My research in SL
On March 8 2007 I joined Second Life (an online 3D virtual environment). Though I am an experienced internet user (former web developer) and had known about SL for some time I had been reluctant to join. In retrospect I attribute my hesitation partially to media portrayals that overemphasized the commercial and “scandalous” aspects of SL and partially to the fact that the SL experience is hard to communicate to people who have not been seriously engaged in it. The media portrayals, but even more so the reactions of people around me when I have tried communicating my experiences are as much of a reason to why I have chosen do dedicate my PhD to studying SL as my experiences are in themselves. Some have commented “Yes its sounds interesting, but it’s not my cup of tea”. To understand why that makes me curious, picture someone talking about their research in a particular country, lets say Finland, receiving the comment “Yes, I’ve been to Finland, but to be honest it’s not really my cup of tea”. To people that have not been part of Second Life (or similar environments) what takes place there can seem foreign or even outright ridiculous. Consequently, some SL residents prefer to keep not only their “real lives” out of their “second lives” but also their second out of the real.
It is with tension in how we are able (or not able) to conceptualise and communicate SL and SL experiences that my research begins. Though there are already different types of research going on in Second Life, I see this tension as an incentive to develop our understanding of SL as a cultural phenomena. There is a need to try to communicate Second Life in its context and in all its complexity without overt simplification, glorification or demonization but also to relate SL culture/subcultures to western culture in general. This means that a main challenge in my work will be to account for SL as something that is both similar and different, something that both re-presents and contests RL norms and practices. I strongly believe that this knowledge must be based on the experiences of SL residents. Consequently, the purpose of my research is to construct a sociological understanding of the cultural significance of Second Life based on long-term and versatile participation and observation, or “ethnography”.
As part of my work with SL I have also been engaged in issues of internet research ethics. This is something I am trying to wrap up at the moment by writing an article on the researcher-participant relationship in online research. Feel free to contact me however if you have any thoughts on the purposes of research in SL, ideas of how researchers should behave or if you have had any encounters with researchers in SL that you think I should know about.
If you did not already catch that, my SL-name is Kid Kuhn. In periods that I’m writing I’m not inworld a whole lot, but I always check my messages. Have fun and I’ll see you in SL!
-Åsa Rosenberg
