A Conversation in Second Life to Critically Reflect on Avatar Experience

Second Life is a form of cyber-reality where an individual can create an avatar in an online world. I created an avatar myself and found that I have become quite attached to it. To me, it depicted myself but online. I had a conversation with my lecturer and fellow students on Second Life to reflect on my avatar experience. We discussed for example, what it was like when we changed its gender:

[04:13] Maria Aura: What did you want to make the avatars look like (in the opposite gender)?
[04:13] CrystalFly: I wasnt too bothered about how i looked like in the opposite gender as it didnt reflect me
[04:13] chocolatefudge: just as simple as walking, the male avatar had a completely different stance to the female, which was different considering i was controlling it
[04:13] greenjag02: strangly like a female friend of mine
[04:14] Maria Aura: Was it more comfortable to have an avatar that is the same gender as your real life avatar?
[04:14] greenjag02: as that really offered security as i new that person so it wasnt like i was being someone completly new
[04:14] violetpixel: I wasnt really sure at first because when i created my female avatar i knew what i wanted, but when I changed it I wasnt as careful with clothing and appearance choices
[04:14] CrystalFly: It was yes
My name for Second Life was ‘Crystal Fly’. I highlighted in the conversation that because I had changed the gender of the avatar, it didn’t feel as though it was me anymore and I was not as bothered about the appearance of the avatar because I didn’t feel as connected to it. I said I was more comfortable having the gender of the avatar the same as my own because it felt strange pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I felt more comfortable with it being a female as it reflected my own behaviour and personality. However, when I was asked whether the appearance of the avatar was important to me in Second Life, I realised that I didn’t really mind how I looked in comparison to real life:

[04:14] Maria Aura: Are looks important - are they as important as in real life?
[04:15] violetpixel: I dont think so no because people are aware that all avatars arent a true representation of people themselves - and appearance in second life can be changed so easily
[04:15] greenjag02: they are more so in here as you can portray how you wish to look lik in here, however in really life you look the way you do
[04:16] greenjag02: can you cant really change that
[04:16] chocolatefudge: not as important as real life - as this can be totally anonymous whereas in the real world you would want your appearance to reflect you
[04:16] CrystalFly: I agree
[04:16] greenjag02: but it is your own personality that defines who you are
[04:16] Maria Aura: Do you think that hte media has influenced how your avatars look at all?
[04:16] CrystalFly: it's not as important and its not really me. just an online avatar

Overall, I didn’t really mind what my avatar looked like because the personality of the Second Life form was more of a factor than its appearance. I did however make it look similar to me possibly because I did feel somewhat connected to it. From the conversation, I have found that my classmates agree with me that the appearance of the avatar is not as important as in real life and that personality was the more central factor.

How has the Internet changed journalism?

The internet has changed journalism through its power of connection. It connects people from all over the world and gives them the opportunity to communicate with one another. Because of this, people are able to tell others of events and news straight away. This could be through different methods of digital distribution such as uploading videos, taking pictures and blogging.

One quite significant example of those who have used the internet as a method of journalism are the activists of Arab Spring. They managed to, through social networking sites such as Facebook and Youtube, arrange ways of protesting against their leaders. They became citizen journalists and used equipment such as mobile phones and cameras to record the activism first-hand to tell and show others what was going on. This was particularly important as some leaders did not allow professional journalists across the borders of their countries and so it was up to the people to let the public know about certain events. There were however issues of this method of journalism. For example, security forces in Egypt set up a special unit to monitor internet activists. If they were caught posting anything online about activism they could have been killed or even tortured. There are benefits to citizen journalism however. Alexander (2011) said that ‘today there are vast numbers of people online, making it far more difficult for the state to track them all’.

Through being an active social agent, news uploaded or talked about by the general public on the internet could also make the information less biased then any information from a newspaper could be. It’s unedited as it may be straight off a person’s mobile phone or from someone’s first-hand experience. The internet has made journalism more quickly available and unbiased. It gives people the opportunity to become the journalists themselves spreading the news in a way that a newspaper or television cannot do.

Alexander, A. (9th February 2011) Internet role in Egypt’s Protests. BBC News, Middle East,p.3.

Youtube (2012) Youtube.[Online] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/ [Acessed 19th March 2012].

Have Have Mobile Medias Shaped Participatory Culture Tag Cloud

How have mobile medias shaped participatory culture?

Due to the easy access of wireless and 3G enabled mobile medias, participating online whilst on the move has become more and more popular. This in turn has increased the amount of users becoming youth producers who get the chance to create and change their own section of the internet through Web 2.0.

As social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become so popular, mobile medias give the public the opportunity to access them whenever and wherever they go. Most modern mobile phones have built in cameras which give the user the chance to take pictures and upload them easily onto these sites. It can be argued that each individuals page on a social networking site represents that person and their identity and mobile medias give a person the chance to take pictures to characterise themselves for these websites. Hills, M. (2009:p.119) says that Facebook photographs are ‘recorded via mobile devices precisely in order to be shared online as a marker of one’s cultural taste’ . This suggests that every time someone takes a picture through their mobile, it's for a social network in mind as ‘the self is constantly and narcissistically performed, auto-objectified, for an imagined audience’.

Henry Jenkins said that as a part of participatory culture, there is strong support for creating and sharing ones projects and that there is a general belief that contributors matter. Because of this, an increasingly large amount people are becoming active social agents. An example of a strongly supported part of participatory culture was ‘Life in a Day’. People were asked to film a day of their life, through a mobile media, for a project. Through motivations like this, filming and recording through mobile devices have made people more creative, giving them the opportunity to be a part of something like a film or the internet through these medias.

Creeber and Martin. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media. Maidenhead, Oxford University Press.

Facebook (2012) Facebook. [Online] Available from: http://www.facebook.com/ [Accessed 17th March 2012].

Twitter (2012) Twitter. [Online] Available from: https://twitter.com/ [Accessed 17th March 2012].

New Media Glossary

Virtual Space

Virtual space is also known as virtual reality in that it describes the technology generated universe in which people can communicate and explore.

Source 1: Internet

“The term used to describe a three-dimensional, computer generated environment which can be explored and interacted with by a person. That person becomes part of this virtual world or is immersed within this environment and whilst there, is able to manipulate objects or perform a series of actions.”

Virtual Reality (2009) What is Virtual Reality? [Online] Available from: http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/what-is-virtual-reality.html [Accessed 6th February 2012).

Found via a Google Search for “virtual reality”. I chose this website because it is an ‘org’ website which means that it is educational and therefore reliable. There is also a lot of information specifically about virtual reality and so could potentially provide a lot of useful points.

Source 2: E-Journal Article

“The defintion of virtual reality is based on concepts of “presence” and “telepresence,” which refer to the sense of being in an environment, generated by natural or mediated means, respectively.”

Steuer, J. (1993) Social Responses to Communication Technologies. Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence [Online] (104), 3. Available from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1992.tb00812.x/abstract [Accessed 6th February 2012].

Found online using the Advanced Search function on Google Scholar. This method means that it will show the more reliable sources. The journal also focuses on communication and virtual space is a major factor of this which made the journal relevant and appealing.

Source 3: Book

“Electronic technologies can enable communication via computers (and other electronic technologies) that replaces face-to-face interaction. With the onset of virtuality it was envisaged that people would spend as much, if not more time in an imaginary virtual world as in their real world.”

Woolgar, S. (2002) Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

This book was found in the library. I chose this book because it went into a lot of detail about virtual technology. It is also quite modern and so up to date.

Old media vs. new media.

The differences between new and old media are usually the level of its interactivity. Examples of these are newspapers which could be argued as old media and new media being the news online such as the Times website (www.times.com). To get hold of information via old media could take more time. With a newspaper a person would have to go about buying it. If you were using new media it would be more instantly available. You could go on the Times website online and that could take a matter of minutes especially since it's becoming easier to use the internet on mobile phones. It also gives the public an opportunity to be the producers and not just the consumer. The audience becomes active and the internet gives people the chance to take control of what they want to see and do. 'We are now living in the digital age, which of course springs from the computer.' (Rayner 2001) 

New media is becoming increasingly popular amongst the public. Libraries are shutting down because the internet is proving an easier source of information and the new media website www.skype.com allows more positives over the old media of a telephone as it is cost free and you can physically see the other user. However, not everyone has access to the internet and so are in danger of falling behind. Technology is also breakable and could be incredibly inconvenient for people who are dependent on the new media if it were to break.

The Times (2012) The Times. [Online] Available from: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/ [Accessed 17th March 2012].

Rayner, P. and Wall, P. and Kruger, S. (2001) Media Studies: The essential Introduction. London, Routledge.

Skype (2012). [Online] Available from: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/home [Accessed 17th March 2012].