some, invasive for others. In talking with our interviewees, we noticed that they all used Facebook for researching new and existing friends. When using the site, if they came across a profile that allowed them access to view all pictures, groups, profile text and wall postings, they felt more comfortable examining the page because this friend is willing to share their individuality with an audience. However, if they saw a profile without a profile picture or did not have access to some aspect of the profile that is usually more readily available on a less restrictive friend, they deemed this friend as reserved or secretive. In a sense, more private profiles were considered less desirable and interviewees would second-guess their own willingness to share information with a more reserved friend.
A person’s introversion or extraversion was assumed by the viewer solely on the basis of whether or not they were able to see certain aspects of a profile. As one of our interviewees, Penny, explained, “If a friend of mine on Facebook has part of their profile hidden, I think they’re kind of shy or withdrawn. There’s no reason to hide something like pictures because we all have good and bad ones and if you don’t like one, de-tag yourself. It’s that simple.” But is it that simple? With the rising number of family members, employers and school officials joining Facebook, the need for more privacy should be increasing for users. Maybe more caution should be exercised when any information about yourself is posted to this site because it could potentially be viewed by anyone and could work against you. “I keep my profile pretty low-key because you never know who’s looking at it. It’s better to be safe than sorry,” explained Sammy, whose only information posted about her on her profile is her hometown, sex, and network. She may be perceived as a bland individual because of this, but Sammy believes her omission of personal information is more of a reflection of her cautiousness, rather than an assumed timidity.
When we conducted our interviews, it was interesting to note the blasé attitudes that four of the five people had regarding privacy settings. In fact, it took us a longer time to find someone that was actually concerned with privacy because it seems as if many people prefer to share all information with their friends and even strangers. BBC News did a report on Facebook’s Terms of Service, specifically the possibility that Facebook could keep personal information even if your account is deleted. The interpretation of the services from the article is that “anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later” (Shiels 2009). When we brought this issue up in the first four individual interviews, shoulders were shrugged and issues of concern were the last things on their minds. “I don’t really see this having an effect on me. I keep my profile open because I’m showing who I am to anyone out there that’s curious and I don’t care who sees it,” said Stanley, a college junior. More often than not, information is willingly provided by users because they want to make connections with others. By displaying as much of their online identities as possible, people are hoping to gain more friends by showing some of their quirks and interests that might otherwise go unnoticed or kept secret in the real world.
Ralph Gross and Alessandro Acquisti, authors of “Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks”, explain the privacy implications of an open profile and detail that “due to the variety and richness of personal information disclosed in Facebook profiles […] users may put themselves at risk for a variety of attacks on their physical and online persona,” (Gross and Acquisti 2005:8). Issues such as stalking and identity theft are hardly even an afterthought when it comes to many college students on Facebook because the desire to make connections and showcase their personalities outweighs the potential risks involved in the divulging of personal information. Many people are willing to put themselves out into the ether because they feel that Facebook is an appropriate place to make friends, as it is a Social Networking Site after all.
The majority of a profile is affected by the privacy settings enforced by a user. For example, they control the type of audience allowed to view a profile. Those who are more cautious about sharing information are viewed as anti-social, secretive, or unwilling to open up to others. In contrast, a completely open profile is hardly ever met with disapproval. It shows that a user is inclined to reveal information to others and makes others comfortable enough to want to share with them as well. Impressions will be made based on any Facebook profile, regardless of the content that is made public or not. While the profile picture can give a more obvious first impression, privacy settings are the unseen feature that can formulate an assumption because they can regulate the acceptance or denial of a curious click onto an identity revealing profile page.

Profile Pictures

When a Facebook account is created, the user can upload a main profile picture of themselves, their family, or a logo, among other things, to represent their identity. Those who see the profile picture, whether it is a family member, classmate, significant other, or some random “friend” will make generalizations about the user’s personality. The judgments made can be positive or negative, correct or incorrect. Just like the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words,” whoever looks at the profile can make various assumptions regarding the person when the user could have intended to display an image for a completely different reason. Similarly, an image can be easier for the viewing audience to judge at a glance as opposed to reading the written profile of a user.
Through open-ended interviews, subjects volunteered insight as to the reasons why specific pictures were chosen to be displayed as the profile picture. One interviewee, Becky, said, “I chose my default picture because I like the way I look laughing out loud, and my sister is in it which means I love my family.” From this, it can be assumed that Becky cares about the way others perceive her in relation to her familial bonds. Although one may mistake her sister for a friend in the picture, Becky is also able to show her congenial spirit as she is laughing and having a good time with others which can provide the effect of a friendly personality to those looking at the picture. Another subject, Robert, said he chooses his default pictures based on the way he looks in them. He also explained that he chooses attractive pictures of himself because, “Unfortunately, I care about how the viewer perceives me.” This shows that at times, people choose certain profile pictures because they want to get a positive reaction from viewers. In the physical world, this may parallel the idea of wearing fashionable clothing in order to look a certain way to impress your peers. Indeed, the profile picture can just be another approach that people take to impress online friends.
People are very sensitive about how they look and who is viewing them online. While some choose to have an actual image representing themselves, others choose symbolic images. This kind of image as a default highlights something totally different. For example, when we asked a fellow student, George, about the topic, he stated that “This could be a bragging situation on a luxury car they might have, or it could mean that this person is into cars. As for logos, this could vary such as a mascot for a school, it could mean that they go or have gone to the school, or that the person is a school spirited person and wants to represent their own school.” Another fellow student, Jane, said “Maybe they don’t want to show their picture because of privacy issues. Maybe they don’t want people to find out who they are.” Evidently, profile pictures vary greatly depending upon the person and what they wish to convey about themselves.
After interviewing several people, we came to realize that people want to present themselves in a positive manner in both the physical and virtual world: “being able to self-present in a positive manner has been tied to physical survival” (Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, Westerman, and Tong 2008:31). People are very self-conscious about their appearance and want to be prepared to “look good” for anyone who may be viewing their profile.
Interestingly, we observed that when users of Facebook post a default picture of themselves, personal self-esteem levels are evident. People that are self-conscious may want to put a great looking picture of themselves, in order to get a positive comment, or post it to make their self esteem higher: “individuals with low self esteem orient toward self-enhancement while those with high self esteem try to protect themselves” (Danowski and Zywica 2008:6). Having high self esteem seems to be a social compensation for an individual in the virtual world. People like compliments, looking attractive, and sharing their interests with others. The user that is going to update their default picture does not want anything negative about them posted: “these symbols that appear with some kind of frequency can designate that someone may be labeled with a stigmatized identity because that symbol or object vouches for the individual’s status” (Boostorn 2008). Personal implications of iconic representation are felt through different alterations in the appearance of the profile picture.

Groups

The Groups feature on Facebook is another part of the Facebook profile which members can use to either provide more information about themselves or learn more about other ‘’“friends.” However, it is distinctly different from the rest of the profile in that groups link to whole different spaces, separate from the user’s main Facebook (the profile, homepage/News Feed, and often separate from one’s friend network). In these groups one can interact with other people based on a shared interest in the group subject, and anyone can create their own group for others to join, from a few select friends to anyone in the world who has a Facebook account (Facebook.com 2009). Moreover, the groups section appears to be one of the more public parts of the profile by virtue of being shared, and because people rarely seem to censor access to this information as they would pictures or other text.
Thus, our initial hypothesis was that while other information such as interests and pictures also provide personal information that the individual has chosen to make public, the difference between such information and groups is that individuals consider profile information and pictures to be more personal aspects of their identities, whereas groups represent personal, but less private aspects of identity. Although this idea holds up to a certain extent, the information provided by the participants suggests that the relationship between identity and groups instead lies in what individuals consider to be representative of their identities (self-perception), and interaction with others.
The issue of self-perception came up when trying to determine how important Facebook groups are to individuals in representing themselves. According to researchers, “people will use whatever information is available within an on-line environment in order to form impressions of others (social information processing theory) including cues that are volitional, consciously chosen by the user (such as profile pictures and textual self-description), and information that is not necessarily provided by the individual with intent (such as the number of friends)” (Tong 533). Furthermore, others suggest that through all the content provided by the user in the profile, the individual creates a ‘performance’ indicating things that differentiate them from others, and moreover that group identification in Social Networking Sites may be used to express prestige that comes from ‘inside knowledge’ of the group (Liu 2007). As a result, one would expect people’s choices in joining Facebook groups to be of significant importance; however, responses from participants indicates that this is not the case, or at least that the participants do not consider this to be the case. Out of 37 people surveyed or interviewed, the majority stated that joining specific groups was not really important to them in creating their profiles or did not really matter. Moreover, a significant number of those who stated that it did matter also had a tendency to make their groups private, which means that other users cannot see them.
In addition, most participants claimed that even though they were aware of implied meanings, implying them was not their primary intention when adding groups. When asked about the reasons people added groups, the majority said that they mostly added based on the group representing a subject or activity of interest, or a social group that they considered themselves a part of (identified with the group of people) or that has a counterpart off-line (such as clubs and workplace). On the other hand, most said that they rarely or never added groups due to their popularity or fad status, or to provide additional information about themselves. Also, while most responded that things like sexual orientation, ethnic, gender, and political identity were important to their identities, they rarely had groups based on these. Rather, most added groups when these were more community or group based, and if the person identified with the community, such as age or peer-based groups (“You Grew Up in the 90s if...”), hometown and school network groups, and groups with shared meanings that are random or funny, or that “bring the lolz,” according to survey responses.
The issue of interaction came up when trying to determine to what extent the groups you join are representative of your self-identity. As previously stated, it turns out that although people consider certain markers (ethnicity, gender, etc.) an important part of their identities, they don’t necessarily feel the need to represent these. On the other hand, we found that social interaction is more significant in choosing representative groups. As the author of The Facebook Project discusses, in one Facebook group about gender relations the members highly identify with the issue and debate abounds as the topic can be controversial (Ginger 2009). Thus involvement in identity creating happens in groups when there is interaction within the groups (in the actual group page) and through the group (sharing an identity), not by adding or displaying a group (self-representation to others). When this happens, we find such groups where people are actively identifying with the description of the group. In our project, this is supported by informants who said that group activity often mattered in whether they would add a group.
So while groups are used as markers of identity, their importance does not really lie in self-representation as much as it does in having a perceived shared identity and then sharing this identity with others. Still, ultimately respondents did not consider the groups section to be as important in their Facebook (their self-representation). However, this conflict is in part addressed by author Mizuko Ito, who suggests that spaces like Facebook are places where people are forming norms on how they represent themselves, but are used largely to expand already-existing friendships (Ito 2008:38). Thus investment into the groups section is perceived to be not as strict. Lastly two findings that remain unexplored: first, the difference between interests versus identity came up a few times in individuals’ responses (as brought up by interviewees T.C. and Maria), which is problematic in how identity is defined and secondly, even though individuals did not really consider their Facebook groups to be representative of their identities, the majority claimed that they do in fact look at other people’s groups in order to get a better idea of who the other person is, which is a pretty significant contradiction in perceptions.

Written Profile

The textual aspect of Facebook is the portal into someone’s private beliefs and pleasures. It is something which when analyzed can be recognized as constructed in order to portray the desired image of each individual. Jenny Sunden, a professor of English at UC Berkeley, coined the term “textual embodiment” to describe the environment created by text online as “a virtual life free from the constraints of bodies and materiality” (Sunden 2003:139). The freedom that the virtual world provides allows people to construct their identity in any way they wish. With the freedom of constructing identity in multiple ways comes the freedom to socialize in multiple ways. Many people use virtual worlds, such as the social networking site, Facebook, in order to expand their social networks. According to a study done by Jeff Ginger people spend most of their time on Facebook investigating and viewing the profiles of other friends or potential friends. With all of this social predation one would assume that people would customize their profiles in order to provide the most efficient and positive advertisement of themselves. In several personal interviews that were conducted I received feedback that correlated with this hypothesis. Sammy Jones, an avid Facebook user, stated “I already have a serious girlfriend, so I don’t really care about forming relationship…If I wasn’t with my girlfriend I would probably put a lot more effort into my Facebook.” Facebook is a tool for free personal marketing, and the great thing about it is that it is completely self controlled. With a Facebook page you use its different features to create yourself from nothing and in essence design yourself.
With a desire for forming relationships identity construction becomes essential. The way in which people choose to define their identity on Facebook is mainly through their “info sections.” These sections consist of political interest, activities, favorite movies, and favorite books, to name a few. A study done by Shanyang Zhao, a professor at Temple University, defined “the [Facebook] text [as] the cultural self… [It] is the in-between category, more explicit than the ‘watch me’ of the photos, but still indirect” (Zhao:10). The textual aspect of Facebook has more layers than the iconic aspect of Facebook which lies in the pictures. The textual aspect is much more explicit than the photos because it allows one to specifically define aspects of themselves. These definitions can get rather intimate and personal, especially when it comes to identifying your religious, sexual, and social orientations. The virtual world of each person’s Facebook page consequently becomes an open book of personal identity that in the physical world may take years to decipher. Additionally, the textual aspect of Facebook can be seen as the cultural self. With a quick glance at the laundry list of interests of each individual person one can see that they conform to a cultural precedent. The favorites of most people vary across different cultures. Evidence for this was found upon surveillance of numerous Facebook profiles across the different regions of the United States and England. “Users create a mediated interaction with their peers by saying ‘see me first and foremost in the context of my group’” (Zhao 2008:12). This popular type of group association with identity is seen not only in the virtual world, but also in the physical world. The sense of belonging to a certain group of people gives someone the sense of identity that they need, and that is why it is paramount in the construction of an online identity.
An important concept, ambient awareness, correlates with the idea of fitting into a certain group on Facebook. The concept of ambient awareness was coined by social scientists and included in the article “The Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” by Clive Thompson to refer to the idea of “being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye” (Thompson 2008). Facebook is a social networking site, therefore the way that someone chooses to define themselves allows other people in society to feel like they can really “see” them. Knowing personal and sometimes intimate details about people allows others to feel a sense of indirect manufactured proximity to someone without really getting to know them. Everything that is written on Facebook, a personal profile, contributes to a cumulative definition of the individual. Some people feel that writing about themselves does not do them any justice. One young college student, Samantha, stated “I don’t have much written. Honestly, I like to depend on pictures to tell who I am.” The way people define themselves online highly correlates with the way they define themselves in physical life. Whether someone classifies themselves as an intellectual, an athlete, or a beauty, it will be prevalent online in the way people construct themselves. The amount a person writes also tells a lot about them. Some people are introverted, some are extroverted, and some wish to administer a veil of curiosity upon themselves in order to “keep people guessing.” Textual embodiment is a process which requires a large amount of deliberation and formulation in identity construction.

Conclusion

We want to make our profiles as accurate as possible to reflect our physical selves while consciously omitting some flaws of which we may believe others will disapprove. There is a tendency for some people to format their profiles based on the reactions they think they will get from their Facebook friends and even strangers viewing their profile. For many people, the different parts of the profile carry varying degrees of importance. To some, the pictures are accurate representations of the real person because it shows them in action and sometimes, a picture can be more descriptive of an individual than anything written. For others however, the written profile gives straight to the point specifics on a person’s likes and dislikes that can lay a general overview of their personality. Regardless of the information provided on a Facebook profile, users’ pages are automatically seen as a representation of the physical person who created it. The conclusions drawn from Facebook can be as close to or as far away from the truth, but the profile will always serve as a manifestation of the physical person.

Bibliography

Boostron, R. The Social Construction of Virtual Reality and the Stigmatized Identity of the Newbie. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(2):1-18, 2008. http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/302/269 11 March 1009.
Danowski, James and Zywica, J. The Faces of Facebookers: Investigating
Social Enhancement and Social Compensation Hypotheses; Predicting FacebookTM and Offline Popularity from Sociability and Self-Esteem, and Mapping the Meanings of Popularity with Semantic Networks. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 1–34:(14) , 2008.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121527995/PDFSTART 8 March 2009.
Ginger, Jeff. Gender Roles and Group Discourse. The Facebook Project. 2007 & IDEALS: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. http://www.thefacebookproject.com/research/jeff/publications/genderroles.html 12 March 2009.
------- Performance and Construction of Digital Identity. The Facebook Project 2007 & IDEALS: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 2007.
https://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/handle/2142/8818 12 March 2009.
Gross, Ralph., Acquisti, A. Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks (The Facebook Case). ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES) Pre-proceedings Version, November 2005. www.heinz.cmu.edu/ ~acquisti/papers/privacy-facebook-gross-acquisti.pdf 12 March 2009.
Ito, Mizuko, et al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, November 2008. http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-WhitePaper.pdf 12 March 2009.
Liu, H. Social Network Profiles As Taste Performances. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 2007. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/liu.html 12 March 2009.
Shiels, Maggie. Privacy Law Call in Facebook Row. BBC News, 18 February 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7898164.stm 12 March 2009.
Sundén, Jenny. Material Virtualities: Approaching Online Textual Embodiment. Digital formations. New York: P. Lang, 13, 2003.
Thompson, Clive. Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. New York Times, 7 September 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html 12 March 2009.
Tong, Stephanie T., Van Der Heide, B., Langwell, L., Walther, J.B. Too Much of a Good Thing? The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(3):531–49, 2008.
Walther, Joseph B., Van Der Heide, B., Kim, S.Y., Westerman, D., & Tong, S.T. The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep? Human Communication Research, 34(1):28-49, 2008.
Zhao, Shanyang, Grasmuck, S. Martin, J. Identity Construction on Facebook: Digital Empowerment in Anchored Relationships. Computers in Human Behavior 1816-1836, 24 September 2008. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science 10 March 2009.

Alts in MUDs and MMOs

2009-05-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

Alts in MUDs and MMOs

Patricia Chan
Heidi Felder
Chris Nelson
Al Yen

Alts in MUDs and MMOs

Introduction

From its humble text-based beginnings, to it’s current 3-dimensional graphics, online gaming has drastically changed in the past 20 years. The gaming community has evolved from text-based gaming like MUDs to detailed graphic games such as MMOs. In such games, players create a virtual avatar that represents their identity in the game. Depending on the rules of the game many players create more than one avatar (character). While the interfaces for these games have changed drastically over time, the trend of using multiple characters has prevailed. The reasons for creating alternative characters (alts) have changed little in the two gaming environments. This is because while the face of these two gaming environments has changed, the motivations behind the game play have not.
Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) are synchronous persistent virtual worlds communicated to the user through text (Curtis 1992). Typically MUDs are similar to role-playing based games in which players create textual avatars which grow and evolve as they progress through the game. However, unlike games, MUDs are not goal-oriented and support multiple users connecting from different places. Players control their avatars or characters through text based commands.
Similarly to MUDs, Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) can have several thousands of players playing simultaneously in a virtual world. The difference is that MMOs represent their world graphically, as opposed to textually. Players are capable of designing characters visually and can control characters without textual commands. MMOs began to gain popularity in the late 1980’s and the early 1990’s as more powerful PCs and high-speed Internet connectivity made such intensive programs possible.
Our research focused on the reasons for creating multiple or alternative characters in MUDs and MMOs. Many of the reasons for creating alts were similar; however, there were a few differences caused by the changing style of multi-user games online. While we have tried to outline as many of the popular reasons as we could, there remain many personal and unique factors in the creations of alts that are not covered below. An interviewee said it best when she concluded our conversation with “Please keep in mind that the information I gave you may not apply to everyone, reasons for alts can be very different from player to player.”

2.0 Methods

During the course of this research we used a combination of participant observation, open-ended interviews, and structured interviews. In our research we focused on five MUDs: Discworld, RetroMUD, 3-Kingdoms, Legacies of Justice, and Naughty Muffin MUSH. We created accounts and played for over ten hours in each MUD to understand the game mechanics. The research on MMOs was centered on two popular games, Lord of the Rings Online (LOTR) and World of Warcraft (WoW). We completed six open-ended interviews with players from Discworld, 3-Kingdoms, LOTR, and WoW, and a former wizard who played various unspecified MUDs. Our semi-structured interviews were in the form on an online survey we created through www.surveymonkey.com. There were six structured questions for the MUD players and seven for the MMOs, with an additional open-ended question that asked participants for additional comments. 44 MUD players and 25 MMO players responded to the surveys. The participants for the survey and the interviews were recruited through the MUDs or MMOs or through connections we had with players outside of the virtual places.

3.0 Similarities between MUDs and MMOs

We divided our research into two parts: similarities and differences. We determined people had six similar uses for alts in MUDs and MMOs: (1) Testing “class/race” combinations, (2) having “banks/mules” for storage, (3) pretending to be the opposite gender, (4) privacy issues, (5) playing with friends, and (6) general boredom.

3.1 Class and Race combinations

One of the major factors of creating a character in both MMOs and MUDs is class. These styles of games focus on the creation and evolution of characters through the gaining of experience and levels of power. The major deciding factor of the direction of a player’s game play is their choice in class. A typical example of these classes would be warriors, or healers. Depending upon the player’s choice at the onset of the game their character will assume the particular role of their chosen class. In an interview with xsharkyx she said
Interviewer: Tired of the character or tired of something else?
xsharkyx: and bored of playing the same err crap
xsharkyx: like... rogue.. mage...
xsharkyx: druid
xsharkyx: i forgot what the umbrella term
Interviewer: So tired of the character class
xsharkyx: YES
This brings up a very interesting point of variety. The class that is chosen when a character is created sets the tone and style of play for the character. This sentiment is echoed in an interview with greenbug3 about an MMO called Lord of the Rings online, “I personally feel that playing different characters helps me to see things in other player’s perspective. Every character “class” seems to favor a certain personality or style”. By changing classes players are able to utilize different sets of skills, weapons, and magic. The difference in capabilities between the various classes is the main attraction in alternating between multiple characters. This idea of changing perspectives and trying out new character types by creating alternative characters is also prevalent in MUDs. In an interview with a Guild Helper in the MUD Discworld Miranda Sparrow professed she “wanted to try something new in the game…” so she created two alternative characters. Both of these characters were completely different from each other and her primary character. While Miranda Sparrow loved her main character she enjoyed trying out different classes and races to broaden her understanding of the game by changing her perspective. Corroborating these sentiments is the data that was collected in anonymous surveys, which shows a majority of players—“76% in MUDs, and 88% in MMOs—”created their alternative characters in order to try different classes. Alternative characters allow players in MUDs and MMOs to enrich their gaming experiences through variety of playing styles and roles. Another major factor which impacts player’s choices in character creation is that of race, and racial traits.
In both MMOs and MUDs the player’s choice in character race profoundly impacts their gaming experience through racial traits and personality. Aside from class the most basic component of any character in both MMOs and MUDs is race. A player’s choice in race can influence anything from the characters playing statistics, to their allies in Player VS. Player combat (PVP), to their starting location in the virtual world. In the two primary MUDs of the study it was found that while race had an influence on a players nationality/faction and starting location, it did not have an affect upon a characters statistics. Through participant observation it was found that the race choices players make in MUDs seem to have more to do with the role-playing aspect than game play. In both Lord of the Rings online and World of Warcraft the two primary reasons in choosing race are their statistical advantages, and factions. Depending on the game a player’s choice in race sets up characters boundaries in the game. In the two afore mentioned MMOs the choice of race determines what side of the game’s overarching conflict a character is on. Within the MUD Discworld a player’s choice of nationality has much the same effect on their experience by determining their city allegiance and starting point. In both MMOs and MUDs race, is a major factor in defining the perspective in which the game will be experienced through.

3.2 Banks/Mules

Another theme which has remained prevalent in both MMOs and MUDs is the creation of alts to create more storage space. In both the above platforms players have limited space available to their characters. Many advanced players create additional characters in order to make use of their inventories, or storage space. The typical slang for these storage characters is “mule” or “banks.” While it is not as common in MUDs the storing of items on alt’s is prevalent as shown by Dorian in a MUD called 3-Kingdoms: “I have one alt. But I mostly use it to store items.” This suggests that MUD players use alternative characters “as short term, special-purpose tools” as opposed to separate playable entities. Not only is this a trend in MUDs its extremely common in MMOs to create “mules” to store excess items. Xsharkyx mentioned she created her alts so “they could store items” for her. During our own time in Lord of the Ring’s online we found ourselves creating alt’s to store our excesses. One thing which makes this trend more common in MMOs is the difficulty in transferring items between characters in MUDs. Dorian described an extremely complicated process by which he transferred items by “dropping an item with my main, after which I then pick it up with my alt” which allowed him to transfer items, but at the risk of someone picking it up while it was on the ground. We found in Lord of the Rings online that the game has a transfer system built into it in the form of player to player mail, and private in game storage boxes independent of the player’s original inventory. While the convenience of item transference systems in MMOs has made it more common than in MUDs it is a shared commonality in both.

3.3 Gender

Often, players will create alts in order to play a different gender. Of the respondents to our survey 50% of MUD-player and 52% of MMO-players had a character that was a different gender than them. However, the reasons for making the gender-bending alts vary drastically.
In an interview with Bantlor, a player from the 3-Kingdoms MUD, he expressed that he had an alt because he “wanted to mess with people with a female character”. He did not consider this character to be in any way connected to the way he was in real life. He was only interesting in seeing the reaction from other players who were led to believe that he was a girl. Bantlor is not an isolated case. Pavel Curtis (1992) observed that some male players in LamdaMOO created female alts “just for the fun of deceiving others.”
Others create female characters in order to be treated as such. Players tend to treat those they perceive to be female better than their male counterparts. Pavel Curtis (1992) documented one such instance where “the other players in the room struck up conversations with the putative female and offered to show her around but completely ignored the putative male, who was left to his own devices”. An interview with a player from LOTR echoed Curtis’ observations.
greenbug3: I noticed that people are generally nicer to ‘female’ characters. That could just be me though.
Interviewer: Does that have a big impact on your general game experience?
greenbug3: Of course. It’s nicer to play a game where people have a tendency to help you, rather than compete against you. lol
Male players want to take advantage of the favoritism to female players. Having a female character makes it easier to keep up the illusion of being female, as people tend to assume that the sex of the avatar matches the sex of the player. An interviewee, xsharkyx, who plays a male avatar on WoW, mentioned that people only treated her differently when they realize she was a girl by hearing her voice through ventrillo, a voice over internet protocol program designed to let users speak to each other online. They assumed that she was male because her avatar was.
For some players they are just curious to “what it feels like to be perceived as female in a community” (Curtis 1992). It is a chance to explore an identity that would be very difficult outside of the virtual world. The physical labor and monetary costs of making oneself appear to be female is much smaller online than in the actual world.

3.4 Privacy and Escaping

Players also expressed that at times alts helped in order to maintain some privacy or as an escape from the normal game play routines. As MUDs and MMOs are multi-user worlds, players may have expectations of each other similar to the actual world. In MUDs and MMOs, alts can provide an escape from this. Players may make several characters without the knowledge of others. It is up to their discretion whether or not to inform other players about their alts.
Miranda Sparrow: Well, a main account can get cluttered and demanding. For me, its nice to escape to a quiter account every once in awhile.
Interviewer: what exactly do you mean by cluttered when you mentioned your primary can get demanding and cluttered?
Miranda Sparrow: Well, right now IM chatting to several people listening to about three channels and listening for the newbie channel. Main accounts tend to know a lot of poeple, and are often the main sorce of income. . . This creates lots of tells and jobs. Alts (in my case) know less people and require less attention.
Interviewer: do you know different people on your alts, or just fewer of the same people from your primary?
Miranda Sparrow: Hmm. . . I know several of teh same people on my alts. And I think one or two people solely connected to that alt. My alts tend to have closer friends connected.
Miranda has a lot of responsibilities when she plays the Discworld MUD. With an alt designated as a “quitter account” she can sign on as a character that only a few people know has the same user behind it as the character Miranda. At times people may just be trying to “avoid getting into a conversation, either because of the particular other player involved or because of some other activity that one does not wish to interrupt” (Curtis 1992).
In an interview with a WoW player, she expressed similar sentiments as to why she liked having alts. The elements of avoiding people and responsibilities were disclosed.
xsharkyx: you can HIDE
xsharkyx: from creepy ppl
xsharkyx: like ming
xsharkyx: >___>
Interviewer: So avoiding people you don’t want to play with in WoW?
xsharkyx: yea
Interviewer : Does that happen often or just with the guy you mentioned above?
xsharkyx: LOL
xsharkyx: well if you have alts
xsharkyx: you can just do your own thing and no one bothers you
xsharkyx: like you dont have guilds
xsharkyx: who want to do raids
xsharkyx: and stuff
Although the main attraction of MUDs and MMOs is their multi-player capacity, there are times where players escape to alts in order to be left alone to their own devices. The demands from other players can ruin the enjoyment. Alts allow players to do something they would not be able to in the actual world: get away from it all.

3.5 Playing with friends

The second most frequent reason (42.9% MUDs and 52% MMOs) for creating alts was in order to play with friends. It is common for friends of current players will join at a later time or to be playing a character that can interact with their friend’s character. In order to remedy this, players create alts that can play with their friend’s characters.
As players progress through both MUDs and MMOs, their gaming experience is dependent on what level, and stage they are at. Different areas are available for each character level. Most MUDs have a newbie-zone that is only accessible to new characters. At higher levels, characters can access areas that are too dangerous for new characters to enter. Characters of a high level do not gain much from playing in an area designed for lower levels. As a result of this intentional separation in the design of MUDs and MMOs, players will often create an alt in order to progress at the same time as their friends who have joined.
For the data-rich MMOs, servers may also separate characters. A character on one server will never encounter a character in a different server. This restriction prevents friends who have characters in different servers from playing with each other. One or both players usually create an alt on the same server in order to bypass the problem. (See more about servers in the section 4.2 below.)
In some cases, there are more specific game limitations that do not allow certain characters to interact. In WoW, characters are divided into two factions during character creation, the Horde and the Alliance. Characters from a different faction cannot communicate with each other. The textual messages sent through the game from a character in one faction appear as gibberish to characters of the opposing faction. Other MUDs and MMOs also separate characters spatially. After character creation, depending on the race chosen, the characters are placed in an area. This may be a remote area far from another character that one wishes to interact with. A character of a different race or faction may be made to remedy these situations.

3.6 Boredom

Games including MUDs usually have a variation of class. Because of the amount of choices they offer, players tend to grow tired of their main character. In this interview, a player describes her reasons for having several alts:
xsharkyx: you can play 9 characters per server
xsharkyx: we only played 1 at a time
xsharkyx: we just got tired
Interviewer: Tired of the character or tired of something else?
xsharkyx: and bored of playing the same err crap
The interviewee xsharkyx is a MMO player, but her reasons for making alts are very similar to why MUD players create new alts. When xsharkyx mentions she’s tired of playing “the same old crap”, she refers to the features her character’s abilities available in its class. For example, a mage may be better with spells while a class like an ogre might be skilled in physical combat.
With different types of classes available, players can explore what kind of class would fit their play style best. By having alts instead of focusing on one main character, players can prevent themselves from getting bored of their characters and continue enjoy game play by having different characters for different experiences within the game.

4.0 Differences between MUDs and MMOs

We also looked at two different uses for alts: the importance of role playing in MUDs and the issue of multiple servers in MMOs. In both cases, we examined how the different game mechanics of MUDs and MMOs are the impetus behind to dissimilarities.

4.1 Roleplaying

We defined role-playing as “the conscious changing of one’s behavior to assume a role.” We looked at players in MUDs and MMOs who communicated and acted as if they were their avatars, in the same way Dmitri Williams et al.(2006) looked at role-play in their article, From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft.
From participant observation we noticed that the average number of role-players overall on MMOs were less than those on MUDs. In MMO PvP and PvE servers, the likelihood of finding a role-playing player is rare. In MUDs, there was a higher occurrence of players role-playing. In MMO RP servers, around half of the players role-play, the other half broke character or were never in character. On MUCKs and MUSHs, nearly all the players were in character.
“Anecdotal evidence has suggested that when there are no role-play rules, few gamers act as anything other than themselves” (Dmitiri Williams et al. 2006: 356). Our personal observation concurs with this statement. Since the game can not make players role-play, the rule has to be enforced socially. We did not see role-players on the PvP and PvE because those servers have no role-playing rules.
As for the differences seen in RP servers versus MUDs, MUSHs, and MUCKs, role-play rules are easier to uphold on the text-based games. We came up with three potential reasons why: (1) smaller player populations; (2) pre-game character approval requirements; and (3) community-maintained fantasies.
MUDs benefit from having smaller player populations. First, players join these games to role play in the first place. With most players role-playing, the bandwagon effect (people doing things because many other people are doing the same things) spreads easier (Bikhchandani et al. 1992). Game masters have fewer players to police, so that makes rule enforcement easy.
In certain MUSHs and MUCKs, players are required to undergo an evaluation process before creating a character. Game masters judge a character’s appropriateness in to the game before players are allowed to log in. For instance, in DCU: Legacies of Justice MUSH, players can play as Batman by showing extensive knowledge of the character, or as an original character after providing a detailed description of the character. This pre-game screening process likely filters out players uninterested in role-playing. After approval, players are expected to role-play. If they do not, then their characters may be removed.
On an MMO, graphics constantly remind players that they are in a fantasy world. Players can see they are in a subterranean dungeon, or trekking across a graveyard, or fighting a dragon. Players do not need to read player profiles to know the race or gender of another character. In contrast, since MUDs lack visual cues of the environment. To compensate, players are encouraged to role-play. Group interaction through role playing allows the community to reinforce the game’s fantasy environment.
With role-play factoring heavily in MUDs, players will make alts to play as new characters. From the survey:
(1)”I enjoy roleplaying and the collaborative storytelling aspects of gaming onine.”
(2) “None of my characters on the one MUD I play are human, so they differ quite [noticeably] in species. They also all have individual personalities, more or less.”
(3) “I enjoy the challenge of roleplaying different personalities in addition to different classes/races. So, while I tend to focus on one character, I will often have a second to experiment with roleplay options.”
The first response illustrates how role-playing is essential to telling a story through collaborative play. In the second response, all the player’s alts have “individual personalities,” which would imply the player assumes multiple roles while playing with his different characters. The third player admits to relishing the act of role-playing because it challenges him. The player reserves a second character for role-playing purposes. We see that because role-playing is a bigger element in MUDs compared to MMOs, people have multiple alts for the chance and the challenge to role-play multiple characters.

4.2 Servers

Whereas MUDs operate on a single server, MMOs commonly utilize multiple servers. The presence of more than one server means players will have a different reason for using alts: that is – players will make new characters to play on multiple servers.
A server houses all the game’s rules, graphics, and players’ information. Players connect to the server using a game client. Once connected, they can interact with the game’s environment and other players who are logged in to the same server. There’s a limit to the amount of information a server can hold, making it necessary for game makers to host new servers.
Modern MMOs are loaded with graphics. From World of Warcraft to City of Heroes, every game features expansive worlds, diverse landscapes, and richly animated avatars. Objects are animated to float, or glitter, or explode. There are no shortages of players on these games – today’s MMOs are international affairs, with players from around the globe playing daily.
With so much processing and storage spent on graphical data alone, it’s necessary for MMOs to host multiple servers to accommodate players. For one example, World of Warcraft (WoW) currently features 244 “realms” (servers), each “realm” is capable of hosting 20,000 players (Nardi & Harris 2006). Theoretically, WoW can hold a total of 4,880,000 players.
Due to game constraints, characters are usually not permitted to move from one server to another. The majority of current MMOs charge players money to transfer servers – WoW and Lord of the Rings Online, for example, price character transfers at $25. Regularly, players start another character on a new server instead of paying.
In our MMO survey, 40% of respondents have multiple characters to play on different servers. Players want to play on other servers because different servers operate with different rules. Perhaps a player wants to try a “Player versus Player” (PvP) server after they have grown tired of playing on a “Player versus Environment” (PvE) server. In PvE, players are pitted against the game. They have the comfort of exploring and leveling without fear of random violent encounters by other players. This safety from players also limit negative social behaviors, like “corpse camping” and “ganking” commonly found in PvP (Nardi & Harris 2006). On the other hand, maybe players want to try the unpredictable and competitive PvP servers; perhaps take part in some corpse camping and ganking themselves. Role-playing (RP) servers are another choice for players. RP servers “allow members to pretend to truly ‘be’ their characters” (Dmitri Williams et al. 2006: 345). Generally, players will make alts on new servers out of curiosity or dissatisfaction, as was the case with one interviewee –
Interviewer: Did you make new characters to play on different servers or to play with other people?
xsharkyx: yea
Interviewer: Do you mind elaborate on that?
xsharkyx: umm
xsharkyx: we made new characters on different servers because the pvp sucked on the first server
xsharkyx: so we all started new characters in another server
In contrast, MUDs operate without graphics. All MUDs use a single server because a text-based interface uses little data. The expansive landscape ands its denizens can still be found on a MUD, only they are described, rather than seen, in text form. Since a MUD uses so little space, it is possible for several hundred thousand players to play on a single server.
However, having a single server is also problematic. In an MMO, players can choose the kind of game they want to play based on the server. Using PvE and PvP as an example, players get the chance to choose which server to join based on what they would like to experience. There is no alternative choice in a MUD, so players have to choose carefully when settling on a MUD.
Players do have a variety of MUDs to choose from. The usual MUDs like Discworld or 3-Kingdoms restrict PvP, meaning players can kill other players under certain conditions (like reaching a high level). Players also have the option of playing other types of MUDs like: “Multi-User Shared Hacks” (MUSHs), “Multi-User Created Kingdoms” (MUCKs), and “MUD, Object Oriented (MOO). The difference between MUDs, MUSHs, MUCKs, and MOOs are their operating servers. They all remain text-based, only the game commands and realm building tools are different. Every MUD, MUSH, MUCK, and MOO is capable of being quest-oriented games, but the latter three are generally used for social interaction and role-play.
In our findings, people who play MUDs usually settle on one MUD or one kind of MUD.
Interviewer: What MUDs did you play?
TRICKY25: LP Muds mostly....although I’ve did try both Diku Muds, and Discworld Muds....I gave up on the MUSH, MUCK and MOO
Interviewer: What was it that turned you away from MUSH, MUCKs, and MOOs?
TRICKY25: MUSH, MUCK and MOO are basically like the current “Second Life”....
TRICKY25: you are not adventuring or killing stuff
TRICKY25: you are roleplaying and creating crap for other players to interact
TRICKY25: yawn...snooze....who cares
This player spent time experimenting with leveling and role-playing MUDs, but ultimately settled on action/adventure styled MUDs over role-playing MUDs..
In another response, one player stated, “I play mostly MUSH’s and concentrate on RP instead of ‘hack and slash’. I have a number of alts to play to others.” So players will test out multiple MUDs before settling on one that suits them. If they prefer to role-play instead of level, they will simply choose a new MUD to play.

5.0 Conclusion

The core reasons behind the use and the creation of alts in MUDs and MMOs are not very different. The only differences come with the addition of graphics into MMOs. Visuals mostly inspire players to make alts for aesthetic purposes.
There were a few areas we did not get to look at in our research due to our short schedule. We had one interviewee say people also make alts for cheating. There are also alts used for griefing. Another thing we came across, but did not examine was coders and game makers’ reasons for using alts. Generally, these behaviors were exceptions rather than the norm, but it could warrant a new area of study.
The original reasons for making new alts remain the same. Alts are still made for experimenting with different classes and races. Curiosity still drives men to play women characters. Alts are still created to overcome limitations (i.e.: high level players make an alt to play with low level friends; extra alts mean extra storage space). An urge for privacy still leads players to escape in alts. Of course the most popular reason, boredom, still conceives new alts.

Bibliography

Bikhchandani, Sushil, with David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch
1992 A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades. Journal of Political Economy. 100 (5): 992-1026.
Curtis, Pavel
1992 Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities. Electronic document. ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/DIA92.txt, accessed January 15, 2009.
Nardi, Bonnie, and Harris, Justin
2006 Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft. Electronic document. http://darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/pdf/fp199-Nardi.pdf accessed Feburary 19, 2009.
Williams, Dmitiri, Nicholas Ducheneaut, Li Xiong, Yuanyuan Zhang, Nick Yee, and Eric Nickell
2006 From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture1(4): 992-1026
Schiano, Diane J. “Lessons from LambdaMoo: A Social Text-based Virtual Environment.” Presence 8 (1999): 127-39.
Graphs with data that did not fit in the paper

"Poking" the Personal Bubble: College & Facebook

2009-05-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

“Poking” the Personal Bubble: College & Facebook

Katrina Castillo
Brandon Goei
Vidya Parashar
David Poon
Stephanie Yang
Anthropology 128C
Professor Tom Boellstorff
Winter 2009

Foreword by the Authors

Facebook is integral to the college experience in that it affects and boosts the social aspect of adolescent networking. Effectively, the widespread use of Facebook adds to all aspects of the classic model of college education outside of classes; in novel social experience, the cultivation of interpersonal relationships, romantic settings, and the diction and dialect of culture and communication.

Chapter I: Facebook Etiquette

et⋅i⋅quette
[et-i-kit - noun]
According to Britannica Online, etiquette relates to “conventional requirements as to social behavior; proprieties of conduct as established in any class or community or for any occasion.” Though the idea of social networking sites is to provide an opportunity to meet and sustain personal as well as professional contacts, etiquette plays a significant role in the social networking arena. Facebook, created principally to offer an online alternative to social networking, revolves around requesting and adding “friends,” essentially personal and/or professional contacts, and then maintaining such connections through wall-posts, and messages, in addition to commenting on current statuses as well. Facebook etiquette mainly entails respect on the part of responding and corresponding to the aforementioned forms of communication, i.e. wall-posts, messages, notes, as well as commenting on statuses and pictures. Facebook members are expected to have a sense of etiquette in order to be a respectable, principled online citizen. However, it is a proven fact that Facebook members do not strictly abide by the unspoken etiquette of online communication, especially when there is such a surplus of salacious information at one’s disposal. Though there are no formal consequences for not having the proper etiquette, or breaking certain online policies, the probability of disapproval, ruin, and shame by fellow Facebook members overrides the fear of breaching Facebook etiquette.
The wide variety of opportunities Facebook offers, such as uniting one’s personal and professional life, also presents a method of breaching Facebook etiquette. Etiquette plays a significant role in how one approaches Facebook overall, and as well as how one considers and perceives the online pictures, applications, status updates, as well as comments on one’s Facebook wall. Genuinely maintaining and strictly abiding by a code of conduct is rather complex, and cannot be monitored due to the evolving state of such networking sites. Before the creation of Mini-Feed, violating Facebook etiquette consisted of “poking” people one barely knew, memorizing one’s personal information, in addition to religiously checking new uploaded photos, and reading people’s wall posts, and their wall-to-wall conversations with other ‘interesting’ contacts. After the launch of Mini-Feed, there was an immense infringement of privacy and etiquette with the amount of personal choices individual members were making in regards to their attendance to an event, their acceptance into a group, their posts to mutual friends, or the recently tagged perhaps not-so-innocent pictures from the party the night before. When twenty college-aged students were interviewed, approximately 60% of students admitted to browsing other profiles based solely on what appeared on Mini-Feed upon each login to Facebook. The little snippets of news allows a breach of privacy on part of the individual, and a breach of etiquette if one engages in investigating the pictures, or looking into details of the event that their friend declined to attend, etc. As per Hal Niedzviecki’s “Facebook in a Crowd 1,” “I would learn, when I asked some people who didn’t show up the next day, that ‘definitely attending’ on Facebook means ‘maybe’ and ‘maybe attending’ means ‘likely not.’ So I probably shouldn’t have taken it personally.” However, people do seem to be affected by such event invitations…especially if they were not invited, leading them explore into the event, probing into who was invited, and who wasn’t. The insecurities that surface due to immense stalking or “Facebooking” are simply due to a lack of etiquette, whether it be posting many pictures with the opposite gender, putting up any pictures that might “alienate one’s audience,” according to Kristin Dixson, a contributing writer to CIO.com, a business technology and leadership site.
The allure of Facebook draws members in, and soon, members are posting more information that necessary to perhaps increase their contacts, but how much is too much? Posting too much is the key to commit a breach of etiquette. As an interviewee admits, “There's nothing about Facebook itself that I hate. But, I do hate a major side affect of Facebook: the side affect of feeling rejected. I mean, there is a lot of potential for rejection. Someone could not write you back, someone could not accept your friend request, someone could unfriend you. It's a delicate situation.” Plenty of people have had fights and broken up with their significant others because of Facebook, either based on what one has read one someone’s wall, the scandalous pictures that pop-up on Mini-Feed, or because of their significant other adding a “friend” based solely on their physical appearance. As per Clive Thompson’s “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy2”, there are rules. “'I either have to know who you are, or I have to know of you.’ That means she monitors the lives of friends, family, anyone she works with.” However, one may easily breach this rule, and therefore have a lack of etiquette by having access to many other profiles in their own network. Overall, Facebook is a useful tool if handled correctly. The site allows networking opportunities and the ability to keep in touch with family members and friends out of state as well as overseas. Disregarding Facebook etiquette leads to disrespecting privacy within the public domain. Facebook is meant to help people keep in touch, and thus far, plays a fundamental role in society, acting as an intermediary step between the physical and online worlds.

Chapter II: Facebook as an Intermediary Social Step

When it was first developed, Facebook struck a chord in an Internet that was making interconnectivity a very real notion. As people yearned to immerse themselves in a world of online peers, Facebook evolved with the pack, creating a space where contact was constant and the ethereal online notion of self was spread across the world. Naturally, with all these effects appearing and flourishing, the place where Facebook still hits the hardest is the area which it was originally formulated for use: college. Especially now, the notion of online socializing is ingrained into the minds at the University of California, Irvine, where Facebook is used not only to keep in contact with old friends, but also to create new relationships. The question addressed in this section, however, is where exactly Facebook fits into the social process. From data and personal experience our group offers the following hypothesis: even in a world where society is becoming increasingly digitized, and even with a generation that embraces technology as definite progress, Facebook is merely a social tool and never a replacement for socializing. It follows that culturally speaking, online social networking via Facebook, however integral it is to the college experience, is just a step added in the traditional manner of meeting friends and building a relationship with them.
The first step of analysis is a look at how people utilize Facebook. Just looking at the front page lists copious amounts of features that the site has acquired over the last few years; the range of usage is broad, from simply sending private messages to a single person, to orchestrating a massive event that requires RSVP. The most basic of features is that which has inherited its own verb: “friending3” others. Once this contact is established, both parties have free reign to peer into the lives of the other via profile. In this way, Facebook also succeeds as a tool for those who wish to keep in contact with others in a quick and casual way. If further action is desired, Facebook can also be the conduit for more social individuals, allowing the chance of joining together, either in the virtual world for a mutual interest via the “Groups” function, or in the physical world for events that are planned through the “Events” function. In these ways, Facebook succeeds, and we would have sufficient proof to crown Facebook a social tool, but the interesting notion of where it fits pleads our careful attention. It is here where we must delve into where Facebook doesn’t work in social settings and why.
In order to more clearly see where exactly Facebook fails, we can look at an anecdote in the form of Hal Niedsviecki’s article, “Facebook in a Crowd”. In the opening paragraph, Niedsviecki states that he “was very close to having 700 online ‘friends’”, and goes on to list them as “cyberpals, connections, acquaintances, and even strangers”. Nowhere does he mention, however, anything about friends in the physical world. Rather, he highlights the social distance he feels from these people who are Facebook “friends”. By the end of the night, Niedsviecki is sharing an awkward experience with the only person who decided to attend his event, a stranger who came out of curiosity. So why did such a successful social networking site fail so tremendously in connecting the author with other members of the network? We can highlight two main points from this account.
The first issue lies in the depth of the relationship shared between “friends” on Facebook. One member of our group interviewed two current college students regarding this topic and they both replied with statements that highlighted Facebook as a tool for brief, impersonal contact. Sally, 20, uses the site to “drop someone a note quickly, say hi, etc.” and went on to say that she “doesn’t think Facebook should be used for any serious interaction ... that’s completely inappropriate.” Sammy, 22, echoed these sentiments, adding that “people seem distant, not personable” and more definitively that he “doesn’t believe in ‘cybering’,” the latter term referring to a process of building intimate and often sexual relationships online. Looking back at Niedviecki’s article, out of this 700 “friends,” no one who came was considered a close friend by him, which points us to the conclusion that Facebook is not a solid basis for forming close relationships with others.
The natural tendency after discovering Facebook’s failure to form deep relationships is to hypothesize that Facebook works the best for starting friendships, but this is disproved once again by the two students interviewed. Both were adamant in how “inappropriate”, “creepy”, and “weird” it is to “friend” a total stranger. Both interviewees even went on to clarify that it was necessary to meet the person “face to face” despite having, more often than not, the most important information accessible via profile. These sentiments are mirrored in Niedviecki’s article as an aura of awkwardness present in his conversation with Paula, the lone attendee of his event, since Paula was more or less a stranger to the author, only having added him through a mutual “friend”. After breaking the unsaid conventional boundaries regarding meeting people solely through Facebook, both parties found that the result was an uneasy conversation fueled only by curiosity and not by true friendship.
Both interviewed students found Facebook to be a tool to communicate with others; this fact itself is enough to qualify it as a social tool. Moreover, this social tool was aimed by students at other students, mediating the experience of college students in a largely internal matter. Further analysis of the interviews exposed two important facts about Facebook: first, that it is in no way an appropriate manner to build relationships past a certain point, and second, that it is not a tool used to initiate relationships of any kind. We can conclude from these findings that Facebook fits in between these two aspects of socializing as an intermediary step, especially in the blossoming social circle of the average college student.

Chapter III: Facebook & Romantic Relationships

While it has been used to connect millions of people under numerous networks, the unique phenomenon about Facebook has been ability to create a sense of community and togetherness, “It’s just like living in a village, it’s hard to lie because everybody knows the truth already,” Tufekci said. “The current generation is never unconnected. They’re never losing touch with friends. So we’re going back to a more normal place, historically. If you look at human history, the idea that you would drift through life, going from new relation to new relation, that’s very new.4”. Just as in any small town or village, Facebook has become a realm in which the romantic relationship cannot be kept a secret for long- made possible with the use of News Feed, the posting of Relationship Statuses on profiles, or the simple changing of a profile picture.
In this chapter, focus is placed on how Facebook plays a role in romantic relationships for college students through the experiences of two couples at the University of California, Irvine- a couple that has been together for only a few weeks and had met in their residential hall, Alice and Martin, and one in a long distance relationship, Robin who currently lives on campus, and George who lives in Northern California, where they both consider home. Another “couple” was also interviewed- Josh and Becca, who both changed their relationship statuses on their profiles to trick their friends into believing they were romantically involved. In speaking to all three of the couples, it seemed evident that there was a sense of importance in posting their relationship statuses. As we find in Mimi Ito’s piece, “Social network sites play an increasing role as couples become solidified and become what some call “Facebook official.” Teens might indicate relationship status by ordering their Facebook or MySpace friends in a particular hierarchy, changing the formal statement of relationship status, giving gifts, and displaying pictures. Youth can also signal the varying intensity of intimate relationships through new media practices such as sharing passwords, adding Friends, posting bulletins, or changing headlines. 5”
For Alice and Martin, posting that they were “In a Relationship” and having it posted on News Feed had been a big deal because it was as an act used to announce it to all of their hallmates. When I asked them why they decided to post their relationship statuses Alice responded, “It’s like the fastest and easiest way to tell everyone.” Thus, to them, publicly posting that they were in a relationship was the official way of announcing it to all their friends. It also gave them a chance to see what the response would be, “When we put it.. most of the people who responded or liked it were people in the hall who’ve got to know both of us,” Martin stated. And when I asked why they responded that way, Erin stated, “Probably because they care about us, and they’re all our friends, and just want us to be happy”.
For Robin and George, posting their relationship status on Facebook was not news to any of their network because they had joined Facebook and posted their status long after practically all of their friends and family had known that they were romantically involved. But, it was still important to both of them that they posted their relationship status, “I guess it means we’re serious. Or to say no one can hit on us”. This idea of possession or assuring that other people do not make moves on their significant others has also been shared by Martin who stated that his reason for posting his relationship status was, “So I could boast about having Alice as my arm candy”. The simple change of relationship status on one’s Facebook profile should change the dynamics of the social interactions they go through.
This change of dynamics could be seen in exploring Josh and Becca’s story. As Mimi Ito states, “The public nature and digital representations of these relationships require a fair degree of maintenance and, if the status of a relationship changes or ends, may also involve a sort of digital housecleaning that is new to the world of teen romance, but which has historical corollaries in ridding a bedroom or wallet of an ex-intimate’s pictures6” (17). In order to trick their friends into thinking they were romantically involved with each other, the two did just that, “digital housecleaning”. They changed their relationship status to indicate that they were “In a Relationship” with each other, their profile pictures to pictures with both of them hugging or with their arms around each other, and even their statuses to state things like “Josh is out with Becca”, all to make it believable to their friends. When asked what the response was, Becca said, “It was more in the physical world because we had a dinner with all our friends right after our ‘announcement’ and people were asking a lot more then.” And after the trick was over, there were still things they had to clear up, “I got questions about this long after the joke was over and we had taken it down”, proving that the long lasting impact that the posting of ones personal information on Facebook could have.
While relationship statuses on Facebook seem to be an essential step for college couples, it was surprising to learn about lack of importance placed on the use of Facebook to communicate with each other. When the two couples were asked if they were romantically involved what applications they use to communicate each other, both responded that they did not use any really. It seemed to be less intimate, Martin stated, “It’s really open, anyone we know can see what we are writing. I’d rather just call her or text. More convenient too.” When a member of our group asked George if it was a helpful tool for his relationship he responded, “I don’t really thinks so. I mean there is no serious talking or anything with our relationship in Facebook. I mean we comment each other a lot and stuff, but that’s only for inside joke stuff, or things that we might forget in the future. If Facebook did not exist, it wouldn’t hurt our relationship one bit”. While it is not used as a main form of communication, the communication does have an effect, for the couples, it would be considered forms of public displays of affection, “I really don’t mind what other people think about us. I mean we try to keep that kind of stuff to ourselves since we have no reason to say that kind of stuff in the public,” George explained. “There is this one couple where the girl leaves the guy a video comment like everyday. We are pretty disgusted by it, so we mock them.” Alice seemed to agree, “Well when you write something on Facebook, you’re not only writing it to that person- you’re writing it to the whole world. So, it’s as if you’re making out in front of everyone, only with words”.
Thus it seems like what Tufekci argues is valid, Facebook creates a community feel that could be comparable to that of a small village, and this proves very true for romantically involved college students. It is an essential social step for a couple to post their relationship statuses publicly, just as it is important for an engaged couple to make an announcement at their local church or newspaper. The couples also showed the care taken to make sure that they do not seem like they are publicly showing affection, as a couple who would be conscious of kissing or holding hands in the park would be. Overall, the phenomenon of the small town feel of Facebook helps form relationships between people but doesn’t necessarily stoke the flames of romantic relationships. Rather the dynamic of Facebook has become an essential social step in the initial process of cultivating deeper interpersonal relationships.

Chapter IV: Facebook & Proximity

Facebook as a Social-Networking Site among First and Second Year Undergraduate Students
At its founding in 2004, access to Facebook was limited to students, faculty, and staff in several U.S. colleges. The social networking site was available to high school students and incoming college first years when studying the role of Facebook among current first and second year undergraduate students, more so after 2006, when it was opened to everyone of ages 13+. Due to its ability to form and manage impressions, as well as maintain relationships, Facebook became increasingly appealing to researchers. In this section of the research project, the main focus was Facebook as a proximity-setter, an important facilitator of relationships, and an important tool for forming and managing impressions for first year students at UCI before and after moving into the residence halls. This section also emphasizes the role of Facebook and News Feed as an important incentive for second year students (who have previously lived in the residence halls) in keeping in contact with their friends and hallmates.
At UCI, first year housing is generally split into two housing communities: Dorm A and Dorm B, that are then split into residence halls, each holding approximately 50-80 students. During the summer before move-in, residents will receive a letter from the hall’s Resident Advisor. In addition, Resident Advisors will usually create a Facebook group for their hall so residents of the hall can join the group after receiving their housing assignment.
In the setup of this research project, proximity and relations between first year residents who currently live in the residence halls was gauged through a number of ways: how they judged each other through Facebook profile pictures and information (especially if residents joined and utilized the hall group to interact with others prior to moving in), expectations the residents had of the hallmates and of their hall based on viewing profiles, and how these expectations shaped their current experience in the hall. In addition, this section explores how Facebook helped their transition to the college environment, and how impressions and expectations formed online differ or are similar to impressions formed in person. Research for this portion of the project was conducted through four 14-question open-ended interviews carried out through phone and in person The interviewees, two male and two female residents, are current first year residents in Dorm A. Research on first year residents was conducted through the belief that Facebook is essential for first year students to become adjusted to the new college environment and form expectations and relationships. In addition, research was conducted through the belief that first year students largely utilize Facebook prior to moving to UCI by using the hall group’s functions to talk to or check the Facebook profiles of hallmates. Ultimately, these actions form expectations about their hallmates, roommates, and hall experience in general.
The second portion of this research project focused on second-year students who have previously lived in the residence halls and have now moved into other housing communities. Relations and proximity among second year students were gauged through how they have used Facebook to stay in contact with hallmates, friends, or Resident Advisor from their first year. In addition, this section focuses on the growth and changes of relationships, and how relationships among second years are maintained through Facebook. Research was conducted through four 7-question open-ended interviews done in person and through instant messaging due to time constraints. The interviewees, two male and two female residents, were former 2007-2008 residents in Dorm A. Research in this section was also conducted through the belief that second year students use Facebook commenting, News Feed, wall posts, and status updates to keep in contact with hallmates with whom they would not normally keep in contact with, as well as casually use Facebook to contact friends frequently. Facebook is believed to be more of an appropriate and convenient way of communication.
Out of the first year interviews, four out of the four interviewees responded that they had joined Facebook because they were “pressured into doing so”, because “everyone else was doing it”, and because they expressed concerns about being familiar with the site before moving to college. All four of the respondents also answered that they had joined Facebook prior to moving into the residence halls at UCI, three out of the four first years joined the hall Facebook group before moving into the actual hall, and one first year was not in the UCI network and did not join the group until the end of the first quarter. However, when questioned about their expectations or impressions of others from looking at the Facebook profile pages of their hallmates, all four of the interviewees reported that even though they joined the hall group, they did little to no surfing through other profiles. In fact, all four of the interviewees answered that they only looked at profile pictures, didn’t contact anyone in the hall other than their roommate, and didn’t build expectations of their hallmates because they believed that Facebook wasn’t an accurate representation of the person. Instead, all four of the respondents reported that they would much rather interact with their hallmates in person. One first-year reflected upon Facebook profiles: “…you can’t really base their personality off of their pages. Facebook is a way of communicating with other people, but some people have a clear distinction between online and the physical world.” Basically, the respondents believed that there should be limited online interaction until actually meeting in person. Another first year reported that she didn’t get too much of a sense of the hall from Facebook and all of the respondents had answered that the hall group only served as a way of remembering names and faces.
Based on the interviews, first year students would much rather meet and talk to their hallmates in person. Therefore, the thesis actually overestimates the importance of a hall Facebook group by assuming that most first years utilize the group to contact their hallmates and form expectations based off profiles. According to the Walther article7, new types of technology (i.e. Facebook) have changed the meaning of managing and forming impressions. The article states “The newest forms of online communication complicate matters in ways that are unique with respect to the kinds of information they offer for observers to draw impressions”, which is ultimately related to a “blend of interactive and static features in any one individual’s online ‘profile’”. In other words, while our thesis assumed that first years would largely utilize Facebook to communicate with their hallmates prior to move-in and form expectations of their hall and college experience based on their hallmates’ Facebook profiles, the first years actually see these profiles (which were assumed by the thesis to be reliable) as unreliable and not representative of the individual. The unreliability of Facebook profiles could ultimately be due to “secondhand descriptions” and interactive information on profiles that are posted by others (such as tagged photos, comments, and wall posts). In a nutshell, the interviewed first year students may have felt that in-person interactions are more meaningful than online interactions and that participation in social-networking sites may not be an accurate reflection of the character of the individual.
In the second portion of the research chapter, four second-years that have moved out of the residence halls were interviewed about the importance of Facebook in staying in contact with their hallmates from their first year and any changes in their relationships they may have experienced. All four of the respondents replied that Facebook didn’t play a huge role in communicating with old hallmates. In fact, they only used Facebook to perform wall posts and comment on photos and statuses, and reported that they only actively keep in touch with around 10-15 former hallmates they were close to. One of the former residents claimed that “…it’s more certain people because halls are really cliquey and the cliques go off in different directions and people in each clique stay in contact more than others.” In addition to wall posts and commenting, when questioned about any relationships from first year that are mainly Facebook-facilitated, three out of the four respondents replied that Facebook serves as an appropriate way of keeping in contact with hallmates. One second year said: “I don't really see anybody anymore. If I do talk to anyone from last year, it's only through Facebook. Our schedules are so different, and with work and school, Facebook and information through News Feed is pretty much our only way of communication.” Another replied: “My roommate was not the kind of person I would ever friend or hang out with if it weren't for the hall, being roommates, and Facebook...Since we ended the year on a good note, Facebook plays a big part in keeping in touch. Mainly we would drop each other a note if we see our names on News Feed...so we know that each other exists.”
Generally, the results and responses from the second year students supported the thesis—all four of the respondents believed that Facebook wall posts, commenting, and chat were appropriate and convenient ways of communication. Responses also supported the belief that the convenience of Facebook is an incentive to keep in contact with hallmates with whom they would normally not keep in contact with. In Thompson’s article8, many Facebook users don't realize that they would learn “things they would never have otherwise discovered through random surfing around Facebook” through the News Feed option.” One can infer that the “constant, up-to-the-minute updates” provided on the News Feed serves as an incentive for second year students to contact their old friends or hallmates whenever their names appear on the News Feed. A need for this sort of “incessant online contact” is known as “ambient awareness” by social scientists and may be the explanation for an unconscious hunger for updates on friends from the year before.
In conclusion, though Facebook was first started as social networking site, proximity still plays a deciding factor in the friendships that students make at the start of their college career. The fact that their “friends” are near them affects the students’ relationships with their hall mates. To many students nowadays, Facebook is seen as a pastime to get a glimpse of the lives of people they are/were close to. The research portion of this project showed that we had overestimated the role Facebook in the formation of friends in the college housing communities. Upon move out from the communities, as distance between the students grow, and schedules begin to differ, students find themselves relying more and more on Facebook to keep in nominal contact with the vast network of people established throughout their first year.

1 Niedzviecki, Hal. Facebook in a Crowd. New York Times, October 26, 2008.
2 Thompson, Clive. Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. New York Times, Sept. 7, 2008.
3 Hereafter, “friend” as it appears in quotation marks, refers to the status of “friend” on Facebook. Appearance without quotation marks refers to an acquaintanceship in the physical world.
4 Thompson, Clive. Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. New York Times, Sept. 7, 2008.
5 Ito, Mimi et al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, 2008.
6 Ito, Mimi et al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, 2008.
7 Walther Joseph B., and Brandon Van Der Heide, Sang-Yeon Kim, David Westerman, & Stephanie Tom Tong, The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep? Human Communication Research 34(1):28-49, 2008.
8 Thompson, Clive. Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. New York Times, Sept. 7, 2008.

Cybercafes and Gender

2009-05-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

Brandon Nguyen, Calvin Cheung, Kim Maniego, Samantha Chan
Anthropology 128C - Group Paper

Cybercafes and Gender

Introduction

One defining characteristic of humanity is our capacity to communicate and exchange ideals. For as long as there have been people, they have engaged in the trading of goods and ideas. Although human communication begins with the capacity for language, it looms far greater than any geographical or cultural boundary. Throughout history, there have been many technological advances that have facilitated such communication and exchange, principally those in transportation. Geographical boundaries have greatly limited human contact. In this sense, the advancements in transportation go hand in hand with the spread of ideals. One exception to this notion is the invention and proliferation of the Internet.
The Internet is arguably the most vital tool of human communication in modern times. Its capacities and possibilities are seemingly limitless. However, its conception is not new, and has, in actuality, evolved from a previous breakthrough invention.
“Although it has now faded from view, the telegraph lives on within the communications technologies that have subsequently built upon its foundations: the telephone, the fax machine, and, more recently, the Internet. And, ironically, it is the Internet—despite being regarded as a quintessentially modern means of communication—that has the most in common with its telegraphic predecessor” [Standage 1998:205].
The postal service, telegraph, telephone and their predecessors have all been prerequisites to what we now know as the Internet. With slight deviations, their goals have all been to facilitate the ease of communication. Despite this, there exists much novelty in the Internet.
The Internet resides in a space that transcends the limitations of geography and culture. “Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere.” In this sense, the Internet not only transmits and transforms existing cultures, but also provides a medium by which completely novel cultures and ideas are created. It is precisely this characteristic that relieves the internet of so many traditional boundaries. Despite this, the proliferation of the internet ultimately depends on the ambitions and motivations of mankind. It is merely a tool by which ideas are spread. To this end, it remains bound by certain norms and hegemonic discourses.
We chose to study cyber cafés because of the interesting environment, fusing the community of what we refer to as cyberspace with that of the real world. One of the earliest and most well documented “cyber cafés” was SFnet Coffee House Network, which debuted in July of 1991. SFnet was a computer network that attempted to “use simple communications technology to bring together two very different social milieus” in the San Francisco Bay Area by “creat[ing] a [computer] network that allowed the well-heeled home user to connect with the young hipster crowd that populated much of the cafe scene” (SFnet.org). Intel had begun production of the AT 486 processor with capabilities of up to 33 megahertz and 128 megabytes of ram in 1990. However, in order to keep the cost of the SFnet project low, its creator, Wayne Gregori, relied on the earlier XT technology. With this, they could assemble a computer with a floppy drive, keyboard, mouse, and monitor for roughly 350 dollars each as opposed to the 1500 to 2000 dollar price range of the more modern AT technology chipsets. Twenty-five coin operated computers were inserted at various coffee houses in the Bay Area with available home subscriptions. Users on the network were allowed to access a text base chat containing visual cues in order to identify each other. In addition, a self-governing community was encouraged with rewards in participation.
The term and concept “cyber café,” however, was credited to a man named Ivan Pope according, to the renowned .Net magazine of the United Kingdom. On his blog, Pope states: “In 1994 I created the world’s first Cybercafe for the Institute of Contemporary Art in London.” Pope is a contemporary artist whose art focuses on technology and SFnet was no doubt an inspiration to Pope when he was commissioned to create an internet event for the ICA. Pope’s cyber café concept was realized by the opening of the Cyberia in London. Cyberia fused the traditional croissant and coffee café with the capability of internet access on computers (Mulvey 1994). Other early Popian cyber cafes included The Binary Café, the first internet café in Canada, which opened June 1994 in Toronto (Cambell 1994) and the High Tech Café, the first public cyber café, in the USA which opened in August 1994 in Dallas, Texas (Lewis, 1994).
Another evolution to the cyber café occurred circa 1997 with the release of Blizzard’s Starcraft. The multiplayer capabilities created the backdrop for the creation of the PC-bang, an internet café specially designed to facilitate the needs of gamers. The PC-bang was popularized in South Korea but persisted to spread globally and remains popular today. The gender performance and dynamics in a PC-bang is the topic of our research.
One persisting theme in any cultural space is gender performances, something that has been dominated by hegemonic discourses in every culture and society. In this paper, we explored the gender performances in a local PC-bang styled cyber cafe called CGCenter Computer Gaming, located in Irvine, California. The immediate goal of this study was to observe noticeable differences in the way male and female customers interacted and performed in a local cyber café. The broader, overlying goal was to observe whether traditional hegemonic domains of gender persisted in the activities of cyberspace.
SFnet:
London’s Cyberia:
Toronto’s Binary Café:
Methods
Since the topic of research our group decided upon involved gender differences in virtual worlds, a question that comes up is whether gender and identity transcend the physical world and transfer over into the virtual world. For example, do people who play online games in virtual worlds notice the same stereotypes about gender as they would in the physical world. Additionally, to add onto the topic of just research involving identity and gender in virtual worlds, we narrowed the focus to people who participate in online gaming at cyber cafes. CGC, located in Lakeforest, California, is one such cyber café. We also tried to do participant observation and conduct quick interviews with a local cyber café called Cyber Deck, however, the owner commented that he was too busy and did not give us a chance to ask him a few questions. We lost interest in Cyber Deck and focused on CGC instead. In addition, another way that we decided to do our research was to talk to friends who are avid players of online virtual worlds or online games. We chose to do this because of the experience of each individual differs slightly as well as the context in which they may or may not see gendered differences in the virtual world.
Our plan was to conduct structured interviews involving gamers at CGC and with friends who play online games or participate in online virtual worlds. Prior to going to CGC, a list of interview questions had to be devised. The questions were straightforward and mainly aimed towards those who attend cyber cafes, but could be modified a little to accommodate a different interviewee. Questions included asking whether they were an avid gamer, and if so, are they are regular attendee at that particular cyber café, in our case, CGC. Based off that first question, the following questions inquired about the types of games they played and if they felt that life was gendered (i.e., Do they feel that the workplace, school, or politics are gendered?). To clarify, by “gendered,” we mean that there are biases or differences based on a person’s gender. Do males get treated more fairly than females in the workplace? Are females more likely to do better in school than males? Questions like these would apply to our idea of a “gendered” life. Depending on their answer of whether they believe that life was gendered or not, we ask the follow-up of whether they think virtual worlds are gendered. Similarly, this idea of a gendered virtual world relates to the idea that female avatars may be treated differently by male avatars than by female avatars. For example, players may decide they want to help a female avatar (but not a male avatar) because of the simple reason that the avatar is female. The goal of this question is to find out if people transcend from reality and take their notion of gendered differences into the virtual world.
We are also interested in finding out whether individuals believe that cyber cafes are also (or alternatively) gendered, as well as finding out some of the gendered differences among people who attend cyber cafes or play online games and virtual worlds. We hope to answer the question of whether cyber cafes are attended by more males than females or vice versa. Also, in addition to finding out some of the demographics, we would also like to investigate gendered differences of the males and females that are at the cyber café. For example, do males tend go to cyber cafes to play games that are aggressive as opposed to females who may tend to use cyber cafes as a place to check their email or go on social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook?
We chose to do interviews because of the open-ended nature of the method and it gives the interviewee plenty of room to make their response. Rather than using a more simple method like conducting a survey, we chose personal interviews because it allows more freedom of opinion and ideas to flow. Additionally, we can also ask for verification or explanations of ideas that we may find interesting and unexpected. In order to do an interview, we first must go to a cyber café and find individuals willing to give an interview. This can sometimes prove to be a problem, as in the case of Cyber Deck, in which customers and owner alike rejected our request to do interviews. However, despite the slight setback, interviews are still an ideal way to find out the opinions of the masses, and especially of the participants who indulge in cyber cafés to enter virtual worlds or online games like World of Warcraft or Left 4 Dead, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. We rely on this ethnographic approach because it utilizes qualitative methods of interviewing, observation, and from that we can take analyses and form a conclusion from the data or findings (Mizuko Ito et al. 2008:6). Ito’s article also states that ethnographic approaches are strong because they enable documentation and understanding of the participants. This differs from other forms of research because it is more interactive and we can obtain firsthand accounts of events and thoughts rather than having to rely on less dependable informants.

Data - Description of CGC

Located in the city of Irvine, Orange County, California is CGCenter Computer Gaming [CGC], a local Cyber/Internet/Gaming Center and a place with a prime location to suit a variety of needs. CGC is a division of Kinetisys, Inc., a computer service provider established in 1992, therefore, selling computer appliances and providing computer repair services as well as LAN/Internet/Cyber/Gaming time. With more than 50 titles, in 5 different categories: Action, Stimulation, MMORPG, Strategy, and Arcade, of the latest games on the market, such as World of Warcraft, Defense of the Ancients, Call of Duty 4, Left 4 Dead, and Counterstrike, over 50 machines equipped with head phones and microphones as well as comfortable office chairs to play on, an always replenished snack bar (supplied with junk food, energy drinks, and microwavable dinners), spacious eating and computer areas, security camera surveillance and recording of interior and exterior locations, black light utility fixtures to set the gaming mood and tone, CGC combines both Cyber/Internet Café characteristics with Gaming Center characteristics to create the ideal place for gamers and internet users of all ages (CG Centre Computer Gaming).

Data - Description of stereotypes & how cyber cafés cater to them

Cross-culturally, every aspect of human life is gendered, from politics to education to the workplace. These gendered identity stereotypes usually stem off of sexual stereotyping –socially shared beliefs that certain qualities can be assigned to men and women based upon their sex. Stereotypes often relate to rigid polarized ideas of masculinity and femininity. Dominant groups use gender stereotypes to support the status quo and keep patriarchy in place—women should be nice, good looking, soft, nurturing, and men should be powerful, competent, responsible, and potent. For example, the workplace is still gendered. The nineteenth-century traditional gender ideology of “separate spheres”—breadwinner husband and the homemaker wife— and “doing gender”—the idea that gender is fundamentally about social interaction and relationship not individual set of traits— was slowly evaporating. However, despite the collapse of separate spheres—work and home—the workplace remains a dramatically divided and unequal world. Males tend to be seen in positions of higher power in business, while females are seen to be in more nurturing positions in medicine.
With that being said, Cyber/Internet/gaming Centers usually tend to be gendered, catering to the male sex rather than females. According to "Survey of China Internet Café Industry" by the Ministry of Culture, in 2005, China has 110,000 Internet cafés, with more than 1,000,000 people working in this area, contributing 18,500,000,000 Yuan to China's GDP. More than 70% Internet café visitors are from 18 to 30 years old. 90% are male, 65% unmarried, and 54% hold a college degree. More than 70% of visitors play computer games. 20% of China's Internet users go to InternetCafe (Ministry of Culture). In the United States cyber cafes are also quite gender-segregated as dichotomous. For example, the ratio of males to females at CGC is 50:3 and they only have one restroom specialized for males (that is, with a urinal stall), and no separate restroom catering to females. Furthermore, males are generally stereotyped to be more aggressive, playing more interactive, violent, high-energy/intensity games, while females are generally stereotyped to be more passive, using the center for social purposes such as Facebooking, chatting on America Online Instant Messenger (AIM), and watching their boyfriends play at a LAN center with their friends. Specifically at CGC, their business is aimed at the younger generation rather than those who are older, at males rather than females, and at hardcore avid gamers rather than social internet users/browsers.
Because our study is catered to studying whether gender and identity transcend through to the virtual world, we believed that interviewing and observing real-world people that congregate at LAN centers and their personal accounts, viewpoints, and experiences in the virtual world would suffice to answer whether or not stereotypes of males and females transcend.

Data - Interviews

Ideally, we wanted to get as much input from the gaming world as possible, specifically Cyber Gaming Center users. Our group interviewed 3 avid gamers, 2 of the 3 used to attend CyberCafe’s regularly, and 1 of which is still a regular attendee. (For Interview questions: see Appendix A.)
The first interview, “A”, was conducted with a 21 year old male Asian ( ½ Korean, ½ Japanese) college graduate, a “hardcore” gamer for all his life, and a “regular” at CGC—averaging 25-40 hours a week and 100-160 hours a month. During “A”’s interview, he expressed that he is a “regular” at CGC and plays massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft (WOW), strategy games like Defense Against the Ancient’s (DOTA), and action games like Call of Duty 4 (COD4) and Left 4 Dead. “A” felt that life is gendered, that “it’s stereotyped that men are always usually better at games, but females usually get the most attention, as soon as a female starts talking, everyone just shuts up.” Furthermore, “A” also thinks that gender is stereotyped, he expressed that “usually in a game you can tell when a girl is playing because they are usually more passive and men are usually more aggressive and they definitely do most of the yelling at LAN centers like CGC.” Additionally, “A” believes that the virtual world is gendered, he confessed that “he plays all female characters in WOW,” and plays along with “pretending to be a girl on WOW because they are the attention whores of gaming and usually get helped out more.” He expressed that “you just assume that everyone is a guy, until you see excessive use of happy faces and capital letters.” Moreover, “A” expressed that cyber-café’s are usually gendered, that “girls usually don’t go to LAN centers to play games, they’re usually on AIM and on the internet. Usually their boyfriends are on the computers playing games, completely ignoring the girlfriends/girls.” “A” expressed some of the stereotypes of gamers as being portrayed as “nerdy.” Therefore, male gamers are portrayed to be “sluggish” and “nerdy,” while female gamers are “called G.I.R.L (Guy In Real Life) because they’re usually fat and ugly.” In relation to the virtual world being closely related to the actual world and that society is gendered, he felt that in “WOW during raids, organizing 40 people to do something, usually it’s all males, and it’s rare to find female guild masters.” Lastly, “A” believes that one’s gender & identity does transcend through to the virtual world, he feels like “girls usually always pick the human characters and try to make them look as pretty as possible, 90% of the girls in WOW play alliance, which is the good side, and usually pick the elves or the humans and try and make them look as pretty as possible, spending an hour or two trying to customize and make their character look good, buying random clothes to make them look good, girl’s always make the time to make their characters look good, while guys don’t.”
The second interview, “B” was conducted with a 27 year old female Asian (Chinese/Taiwanese American) college graduate, an “avid” gamer, and a former Internet/Cyber Café attendee but currently plays at home and has several friends that are “regulars” at Cyber Café’s—averaging 40-50 hours a week and 160-200 hours a month. During “B”’s interview, she expressed that she plays WOW and DOTA only. “B” felt that life is gendered, that “there are a lot of gendered stereotypes, that guys I play games with joke around about, such as doing the dishes and laundry is women’s work. That it’s a woman’s job to take care of the home. That there’s a lot of crimes against women. A lot of trends that show that life is gendered, for example, child custody cases tend to favor the mother over the father.” Furthermore, “B” also thinks that gender is stereotyped, she expressed that “it’s more acceptable for men to be aggressive and women to be passive, I think that if it’s the over way around, men would be seen more as feminine, and if women are more aggressive, they are seen more as bitchy. For example, if there’s a female boss people can say stuff about her and would sympathize with them, but if it’s a male boss it’s more understandable and more hard on them.” Moreover, “B” expressed that the virtual world is usually gendered, that “guys just play games, even though names would be really girly, people just assume that you’re a guy and that girls don’t play video games and are just on in the internet.” “B” also expressed that cyber-cafes are gendered, that “cyber cafes cater to men because there are way more guys that go than girls because it’s a ‘guy’ place because one of the cyber cafes I went to only had a urinal.” In relation to the virtual world being closely related to the actual world and that society is gendered, she felt that in “WOW, girls are treated better for sure, people are more likely to give you stuff just because you’re a female character. Like in real life, guys give pretty girls things.” Lastly, “B” believes that one’s gender & identity does transcend through to the virtual world, she feels like “girls usually do try to pick pretty characters and names and stuff, guys tend to make their characters more masculine. People’s personalities and views usually transcend through to the virtual world. If someone’s really responsible, they usually work really hard during RAIDS. If someone’s really lazy, they usually don’t do much on WOW and hire people to play for them. I’m actually a guild leader and I witnessed a lot of stereotyping because people thought because I was female that I should be nicer and not so aggressive so I was always called bitchy that it wasn’t acceptable. I feel like if I was a guy, I wouldn’t get as much crap.”The third interview, “C” was conducted with a 21 year old female Asian (Chinese) college student, an “avid” gamer, and a former Internet/Cyber Café attendee, but currently a home gamer— averaging 56 hours a week and 224 hours a month. During “C”’s interview, she revealed that she played Maple Story and Chrono Trigger. “C” felt that life is gendered, that “To an extent yes, like people aren’t suppose to be sexist and discriminate but it is true women get paid less than men, and are under-looked of their abilities a lot of the time. It’s mostly men in power because they see women as being too emotional and not able to separate feelings from their work. That’s why we don’t have a woman president.” Furthermore, “C” also thinks that gender is stereotyped, that “obviously there are passive men and aggressive women too so maybe not that. But we do stereotype gender, like babies, we use the color blue for boys and pink for girls. We stereotype material things like girls drive VW bugs and guys drive trucks, but I think we're starting to break stereotypes like you see a lot of girls with really short hair like they almost look like guys, I guess u would call them tomboys...then there’s really feminine guys that the masculine type of guy would consider gay.” Moreover, “C” expressed that cyber café’s are gendered, that “you don’t really expect to see many girls there. It’s mostly guys.” “C” expressed that people just “assume girls don’t play like FPS [First-Person Shooter] and those types of games that are really violent, but some girls do. But in the actual game itself like maybe WOW or Maple, guys and girls can be whatever gender character or monster thing they want so gender isn’t really an issue. Maybe only for the younger nubs (noobs) that try to use gender has an insult ‘oh you’re a dumb girl.’” “C” believes that cyber cafés are gendered, although the gender and identity of a person does not transcend to virtual worlds.

Results/Conclusion

From these findings, the conclusion is that cyberspace is gendered. There was no dispute over the question of whether stereotypes existed in game. All interviewees had agreed that there were basic differences between genders in terms of attitudes and actions in real life—as well as in virtual worlds. The fact that there were only urinals available at a café that “B” had attended testifies to the deficiency of female presence in cyber cafés, and perhaps an allusion to the lack of real life females in game. In accordance with the interviews, female avatars or characters are seen as weaker, but strong female avatars are assumed to be male in real life. In Weihua Wu, et al.’s article, they study online marriage on Chinese gaming servers. An intriguing point is that there are many players that opt to get married due to the fact that in China, marriage comes with a heavy responsibility that the younger generation does not want to deal with yet; however, in game, they can choose to get married to other players and do what they are afraid to do without bearing any of the real life burdens. In a similar way, a person that feels the need to become uninhibited can do so within the confines of virtual reality, rather than be ostracized in actual reality; for instance, choosing to detach oneself from your real life gender and playing an avatar of the opposing sex. Wagner James Au interviewed a male player of Second Life who plays a female avatar: “In real life, I'm clearly attracted to women. In Second Life, it gets shady. I see my avatar, Jade, and I'm compelled to play a female role.... because it's what she's supposed to do, I guess. I dunno.” (2005). This gamer’s experience playing a gender not his own shows how the boundaries of gender are blurred once the “line” is crossed.
In contrast, rather than be the opposite gender, there are a number of female players who take pride in playing a avatar of their “true” gender. Previously, “A” stated that he believed the general opinion of female gamers could be described as “G.I.R.L”s. Perhaps this judgment is true, however, the following quote from Wu’s article describes one type of female gamer:
“[The ‘superwoman’] is good at fighting, hence, rich and attractive in the virtual world. The ‘superwoman’ in the Chinese context is often called iron lady (tie niangzi), who is powerful, aggressive, and assertive and therefore competent enough to compete with men. The Iron Lady invites criticism for her lack of femininity in real life, whereas the “superwoman” in the game space is challenged by whether her gender is true or not.” [2007:81; emphasis added]
Our interviewee, “B” had declared that in the real world, it is “more acceptable for men to be aggressive and women to be passive” but “if it’s the other way around, men would be seen more as feminine, and if women are more aggressive, they are seen more as bitchy.” But due to the common attitude that most avatars are men in disguise, per se, the gender selection process for women is less burdening since they could play any character they wish without the limitations of her “true gender.” They can choose to have the manliest or the most girlish of avatars with no real life liability or social restraints. As “C” asserted, “In games it’s more about being strong and having skills in whatever game you're playing. So if you suck at it, that’s what you get looked down upon, not necessarily for your gender.” But perhaps it is a question of whether it is the aforementioned social restraints (based on gender stereotypes) that account for the evident lack of women from cyber cafés.
In line with her in-game views of gender, Interviewee “C” conveys that she does perceive cyber cafés to be gendered, in the respect that males are the dominant gender present; in spite of that, she maintains that everyone is there for the same reason, whether it be to check Facebook or play games. There is a slight discrepancy with her logic, as she points out that “guys go check their emails and chat too, but spend more time on gaming? And like girls have Facebook and they play mini games there…” Clearly, there is an indication of difference in regards to what the two sexes do in these cafés. However, we did not clarify if there was a distinction between females playing mini-games and males playing games.
In this study of gender in cyber spaces (both real world and virtual world versions), we have found that traditional hegemony does still stand in the virtual world, albeit, in a slightly twisted manner, due to the ability to “gender swap,” or go beyond one’s physical gender. Surprisingly, the dominant gender seems to be males playing females, according to the articles read in class, as well as the interviews conducted. The question remains, though, whether it be in a virtual space, or the real world, why these gender cultures persist.

References Cited

Au, Wagner James
Man on Man and Woman on Woman. New World Notes, 2003. http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2005/01/man_and_man_on_.html, accessed March 17, 2009.
Barlow, John Perry
1996 A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Electric Document,
http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html, accessed March 17, 2009.
Cambell, K.K. 1994 Upstairs at the Binary Café Underground. Electric Document,
http://w2.eff.org/Misc/Publications/E-journals/Eye/940915.eye, accessed March 17, 2009.
CG Centre Computer Gaming, "CG Centre Computer Gaming." 6 Mar 2009 .
Ito, Mizuko with Heather Horst, Matteo Bittanti, Danah Boyd, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Patricia Lange, C.J. Pascoe, and Laura Robinson
November 2008 Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. MIT Press.
Lewis, Peter
1994 Here’s to the Techies Who Lunch. New York Times, August 27.
Ministry of Culture, "Survey of China Internet Café Industry." Internet Cafes China. 2005. Ministry of Culture. 6 Mar 2009 .
Mulvey, Paul,
1994 Coffee and a Byte? The Bulletin, December 6.
Pope, Ivan
Absent without leave Ivan Pope: My life as an artist. Electric Document,
http://blog.ivanpope.com/about.html, accessed March 6, 2009
SFNet.org
Standage, Tom
1998 The Victorian Internet. New York: Walker and Company.
Wu, Weihua, and Steve Fore, Xiying Wang, and Petula Sik Ying Ho, Beyond Virtual Carnival and Masquerade: In-Game Marriage on the Chinese Internet. Games and Culture 2(1):59–89, 2007. http://gac.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/1/59, accessed March 17, 2009

Appendix A

Anthropology 128C: Interview Questions
Can you briefly tell us about your background? [Your name, Age, Ethnicity, Gender, College you attend, What you’re studying, etc.]
Are you an avid gamer? If so, are you a regular here at [insert cyber café name here]?
Going off of the last question, how often do you come to [insert cyber café name here]? How many hours do you spend on average a week? How much do you say you spend on hours here per month?
What type of games do you play? [Left 4 Dead, COD4, WOW, DOTA, etc]
Do you feel that life is gendered? [if they don’t get it, ask them if they feel the workplace is gendered, if the school is gendered, if politics is gendered, etc.] make them explain why they feel that way as well.
Do you feel that gender is stereotyped? [if they don’t get it, elaborate ie. men are aggressive, women are passive] make them explain why they feel that way as well.
Going off the last two questions, do they feel that the virtual world is gendered? If yes, ask them if they feel if gender is stereotyped in the virtual world. If no, ask them why.
Are cyber-café’s gendered? [if they don’t get it, elaborate, do more males attend or females? elaborate further]
What are the similarities of behavior/activities of women and men at cybercafés? Are they any things that they do differently? [for example, men tend to play more aggressive games such as WOW, while women tend to go to cybercafés for social aspects of talking on AIM]
Are there any instances in the virtual world that you feel is closely related to the actual world and that society is gendered. [if they don’t get it, give them an example. In the real world, politics is gendered, in the workplace, jobs are gendered where males tend to get more high-paying aggressive jobs, while women are associated with more low-paying passive/nurturing jobs, does this apply to online vitual worlds/games?] if they still don’t get it, ask them about WOW characters, why do males choose females, are people more likely to help females than males, etc.
Do you believe that gender & identity of a person transcend to the virtual world?