Mcintosh Gallery Playing the Gallery, are you game?
1. the social impact of
Anabel Quan-Haase
Sociology
Information and Media Studies
The University of Western Ontario
playing the gallery, are you game?
London, ON Oct. 3 to 5, 2007
The University of Western Ontario
2. Social Capital in America
• Harvard sociologist
Robert D. Putnam has
document in America a
decline in social capital:
– Network capital
– Participatory capital
– Sense of community
5. Debating Internet Effects
• Three competing theoretical views on the
impact of the Internet on social capital:
1. Internet increases social capital
2. Internet decreases social capital
3. Internet adds-on to social capital
6. Contact with Near-By Kin
250
Total
200
Days per Year
150
Phone
100
Face-to-face
50
Email
Letters
0
Never Daily
Email Use
7. Contact with Far-Away Kin
160
140
Total
Days per Year
120
100
80
Email
60
40 Phone
20 Face-to-face Letters
0
Never Daily
Email Use
8. Conclusions
• Users are engaging in social activities online
• Time online leads to more email
• Daily users use high % of email for contact
• Glocalization
– Highest use of email is for long distance
– Local interaction also relies on email
• Email adds on to F2F, phone, & letter contact
– Neither increases or decreases them
9. Background Information on SL
• The start
• The development
• Current state
• Key SL terms
• Future plans
• The SL history wiki
• SL on Wikipedia
10. Three Questions:
• Is SL a community?
• What is the nature of relationships in SL?
• What is the “game” in SL and how is it
linked to questions of community?
11. The nature of communication in SL
• SL is a unique
environment,
different from email
and IM:
– Communication with
strangers possible.
– No co-location in real
space necessary.
– Avatars as
representations.
12. Is SL a community?
• Evidence of community
– Wiki history
– Membership
• Characteristics of the SL community
– Dispersed
– Changing
• Few studies on the SL community
13.
14. Social Circles in SL
• Defining friendship in SL
• Urban societies (Simmel, Milgram &
Wellman)
• Boundaries of private and public time
(Zerubavel, Goffman)
• Social cues-signaling (Donath)
• Sex in SL
15. The Creative Commons
• Productive play (Pearce)
– Consumer/producer boundary
• Vernacular creativity in SL (Burgess)
– The everyday creative practice
• Avatars: representation of self (Goffman)
17. Concluding Remarks & Questions
• More research is
needed to see if
hype actually gets
realized
• SL in part can be
seen as a
community
• Vernacular
presentation of self
• SL creates new
cultural capital
