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The Social Life of Avatars

Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments

  • Book
  • © 2002

Overview

Editors:
  1. Ralph Schroeder

    1. Department of Technology and Society, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden

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  • The first overview of graphical online interaction

Part of the book series: Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
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  2. Social Interaction in Virtual Environments: Key Issues, Common Themes, and a Framework for Research

    • Ralph Schroeder
    Pages 1-18

  3. Social Conventions in Computermediated Communication: A Comparison of Three Online Shared Virtual Environments

    • Barbara Becker, Gloria Mark
    Pages 19-39

  4. Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds

    • T. L. Taylor
    Pages 40-62

  5. Rest in Peace, Bill the Bot: Death and Life in Virtual Worlds

    • Mikael Jakobsson
    Pages 63-76

  6. 30 Days in Active Worlds: Community, Design and Terrorism in a Virtual World

    • Andrew Hudson-Smith
    Pages 77-89

  7. Lessons Learned: Building and Deploying Shared Virtual Environments

    • Lili Cheng, Shelly Farnham, Linda Stone
    Pages 90-111

  8. The Long-term Uses of Shared Virtual Environments: An Exploratory Study

    • Alexander Nilsson, Ann-Sofie Axelsson, Ilona Heldal, Ralph Schroeder
    Pages 112-126

  9. Social Influence within Immersive Virtual Environments

    • Jim Blascovich
    Pages 127-145

  10. Meeting People Virtually: Experiments in Shared Virtual Environments

    • Mel Slater, Anthony Steed
    Pages 146-171

  11. Collaboration in Multi-modal Virtual Worlds: Comparing Touch, Text, Voice and Video

    • Eva-Lotta Salinäs
    Pages 172-187

  12. The Digital Divide: Status Differences in Virtual Environments

    • Ann-Sofie, Axelsson
    Pages 188-204

  13. The Social Life of Small Graphical Chat Spaces

    • Marc Smith, Shelly Farnham, Steven Drucker
    Pages 205-220

  14. Back Matter

    Pages 221-225
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Keywords

About this book

Virtual reality (VR) technology has been developed commercially since the early 1990s [1]. Yet it is only with the growth of the Internet and other high-bandwidth links that VR systems have increasingly become networked to allow users to share the same virtual environment (VE). Shared YEs raise a number of interesting questions: what is the difference between face-to-face interaction and interaction between persons inside YEs? How does the appearance of the "avatar" - as the graphical representation of the user has become known - change the nature of interaction? And what governs the formation of virtual communities? This volume brings together contributions from social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on social interaction in various types of YEs. Two previous volumes in this CSCW book series [2, 3] have examined related aspects of research on YEs - social navigation and collaboration - although they do not always deal with VRIVEs in the sense that it is used here (see the definition in Chapter 1). The aim of this volume is to explore how people interact with each other in computer-generated virtual worlds.

Reviews

From the reviews:

"At the heart of this book is a simple question: how do people who meet in computer-generated worlds interact? … The strengths of this book lie in what it reveals of the orderliness of interaction in virtual environments. … If you work in this domain, should you have it on your bookshelf? Yes, of course." (Peter Tolmie, New Media & Society, Vol. 6 (3), 2004)

"If you are interested in virtual environment (VE) and social interaction in various types of VEs, this book is an excellent resource. This book focuses on how people interact with each other in computer-generated virtual worlds. … The Social Life of Avatars gives readers two valuable points: how to improve the VEs and the potential that social interaction in virtual environments can be applied in various forms of computer-mediated interaction. Finally, let me recommend this book to you." (Sally Hong, Educational Technology and Society, Vol. 5 (4), 2002)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of Technology and Society, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Ralph Schroeder

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