14 thoughts on “Week 11 – New Media Identities (T1)”
M Priyanka Nair
Nakamura writes about gold farming and the racialisation of certain characters on Warcraft. This assumption and stereotypes of characters being of certain races occurs in other MMORPGs as well, but more than racialisation, gender stereotypes get played out and acted on more in MMORPG. Turkle writes that it’s easier for individuals to explore their options and question and experiment with their identity online in ways that the real world has constraints over and this allows computers and technology to be a lot more evocative of self-reflection. I think it’s interesting to look at the varying traits that people choose to experiment with when it comes to online personas or avatars. Gender is probably one of the options that PRG players experiment with because in the gaming world, female and male characters are treated very differently by other players. For example, female characters tend to get male characters offering items of value or writing off their “noob”ness as justified because of the assumption that it is a girl player. In this way, not only racial relations but gender relations as well among other relations, in real world get transferred into virtual world.
Kaede Lim
Danah Boyd writes about the architecture of the digital realm and how it has changed the ways in which people act and interact online. She focuses on the idea of storage and archiving. Despite the extent of archiving and storage done, we still remain oblivious to this because there are no notification or explicit signs. She also emphasises the ease at which information can be misinterpreted when found online because it is detached from its original source and may be taken out of its actual context. Hence, one must constantly be weary of the information found online before making assumptions.
Sherry Turkle talks about the freedom to change and create multiple personas in the online world. The new online media has allowed people to quench their thirst of an alternate reality or persona that is in line with the kind of narcissism that is instinctive to human nature. “Freud’s ego ideal”, which is basically our ideal persona is easier to achieve in the virtual world. This idea complements Kracauer’s theory of the cult of distraction. The virtual world and the ability to create new, alternative personalities has opened up a new door to the idea of escapism. Many people who find difficulty integrating themselves into and coping with the situation in the real world turn to online platforms to form a virtual reality in a search for temporal satisfaction.
rebecca quek
This week’s readings focus on the formation and invention of identity in online activites. While Turkle argued for the Internet as a free and positive space in which individuals were free to play and experiment with their online personas, Nakamura and boyd highlight the fact that real life identities are often connected to online one, especially with the popularity of social media websites, which urge individuals to divulge their real life identities. We see this with facebook, or even twitter, whereby individuals use their real names and use these social media platforms to talk to their real friends. Perhaps what this charts is the evolution of how the internet has been used. Rather than being an anonymous space where real life identities didn’t matter (Turkle), it has now been transformed into a space to complement real life activities, rather than to be a break from. Nakamura’s reading also highlights how the virtual world of video games is not separate from real life, as so often thought, but rather, racial discourses that are seen in real life are mapped onto virtual, raceless characters, and despite this lack of racial identity in the world of WOW, the mapping on of particular discourses makes these racial identities real.
Ong Yan Ting
Turkle talks about “worlds for social interaction in a virtual space”, where people create an anonymous character that can be as close or as different from their real self as desired. This would allow people to play out scenarios that are parallel to real life situations, allowing for reflection and developing problem solving skills. Also, in creating personalities extremely different from their real self, it allows the user to explore areas that they are unable to do in real life, giving the example of Peter, whose virtual character could do everything that his real physical self could not do.
Instead of Turkle’s argument of multiple virtual selves, Boyd feels that there is a primary self, and the multiple accounts are facets of this primary self. Having a work email and a personal email for example, will allow users to move from one context to another, and they know to present the work face in the use of the work email, such as using honorifics and proper language, and for the personal email it is more casual and Singlish is allowed/expected. The primary self and multiple facets argument is an example of the self mentioned by Hall, whereby several identities exists and are presented across different situations. It would seem that Boyd’s argument is to regard online world as part of the real world rather than something separate.
In my opinion, the online world as part of the real world is made clear in Nakamura’s article. In a game that is without race, it is supposed to represent a virtual world distinct from the real world. However, even in the virtual world, there exists an economy, and power play between the rich and the exploited. The reactions of players within this economy also parallels that of those in the real world, thus ‘leisure’ players view ‘worker’ players as unwanted, similar to how citizens view immigrants from the poorer countries.
lucy molloy
This weeks readings really resonated with my every day experience of using the internet.
I could really relate to the concepts described by Turkle, Boyd, and Nakamura and I touched on some of these themes in my coursework essay.
The key themes I picked up on were:
Turkle
Real and virtual worlds interact and it is not possible to create a binary definition of these.
Suspend social relations in order to reassess them.
Psychosocial moratorium =
A suspension of social reality to reassess our realities.
Similar to simulation models which work for peace & conflict resolutions e.g. security council UN
Context: futuristic
Boyd disagrees with Turkle.
Act out, in order to work through.
Psychosocial
The basis of self help: You work on yourself so you can interact better with your environment.
Boyd
The self can be multifaceted but its not necessarily fragmented.
You can still have a ‘whole’ which is divided e.g. orange.
There are core values. Which relate back to a soul, a unitary self.
Nakamura
She provides new framework to understand society which describes the new threat to civil liberty _> Digital Colonialism
Tracing the Political economy. Tracing capital.
Zooming into micro & macro political economy.
Myopic & broader political implications.
The questions posed by Nakamura are integral for generation y’s social, cultural and political policy regarding the internet and online space.
As such, there exists no formal etiquette guide for it. (At least not to my knowledge AKA the algorithms of my google)
I believe this is yet to come. It’s probably already in the making.
Policy makers in the Global North are currently struggling to legislate for the internet and decide if and what boundaries should be put in place for information and how this should be done.
In historical terms, it is arguable that this is the Victorian Digital Age.
Concepts of: preservation, boundaries, public health, modesty, morality, sexuality, the nuclear family unit.
Are all being realigned, reformulated and in some cases made redundant.
The big old question is: where do we go from here?
How will we educate our children to live with pandora’s box/ipad/smartphone?
The death of the screen is the birth of the intellectual?
What would Jesus tweet?
I’ll stop with the anecdotes now.
Tham E-lyn
I felt that these week’s readings were relatively easier to read as compared to previous week’s (i.e. easier to grasp the main concepts).
Turkle tackles the construction and reconstruction of self, juxtaposed with the psychosocial moratorium. She outlines the virtual world as a space in which users can present themselves as “character”, and by anonymous. This virtual self can either be very much like your real physical self, or it can also be very much different; it is entirely left up to the user’s discretion. These projections of self are engaged in a postmodern context. This is drawn in parallel to the concept of modernity – it is always in a constant state of flux, it is constantly shifting, constantly moving. These multiple facets of self presents an “unparalleled opportunity to play with one’s identity and to “try out” new ones. The creation of new identities give users a “second chance” to present themselves as someone whom they are not, but whom they wish to be.
Turkle also claims that the lines between real life and the virtual gaming world are blurred – The virtual constitutes a sort of in-between stage, having some semblance of reality as the user also possesses a physical form on top of his/her virtual self. Hence, role-playing complicates the whole notion of “real vs virtual” per se. She gives really interesting case studies, about Julee and Peter – how video games allowed them to employ the psychoanalytic notion of “working through”, to improve one’s self, and harness the opportunity to play an “aspect of your self” that you embody as a separate self in the game space. For example, Peter was able to marry someone in the game despite having little luck with girls in the real life. Yet, it is pertinent to note that “the degree to which he (any user) brine the game into his real life is his choice” – users are still able to exercise some degree of control.
Boyd addresses the architecture differences between the physical world and the virtual world, acknowledging that the online world has a storage capacity, everything can and will most probably be archived. Hence, the problem presents itself in how most people don’t realise that – they don’t realise that whatever they say or do online can in fact be used against them in the future. What they say can even be taken out of context, due to search engines. Boyd outlines the concept of a postmodern fragmented self by using emails as an example – individuals are able to present various personas of themselves online, simply be creating different emails (e.g. one for work, and one for play). They are able to draw lines between the different aspects of their lives, in turn presenting different aspects of themselves for different things. These multiple online personas allow them to better adjust to social situations.
Nakamura, on the other hand, draws a parallel between capitalism and the gaming world. He identifies that the virtual world is in fact functioning very much like the real world today, in a phenomenon called informationalized capitalism. The rich benefit as they are able to spend money to buy things that they otherwise would have to earn, causing the others to feel exploited. He again draws a link to migrant labor in 3rd world countries, claiming that the exact same situation replicates itself in both instances, but it seems less significant in the gaming world as it’s all alluded to be “virtual”. Yet, as per the given example – “Their high-tech labor in low-tech conditions more closely resembles maquiladora factory labourer’s conditions than it does other recreational or professional software-based activities. Farmers work in shifts, playing Wow in 12 hour sessions and sleeping on pallets”. Also, things also tend to be taken wildly out of context – in a manifestation of virtual racism, videos were created showing spring rolls and fortune cookies as part of a defamatory Chinese video aimed at the gold farmers (who were all stereotyped to be Chinese). Cultural references that are associated with a particular race (Which is often propagated in the media) are taken and manipulated wildly out of context.
Tiffany Goh
This week, Turkle, Nakamura and Boyd cover the issue of offline and online realities for technophile, gaming users and how they use the online platform to construct identities and navigate social interactions in the virtual realm.
For Boyd, the architecture of the digital realm is at the heart of conditioning social interactions. She addresses the issue of possessing awareness in order to exercise control over their presentation and identity online. According to Boyd, the architecture of the internet is code, comprised of ‘digital bits’, which makes information easily accessible to public by simply doing a quick search. However, when people search for such recorded information, it is removed from its context- especially in the case of utilizing data from Usenet. The term that Boyd uses is “collapsed contexts”. This creates the problem of misinterpretation of messages. Misinterpretation can in turn, be detrimental to a subject’s reputation and people start to “live lives knowing that the details might be captured by a bi magnifying glass in the sky” (Lee 2012). Since the advent of computer-mediated communication (CMC), there has been an explosion of social media platforms and gaming sites that allow one to disclose personal information and opinions online. This can be used to one’s advantage or disadvantage. An unfortunate case of the tarnishing of one’s reputation is the Anton Casey case in Singapore- this London stockbroker posted offensive remarks about Singaporeans on Facebook. How this relates to Boyd’s article is that one needs to be acutely aware of how one presents her/himself online. Focault’s theory of “governmentality” can be applied here- since we are always under surveillance, even in the virtual world, there is a need to exercise agency to behave in ways which conform to the social norms in the virtual world as well.
On this note of the user as an active agent in the virtual realm, we shall have a look at Turkle’s article on how MUDs are used as an environment for the construction and reconstruction of the self. In virtual games such as Second Life, the user can build his/her own environments and tailor his/her personality however he/she likes Turkle highlights that there two main ways in which one might construct an online identity- one that involves role-playing and deception: constructing an identity which is far from your “real self” and the other depicting yourself as a character, similar to that of your offline personality. In keeping with the “postmodern ethos of the value of multiple identities”, the self can also be “multiplied without limit”. Multiplicities of identity are common in postmodern societies where there is an increasing absence of a singular identity. This is confirmed by Fredric Jameson’s theory of the “schizophrenia”. Tukle and Boyd saw this fragmented self as having “greater flexibility for the multi-faceted individual” (Boyd, 2002).
As seen in Boyd’s article, users are constrained by the designer’s architecture of the virtual realm which provide certain social cues. In Nakamura’s article, she points to a similar constraint: the cyber-gaming ethos that has been violated by a particular group of users. This group is the “Chinese gold farmers”. They are overt signs of racialization against these “worker players” who upset the “beauty and desirability of a shared virtual space in WoW.” There is a parallel drawn with the capitalistic physical world where Chinese worker players view Wow as a virtual sweatshop. These workers are seen as immigrants from service economies in the global South. There are therefore, negative social implications of not conforming to social norms even in the virtual realm and this can create a climate of anti-Asian sentiment in this case.
TAN YUAN TING
Boyd is concerned about the context of interaction that individuals partake online. Data from conversations, and data itself is often stored, sorted and searchable. It comes in various forms and can be found in all kinds of systems. Digital archiving makes interactions that has taken placed before, be taken out of conetxt and be plaaced into another. It forms miscommunication and misinterpretation of not only the context, but of the individual who first produced the said content. The presentation of self is developed in a certain context particular in the situation, but is not necessarily received the way it is intended too, and is also received with certain attached assumptions. Users althought knowing that their information is public, are not consciously aware that the information online, data online remains and persists for a long, long period of time. Posts that I made 6 years ago can still be found if i go to the correct website and deicide to search for it. Unlike in real life, what i said 6 years ago tend to not be stored and remembered by people there and then.
Turkle is largely about the adoption of different selves online, where people can try out different types of selves, and if they don’t like one, they simply delete the account and start up another. She mentions that engagement with the computers allow people to think about the self, as they consider and resolve issues that they might have about the self. The online self is invisible, multiple and ongoing. She also mentions about how MUDs become a evocative object for people to consider social constructions of gender, since one can adopt another identity.
Lastly, Nakamura uses the example of World of Warcraft to talk about how an online space, like Wow, that supposedly has no race, no gender (from the physical), has a reintroduction of such social categories. e.g. The chinese worker player. It can happen because of the convergence of culture.
Yeow xinyin christy
Boyd states that the translation of physical expectations to the digital world is problematic as online information is archived by default. She makes a comparison to the physical world where what we say is fleeting. Boyd focuses on (1) the power of architecture and (2) the lack of embodiment, that impact social interaction. The architecture of the Internet is code, comprised of digital bits. Online conversations are stored as codes and can be taken out of the context in which they were originally located, and repositioned into a different context, out of temporal or group order. Without knowledge of the context, the data is open to misinterpretation for readers and the persistence of the data leads to an increased level of accountability for past statements for the users. Next, she also states that the online space is a mediated one which has limited channels for both expression and perception. Unlike face-to-face interactions in the physical space, body language cues are missing and what is left is a manually articulated aspects of one’s presentation. This minimal form of interaction, she argues, is harmful as people insert missing information to build their mental models of others. To cope with the inability to manage the given context, users have multiple accounts or facets which can be switched. She ends off urging system designers to provide feedback and control, allowing users to be aware and empowered.
Turkle’s article discussed how computational technologies such as MUDs can provide opportunities for “second chances” to adults, for them to work and rework unresolved personal issues and to their ongoing construction of the self. MUDs allow for a contained and confidential environment for working through such issues and what Erik Erikson called a “psychosocial moratorium” where individuals take a break from real life to actively search for their identity. The computer is an evocative object that allows the revaluations and reconsiderations of things taken for granted this process, can also take place in MUDs to include social and cultural issues and fresh resolutions. The game allows its players to experience, rather than merely observe. She states how it is real for the players and gives an example of the players engaging in conversation with the bots, before realizing that bots are not people but things.
In her article, Nakamura talks about how worker players in WoW are becoming discriminated in terms of race. She does not focus on the game itself but on the racist rhetoric players bring to the game through the use of Machinima, by breaking players into two distinct groups of leisure players and worker players. Worker players are those that produce and sell virtual goods to other players for real world money.
Frances Tan Wei Ting
In Boyd’s article, the architecture of the digital realm allows for the archival, sorting and searchability of data information. In turn, these bits of information are taken out of context. In addition, this function of organizing data allows for “reputation information”. The collapse of contexts (and additional cues) and the provision of reputation information means that the ways in which the user’s messages and the user’s own self may be understood in limited, and even distorted, ways. One should recognise that a digital space holds a presentation, not the actual thing that is being (re)presented. In a digital space, there is no information to directly point out the crowd, only hints and interpolation. to make out the meanings necessary for purposeful social interaction.. Assessment signals to check reliability are costly to possess and maintain. As a result, people are more likely to accept the information they are given than to check it. There has to be a greater fit between the system and user, either one adapting to the other. When the latter tries to adapt to the former, they may do so by maintaining multiple personas and accounts online, one of which would be chosen for the specific interaction. This segregation of facets itself also requires effort.
Turkle talks about MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) which are virtual game spaces for role-playing and social interactions. MUDs do not exist physically. They allow for multiple authorship from anywhere simultaneously. They blur boundaries between the game and RL (real life) and TRW (the real world), since they are social environments comprising of both people and programs. It is the provision of experiences that blurs boundaries and allow MUDs to become constructive spaces for dialogue, understanding and working through, not just the prevalent discourses in popular culture that emphasize the destructive potential via escapism and addiction by these games. “You are who you pretend to be”. MUDs allow for the working through of issues in real life, the exploration of a different and sometimes more expansive ideal self, psychosocial moratorium, and control over self-presentation and self-creation. The game is ongoing (play and interaction anytime), anonymous (character may not be identifiable and thus not accountable for real life actions), invisible (character may not reflect actual self), and has multiplicity (chance for several characters with different qualities, and thus different identities). MUDs also has the potential to become an arena for contemplation of issues e.g. what it means to have multiple identities, essences and relationships, artificial intelligence, nature of the (virtual) community, functions of bots, how close representations should be to reality, etc. The old questions are placed in new contexts in hopes for new resolutions.
In Nakamura’s article, she mentions how virtual game spaces that are supposedly “free” from social inequalities mirror and even make more salient the differences in the “real world”. For example, the articulation of player workers as mostly being Chinese. The Chinese identity online in these games is different from the Chinese identity offline, and though such difference is accepted by some and rejected by others. Despite the salience, some do not recognise it as racial discrimination. Debates ensue over legitimate status and actions of players. A new taxonomy of playing traits gets attached to new labels.
It is also stated that MMORPGs converge the text-only online social environments of MUDs and MOOs with other forms of entertainment media (e.g. cinematic forms) for profit. The media technology is not politically neutral, being used by users to create and explore selves, but also to use these users by getting them to spend “gold” to avoid “grinding” or even to contribute to the content of the game. The internet contributes to the latter usage by acting as a distribution channel.
All three articles highlight the potential for negotiation of selves, actions and consequences in the virtual space that may reflect and even provide for new solutions to the real world, in turn blurring the boundaries between virtual and physical spaces of social interactions.
Tiffany Goh
This week, Turkle, Nakamura and Boyd cover the issue of offline and online realities for technophile, gaming users and how they use the online platform to construct identities and navigate social interactions in the virtual realm.
For Boyd, the architecture of the digital realm is at the heart of conditioning social interactions. She addresses the issue of possessing awareness in order to exercise control over their presentation and identity online. According to Boyd, the architecture of the internet is code, comprised of ‘digital bits’, which makes information easily accessible to public by simply doing a quick search. However, when people search for such recorded information, it is removed from its context- especially in the case of utilizing data from Usenet. The term that Boyd uses is “collapsed contexts”. This creates the problem of misinterpretation of messages. Misinterpretation can in turn, be detrimental to a subject’s reputation and people start to “live lives knowing that the details might be captured by a bi magnifying glass in the sky” (Lee 2012). Since the advent of computer-mediated communication (CMC), there has been an explosion of social media platforms and gaming sites that allow one to disclose personal information and opinions online. This can be used to one’s advantage or disadvantage. An unfortunate case of the tarnishing of one’s reputation is the Anton Casey case in Singapore- this London stockbroker posted offensive remarks about Singaporeans on Facebook. How this relates to Boyd’s article is that one needs to be acutely aware of how one presents her/himself online. Focault’s theory of “governmentality” can be applied here- since we are always under surveillance, even in the virtual world, there is a need to exercise agency to behave in ways which conform to the social norms in the virtual world as well.
On this note of the user as an active agent in the virtual realm, we shall have a look at Turkle’s article on how MUDs are used as an environment for the construction and reconstruction of the self. In virtual games such as Second Life, the user can build his/her own environments and tailor his/her personality however he/she likes Turkle highlights that there two main ways in which one might construct an online identity- one that involves role-playing and deception: constructing an identity which is far from your “real self” and the other depicting yourself as a character, similar to that of your offline personality. In keeping with the “postmodern ethos of the value of multiple identities”, the self can also be “multiplied without limit”. Multiplicities of identity are common in postmodern societies where there is an increasing absence of a singular identity. This is confirmed by Fredric Jameson’s theory of the “schizophrenia”. Tukle and Boyd saw this fragmented self as having “greater flexibility for the multi-faceted individual” (Boyd, 2002).
As seen in Boyd’s article, users are constrained by the designer’s architecture of the virtual realm which provide certain social cues. In Nakamura’s article, she points to a similar constraint: the cyber-gaming ethos that has been violated by a particular group of users. This group is the “Chinese gold farmers”. They are overt signs of racialization against these “worker players” who upset the “beauty and desirability of a shared virtual space in WoW.” There is a parallel drawn with the capitalistic physical world where Chinese worker players view Wow as a virtual sweatshop. These workers are seen as immigrants from service economies in the global South. There are therefore, negative social implications of not conforming to social norms even in the virtual realm and this can create a climate of anti-Asian sentiment in this case.
Lee Cheong Khi
This week’s readings discussed the relationship between the digital world through the use of various social media platforms as well as online games. In her reading, Boyd explores the digital world and analyzes whether it is a reflection of the physical world. To her, the digital and physical worlds varies but many people do not realize the difference. People were unaware of the “set of architectural assumptions” as they are not available. This set of assumptions had to do with the implications of posting things online such as the storage capability of the digital world and the idea that things posted in one context could also appear in another. She found that users normally assume that posting things on a forum meant that the information would only be available there. Instead, restrictions to information does not really occur in the digital world. It allows for storage that does not exist in the physical world, where oral speech is not always recorded and kept. This would sometimes lead to misrepresentation of the self, as information could not be represented fully. People can misinterpret or only have access to a certain part of the personal information. She suggests that text alone is not rich enough as compared to information in the physical world where one could convey “through body and fashion.” Another part of her reading describes how the presentation of self could be multiple. People can create various accounts to represent certain parts of themselves, such as for work or for personal use. In some ways, managing several accounts gives people the agency to limit what they want to present. This is similar to Turkle’s idea that the self can be “multiplied without limit” online.
Turkle formulates her argument by analyzing “Multi-User Dungeons” (MUDs) which refers to the multi-user games that “provide worlds for social interaction in a virtual space”. To her, people can represent themselves virtually, at times projecting their inner desires and the virtual world acts as “places of escape” when their physical world gets tough. Like Boyd, she argues that people have the freedom to decide what they want to be online giving them a certain sense of power. She then discusses how this freedom might actually lead the question of the existence of the “true self”. It is indeed true in that the true self is now difficult to grasp as people are influenced by the digital world every single day as they are exposed to so much information and ideas that would affect their thoughts and character in one way or another.
As for Nakamura, she tries to associate the virtual world with the real world through the discussion of gold farming in the online game, World of Warcraft. Gold farming is a term used to refer to people who spent hours playing and achieving certain levels in online games and then selling these to other players who would then pay with real money. She discusses the tension as a result of gold farmers who were often known to be Chinese. Gold farming has thus “become racialized as Asian, specifically as Chinese.” Many were discontented with the occurrence of these farmers and thus result in the separation of 2 social environment; “leisure players” and “worker players” which were connected with profit-making. She uses the concept of ‘machinima’ as a site to understand how racial remarks are exemplified. Users have the autonomy to create videos of their own, contributing to the media universes. This allowed them to create their own worlds and share it with others, including the inserts of racial remarks that are intended to mock gold farmers. As such, it is interesting how in all three readings, the writers are trying to make the connections between the digital and physical worlds as they believe that instead of the general assumption that both worlds are separate, they are actually very much interconnected with each other, affecting each other in various ways.
Annabel Su
This week’s readings draw in on the impacts of online and virtual activities on the real world both in terms of social interactions as well as in the construction of the sense of self of individuals.
Boyd touches on the idea that information in the digital realm can be ‘frequently archived, sorted and searchable,’ making it easy to be taken out of the situational context in which they were found. Hence, messages and data can be misinterpreted with minimal effort and it becomes more worrying when ‘the subject lacks the ability to control their representation.’ Furthermore, when using the digital interface, social interactions become greatly restricted by what can be conveyed and perceived within the space. Thus, users have to be able to have the tools and means to guard their reputation and identity against such misrepresentation. Although one can create multiple accounts online, and associate context locally, it is still a temporal solution that does not address the architectural flaw within the system. Boyd’s argument holds true especially when cases of identity theft are on the rise and there is no concrete way to prevent such misuse of information updated online.
Turkle highlights the ability of an individual to change his or her self constantly in the virtual world, in order to find one’s true self. This is done as the online self can be decentred and multiplied through the evocative capacity of MUDs. Games like these blur the boundaries between reality and virtual space, and help individuals to re-experience, re-imagine and re-work their reality and grant them control and mastery, as they assimilate MUDs into their daily routine. Although the digital space is not ‘real’, there is no denying that it has a relationship to the real world. Hence, the virtual sphere becomes a play space where thoughts about reality can emerge.
Nakamura is concerned about the Machimina, a digital space where consumers contribute to the creation of counter-narratives that game developers and the industry do not want to acknowledge. More specifically, Nakamura focuses on the racially divisive discourses that are being spread in the machinima of World of Warcraft where other players cast Chinese gold farmers, and leisure players under the veil of hatred. This notion of participatory media is derived from Jenkin whose stance we read about last week. However, Nakamura puts Jenkin’s idea into perspective as she uses empirical data to highlight how participatory media favours certain consumers over others. Those with privilege are able to dominate while those without are left to fend for themselves. In this instance, the Chinese service/player workers are not considered citizens in this digital space despite working in the space, because they do not have the opportunity to own avatars. Hence, Machimina can be considered a strong advancement in the virtual realm and is controlled by certain users and consumers who contribute to unequal social relations.
All the readings this week can be seen in relation to Heidegger’s concept of the essence of technology, where the happenings in the digital world though virtual, can eventually affect us, our knowledge and our social interactions in the tangible and real world.
Khrisha Chatterji
This week’s readings have a focus on how identity is negotiated through new media especially in interactive media platforms such as Usenet, MUDs and MMOs. These three authors looked at how people interact in these media platforms and how their interactions and development of their identities are shaped by these virtual spaces.
For Boyd, she is interested in how the structure of these platforms shapes social interactions. She compared the physical and the digital realm and noted how differences in “the power of architecture” and “lack of embodiment” have impacted social behaviour, especially communication. She mentioned how everything that is written online can come back to haunt one as everything is archived and this is different from the experience of when one is in the physical realm. This archiving of stuff online can lead to misrepresentation as well and it can render the affected parties powerless to do anything about it as they cannot remove stuff that is already archived in the digital realm. However, not everything is beyond the affected parties’ control as there are ways in which one can ensure that some information remains private. Some users manage their identities online by having many accounts, self-censoring themselves online, etc. and she mentioned the example of having different email accounts for different purposes. She believes that there is a need to have self awareness, especially about what they do online and the traces they leave. Once they are aware of that, they would have a better idea of how they should control and manage their identities in the digital realm.
Unlike Boyd who looked at the differences in spaces, Turkle looked at how the virtual world has become a therapeutic avenue for those wishing to escape their real lives, explore identities that they could not in the real world and how the virtual world has also enabled these players to come up with solutions to deal with their problems in real lives. It is more complex than having a separate virtual identity and a real, physical identity as these two identities tend to affect each other and such identity boundaries get blurred and she mentioned a few cases in her work to explain why this is so.
I would think that Nakamura looked further into the complex relationship between the real and the virtual worlds. She basically analysed how capital accumulation in the real world works in the same way in the virtual world and that this quality of accumulation makes MMOs addictive. Players are out to accumulate as much capital as possible and start to compare the process of such accumulation as similar to the real world. She claimed that avartarial capital is almost an equivalent of human capital, social capital, etc. and that like the real world, MMOs will end up being “socially debased and racialised” and that there will be “radically unequal social relations, labour types, and forms of representation along the axes of nation, language, and identity.” She concluded as such because of the racialised identity given to Chinese players of World of Warcraft who are seen as gold farmers and workers rather than leisure players.
Nakamura writes about gold farming and the racialisation of certain characters on Warcraft. This assumption and stereotypes of characters being of certain races occurs in other MMORPGs as well, but more than racialisation, gender stereotypes get played out and acted on more in MMORPG. Turkle writes that it’s easier for individuals to explore their options and question and experiment with their identity online in ways that the real world has constraints over and this allows computers and technology to be a lot more evocative of self-reflection. I think it’s interesting to look at the varying traits that people choose to experiment with when it comes to online personas or avatars. Gender is probably one of the options that PRG players experiment with because in the gaming world, female and male characters are treated very differently by other players. For example, female characters tend to get male characters offering items of value or writing off their “noob”ness as justified because of the assumption that it is a girl player. In this way, not only racial relations but gender relations as well among other relations, in real world get transferred into virtual world.
Danah Boyd writes about the architecture of the digital realm and how it has changed the ways in which people act and interact online. She focuses on the idea of storage and archiving. Despite the extent of archiving and storage done, we still remain oblivious to this because there are no notification or explicit signs. She also emphasises the ease at which information can be misinterpreted when found online because it is detached from its original source and may be taken out of its actual context. Hence, one must constantly be weary of the information found online before making assumptions.
Sherry Turkle talks about the freedom to change and create multiple personas in the online world. The new online media has allowed people to quench their thirst of an alternate reality or persona that is in line with the kind of narcissism that is instinctive to human nature. “Freud’s ego ideal”, which is basically our ideal persona is easier to achieve in the virtual world. This idea complements Kracauer’s theory of the cult of distraction. The virtual world and the ability to create new, alternative personalities has opened up a new door to the idea of escapism. Many people who find difficulty integrating themselves into and coping with the situation in the real world turn to online platforms to form a virtual reality in a search for temporal satisfaction.
This week’s readings focus on the formation and invention of identity in online activites. While Turkle argued for the Internet as a free and positive space in which individuals were free to play and experiment with their online personas, Nakamura and boyd highlight the fact that real life identities are often connected to online one, especially with the popularity of social media websites, which urge individuals to divulge their real life identities. We see this with facebook, or even twitter, whereby individuals use their real names and use these social media platforms to talk to their real friends. Perhaps what this charts is the evolution of how the internet has been used. Rather than being an anonymous space where real life identities didn’t matter (Turkle), it has now been transformed into a space to complement real life activities, rather than to be a break from. Nakamura’s reading also highlights how the virtual world of video games is not separate from real life, as so often thought, but rather, racial discourses that are seen in real life are mapped onto virtual, raceless characters, and despite this lack of racial identity in the world of WOW, the mapping on of particular discourses makes these racial identities real.
Turkle talks about “worlds for social interaction in a virtual space”, where people create an anonymous character that can be as close or as different from their real self as desired. This would allow people to play out scenarios that are parallel to real life situations, allowing for reflection and developing problem solving skills. Also, in creating personalities extremely different from their real self, it allows the user to explore areas that they are unable to do in real life, giving the example of Peter, whose virtual character could do everything that his real physical self could not do.
Instead of Turkle’s argument of multiple virtual selves, Boyd feels that there is a primary self, and the multiple accounts are facets of this primary self. Having a work email and a personal email for example, will allow users to move from one context to another, and they know to present the work face in the use of the work email, such as using honorifics and proper language, and for the personal email it is more casual and Singlish is allowed/expected. The primary self and multiple facets argument is an example of the self mentioned by Hall, whereby several identities exists and are presented across different situations. It would seem that Boyd’s argument is to regard online world as part of the real world rather than something separate.
In my opinion, the online world as part of the real world is made clear in Nakamura’s article. In a game that is without race, it is supposed to represent a virtual world distinct from the real world. However, even in the virtual world, there exists an economy, and power play between the rich and the exploited. The reactions of players within this economy also parallels that of those in the real world, thus ‘leisure’ players view ‘worker’ players as unwanted, similar to how citizens view immigrants from the poorer countries.
This weeks readings really resonated with my every day experience of using the internet.
I could really relate to the concepts described by Turkle, Boyd, and Nakamura and I touched on some of these themes in my coursework essay.
The key themes I picked up on were:
Turkle
Real and virtual worlds interact and it is not possible to create a binary definition of these.
Suspend social relations in order to reassess them.
Psychosocial moratorium =
A suspension of social reality to reassess our realities.
Similar to simulation models which work for peace & conflict resolutions e.g. security council UN
Context: futuristic
Boyd disagrees with Turkle.
Act out, in order to work through.
Psychosocial
The basis of self help: You work on yourself so you can interact better with your environment.
Boyd
The self can be multifaceted but its not necessarily fragmented.
You can still have a ‘whole’ which is divided e.g. orange.
There are core values. Which relate back to a soul, a unitary self.
Nakamura
She provides new framework to understand society which describes the new threat to civil liberty _> Digital Colonialism
Tracing the Political economy. Tracing capital.
Zooming into micro & macro political economy.
Myopic & broader political implications.
The questions posed by Nakamura are integral for generation y’s social, cultural and political policy regarding the internet and online space.
As such, there exists no formal etiquette guide for it. (At least not to my knowledge AKA the algorithms of my google)
I believe this is yet to come. It’s probably already in the making.
Policy makers in the Global North are currently struggling to legislate for the internet and decide if and what boundaries should be put in place for information and how this should be done.
In historical terms, it is arguable that this is the Victorian Digital Age.
Concepts of: preservation, boundaries, public health, modesty, morality, sexuality, the nuclear family unit.
Are all being realigned, reformulated and in some cases made redundant.
The big old question is: where do we go from here?
How will we educate our children to live with pandora’s box/ipad/smartphone?
The death of the screen is the birth of the intellectual?
What would Jesus tweet?
I’ll stop with the anecdotes now.
I felt that these week’s readings were relatively easier to read as compared to previous week’s (i.e. easier to grasp the main concepts).
Turkle tackles the construction and reconstruction of self, juxtaposed with the psychosocial moratorium. She outlines the virtual world as a space in which users can present themselves as “character”, and by anonymous. This virtual self can either be very much like your real physical self, or it can also be very much different; it is entirely left up to the user’s discretion. These projections of self are engaged in a postmodern context. This is drawn in parallel to the concept of modernity – it is always in a constant state of flux, it is constantly shifting, constantly moving. These multiple facets of self presents an “unparalleled opportunity to play with one’s identity and to “try out” new ones. The creation of new identities give users a “second chance” to present themselves as someone whom they are not, but whom they wish to be.
Turkle also claims that the lines between real life and the virtual gaming world are blurred – The virtual constitutes a sort of in-between stage, having some semblance of reality as the user also possesses a physical form on top of his/her virtual self. Hence, role-playing complicates the whole notion of “real vs virtual” per se. She gives really interesting case studies, about Julee and Peter – how video games allowed them to employ the psychoanalytic notion of “working through”, to improve one’s self, and harness the opportunity to play an “aspect of your self” that you embody as a separate self in the game space. For example, Peter was able to marry someone in the game despite having little luck with girls in the real life. Yet, it is pertinent to note that “the degree to which he (any user) brine the game into his real life is his choice” – users are still able to exercise some degree of control.
Boyd addresses the architecture differences between the physical world and the virtual world, acknowledging that the online world has a storage capacity, everything can and will most probably be archived. Hence, the problem presents itself in how most people don’t realise that – they don’t realise that whatever they say or do online can in fact be used against them in the future. What they say can even be taken out of context, due to search engines. Boyd outlines the concept of a postmodern fragmented self by using emails as an example – individuals are able to present various personas of themselves online, simply be creating different emails (e.g. one for work, and one for play). They are able to draw lines between the different aspects of their lives, in turn presenting different aspects of themselves for different things. These multiple online personas allow them to better adjust to social situations.
Nakamura, on the other hand, draws a parallel between capitalism and the gaming world. He identifies that the virtual world is in fact functioning very much like the real world today, in a phenomenon called informationalized capitalism. The rich benefit as they are able to spend money to buy things that they otherwise would have to earn, causing the others to feel exploited. He again draws a link to migrant labor in 3rd world countries, claiming that the exact same situation replicates itself in both instances, but it seems less significant in the gaming world as it’s all alluded to be “virtual”. Yet, as per the given example – “Their high-tech labor in low-tech conditions more closely resembles maquiladora factory labourer’s conditions than it does other recreational or professional software-based activities. Farmers work in shifts, playing Wow in 12 hour sessions and sleeping on pallets”. Also, things also tend to be taken wildly out of context – in a manifestation of virtual racism, videos were created showing spring rolls and fortune cookies as part of a defamatory Chinese video aimed at the gold farmers (who were all stereotyped to be Chinese). Cultural references that are associated with a particular race (Which is often propagated in the media) are taken and manipulated wildly out of context.
This week, Turkle, Nakamura and Boyd cover the issue of offline and online realities for technophile, gaming users and how they use the online platform to construct identities and navigate social interactions in the virtual realm.
For Boyd, the architecture of the digital realm is at the heart of conditioning social interactions. She addresses the issue of possessing awareness in order to exercise control over their presentation and identity online. According to Boyd, the architecture of the internet is code, comprised of ‘digital bits’, which makes information easily accessible to public by simply doing a quick search. However, when people search for such recorded information, it is removed from its context- especially in the case of utilizing data from Usenet. The term that Boyd uses is “collapsed contexts”. This creates the problem of misinterpretation of messages. Misinterpretation can in turn, be detrimental to a subject’s reputation and people start to “live lives knowing that the details might be captured by a bi magnifying glass in the sky” (Lee 2012). Since the advent of computer-mediated communication (CMC), there has been an explosion of social media platforms and gaming sites that allow one to disclose personal information and opinions online. This can be used to one’s advantage or disadvantage. An unfortunate case of the tarnishing of one’s reputation is the Anton Casey case in Singapore- this London stockbroker posted offensive remarks about Singaporeans on Facebook. How this relates to Boyd’s article is that one needs to be acutely aware of how one presents her/himself online. Focault’s theory of “governmentality” can be applied here- since we are always under surveillance, even in the virtual world, there is a need to exercise agency to behave in ways which conform to the social norms in the virtual world as well.
On this note of the user as an active agent in the virtual realm, we shall have a look at Turkle’s article on how MUDs are used as an environment for the construction and reconstruction of the self. In virtual games such as Second Life, the user can build his/her own environments and tailor his/her personality however he/she likes Turkle highlights that there two main ways in which one might construct an online identity- one that involves role-playing and deception: constructing an identity which is far from your “real self” and the other depicting yourself as a character, similar to that of your offline personality. In keeping with the “postmodern ethos of the value of multiple identities”, the self can also be “multiplied without limit”. Multiplicities of identity are common in postmodern societies where there is an increasing absence of a singular identity. This is confirmed by Fredric Jameson’s theory of the “schizophrenia”. Tukle and Boyd saw this fragmented self as having “greater flexibility for the multi-faceted individual” (Boyd, 2002).
As seen in Boyd’s article, users are constrained by the designer’s architecture of the virtual realm which provide certain social cues. In Nakamura’s article, she points to a similar constraint: the cyber-gaming ethos that has been violated by a particular group of users. This group is the “Chinese gold farmers”. They are overt signs of racialization against these “worker players” who upset the “beauty and desirability of a shared virtual space in WoW.” There is a parallel drawn with the capitalistic physical world where Chinese worker players view Wow as a virtual sweatshop. These workers are seen as immigrants from service economies in the global South. There are therefore, negative social implications of not conforming to social norms even in the virtual realm and this can create a climate of anti-Asian sentiment in this case.
Boyd is concerned about the context of interaction that individuals partake online. Data from conversations, and data itself is often stored, sorted and searchable. It comes in various forms and can be found in all kinds of systems. Digital archiving makes interactions that has taken placed before, be taken out of conetxt and be plaaced into another. It forms miscommunication and misinterpretation of not only the context, but of the individual who first produced the said content. The presentation of self is developed in a certain context particular in the situation, but is not necessarily received the way it is intended too, and is also received with certain attached assumptions. Users althought knowing that their information is public, are not consciously aware that the information online, data online remains and persists for a long, long period of time. Posts that I made 6 years ago can still be found if i go to the correct website and deicide to search for it. Unlike in real life, what i said 6 years ago tend to not be stored and remembered by people there and then.
Turkle is largely about the adoption of different selves online, where people can try out different types of selves, and if they don’t like one, they simply delete the account and start up another. She mentions that engagement with the computers allow people to think about the self, as they consider and resolve issues that they might have about the self. The online self is invisible, multiple and ongoing. She also mentions about how MUDs become a evocative object for people to consider social constructions of gender, since one can adopt another identity.
Lastly, Nakamura uses the example of World of Warcraft to talk about how an online space, like Wow, that supposedly has no race, no gender (from the physical), has a reintroduction of such social categories. e.g. The chinese worker player. It can happen because of the convergence of culture.
Boyd states that the translation of physical expectations to the digital world is problematic as online information is archived by default. She makes a comparison to the physical world where what we say is fleeting. Boyd focuses on (1) the power of architecture and (2) the lack of embodiment, that impact social interaction. The architecture of the Internet is code, comprised of digital bits. Online conversations are stored as codes and can be taken out of the context in which they were originally located, and repositioned into a different context, out of temporal or group order. Without knowledge of the context, the data is open to misinterpretation for readers and the persistence of the data leads to an increased level of accountability for past statements for the users. Next, she also states that the online space is a mediated one which has limited channels for both expression and perception. Unlike face-to-face interactions in the physical space, body language cues are missing and what is left is a manually articulated aspects of one’s presentation. This minimal form of interaction, she argues, is harmful as people insert missing information to build their mental models of others. To cope with the inability to manage the given context, users have multiple accounts or facets which can be switched. She ends off urging system designers to provide feedback and control, allowing users to be aware and empowered.
Turkle’s article discussed how computational technologies such as MUDs can provide opportunities for “second chances” to adults, for them to work and rework unresolved personal issues and to their ongoing construction of the self. MUDs allow for a contained and confidential environment for working through such issues and what Erik Erikson called a “psychosocial moratorium” where individuals take a break from real life to actively search for their identity. The computer is an evocative object that allows the revaluations and reconsiderations of things taken for granted this process, can also take place in MUDs to include social and cultural issues and fresh resolutions. The game allows its players to experience, rather than merely observe. She states how it is real for the players and gives an example of the players engaging in conversation with the bots, before realizing that bots are not people but things.
In her article, Nakamura talks about how worker players in WoW are becoming discriminated in terms of race. She does not focus on the game itself but on the racist rhetoric players bring to the game through the use of Machinima, by breaking players into two distinct groups of leisure players and worker players. Worker players are those that produce and sell virtual goods to other players for real world money.
In Boyd’s article, the architecture of the digital realm allows for the archival, sorting and searchability of data information. In turn, these bits of information are taken out of context. In addition, this function of organizing data allows for “reputation information”. The collapse of contexts (and additional cues) and the provision of reputation information means that the ways in which the user’s messages and the user’s own self may be understood in limited, and even distorted, ways. One should recognise that a digital space holds a presentation, not the actual thing that is being (re)presented. In a digital space, there is no information to directly point out the crowd, only hints and interpolation. to make out the meanings necessary for purposeful social interaction.. Assessment signals to check reliability are costly to possess and maintain. As a result, people are more likely to accept the information they are given than to check it. There has to be a greater fit between the system and user, either one adapting to the other. When the latter tries to adapt to the former, they may do so by maintaining multiple personas and accounts online, one of which would be chosen for the specific interaction. This segregation of facets itself also requires effort.
Turkle talks about MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) which are virtual game spaces for role-playing and social interactions. MUDs do not exist physically. They allow for multiple authorship from anywhere simultaneously. They blur boundaries between the game and RL (real life) and TRW (the real world), since they are social environments comprising of both people and programs. It is the provision of experiences that blurs boundaries and allow MUDs to become constructive spaces for dialogue, understanding and working through, not just the prevalent discourses in popular culture that emphasize the destructive potential via escapism and addiction by these games. “You are who you pretend to be”. MUDs allow for the working through of issues in real life, the exploration of a different and sometimes more expansive ideal self, psychosocial moratorium, and control over self-presentation and self-creation. The game is ongoing (play and interaction anytime), anonymous (character may not be identifiable and thus not accountable for real life actions), invisible (character may not reflect actual self), and has multiplicity (chance for several characters with different qualities, and thus different identities). MUDs also has the potential to become an arena for contemplation of issues e.g. what it means to have multiple identities, essences and relationships, artificial intelligence, nature of the (virtual) community, functions of bots, how close representations should be to reality, etc. The old questions are placed in new contexts in hopes for new resolutions.
In Nakamura’s article, she mentions how virtual game spaces that are supposedly “free” from social inequalities mirror and even make more salient the differences in the “real world”. For example, the articulation of player workers as mostly being Chinese. The Chinese identity online in these games is different from the Chinese identity offline, and though such difference is accepted by some and rejected by others. Despite the salience, some do not recognise it as racial discrimination. Debates ensue over legitimate status and actions of players. A new taxonomy of playing traits gets attached to new labels.
It is also stated that MMORPGs converge the text-only online social environments of MUDs and MOOs with other forms of entertainment media (e.g. cinematic forms) for profit. The media technology is not politically neutral, being used by users to create and explore selves, but also to use these users by getting them to spend “gold” to avoid “grinding” or even to contribute to the content of the game. The internet contributes to the latter usage by acting as a distribution channel.
All three articles highlight the potential for negotiation of selves, actions and consequences in the virtual space that may reflect and even provide for new solutions to the real world, in turn blurring the boundaries between virtual and physical spaces of social interactions.
This week, Turkle, Nakamura and Boyd cover the issue of offline and online realities for technophile, gaming users and how they use the online platform to construct identities and navigate social interactions in the virtual realm.
For Boyd, the architecture of the digital realm is at the heart of conditioning social interactions. She addresses the issue of possessing awareness in order to exercise control over their presentation and identity online. According to Boyd, the architecture of the internet is code, comprised of ‘digital bits’, which makes information easily accessible to public by simply doing a quick search. However, when people search for such recorded information, it is removed from its context- especially in the case of utilizing data from Usenet. The term that Boyd uses is “collapsed contexts”. This creates the problem of misinterpretation of messages. Misinterpretation can in turn, be detrimental to a subject’s reputation and people start to “live lives knowing that the details might be captured by a bi magnifying glass in the sky” (Lee 2012). Since the advent of computer-mediated communication (CMC), there has been an explosion of social media platforms and gaming sites that allow one to disclose personal information and opinions online. This can be used to one’s advantage or disadvantage. An unfortunate case of the tarnishing of one’s reputation is the Anton Casey case in Singapore- this London stockbroker posted offensive remarks about Singaporeans on Facebook. How this relates to Boyd’s article is that one needs to be acutely aware of how one presents her/himself online. Focault’s theory of “governmentality” can be applied here- since we are always under surveillance, even in the virtual world, there is a need to exercise agency to behave in ways which conform to the social norms in the virtual world as well.
On this note of the user as an active agent in the virtual realm, we shall have a look at Turkle’s article on how MUDs are used as an environment for the construction and reconstruction of the self. In virtual games such as Second Life, the user can build his/her own environments and tailor his/her personality however he/she likes Turkle highlights that there two main ways in which one might construct an online identity- one that involves role-playing and deception: constructing an identity which is far from your “real self” and the other depicting yourself as a character, similar to that of your offline personality. In keeping with the “postmodern ethos of the value of multiple identities”, the self can also be “multiplied without limit”. Multiplicities of identity are common in postmodern societies where there is an increasing absence of a singular identity. This is confirmed by Fredric Jameson’s theory of the “schizophrenia”. Tukle and Boyd saw this fragmented self as having “greater flexibility for the multi-faceted individual” (Boyd, 2002).
As seen in Boyd’s article, users are constrained by the designer’s architecture of the virtual realm which provide certain social cues. In Nakamura’s article, she points to a similar constraint: the cyber-gaming ethos that has been violated by a particular group of users. This group is the “Chinese gold farmers”. They are overt signs of racialization against these “worker players” who upset the “beauty and desirability of a shared virtual space in WoW.” There is a parallel drawn with the capitalistic physical world where Chinese worker players view Wow as a virtual sweatshop. These workers are seen as immigrants from service economies in the global South. There are therefore, negative social implications of not conforming to social norms even in the virtual realm and this can create a climate of anti-Asian sentiment in this case.
This week’s readings discussed the relationship between the digital world through the use of various social media platforms as well as online games. In her reading, Boyd explores the digital world and analyzes whether it is a reflection of the physical world. To her, the digital and physical worlds varies but many people do not realize the difference. People were unaware of the “set of architectural assumptions” as they are not available. This set of assumptions had to do with the implications of posting things online such as the storage capability of the digital world and the idea that things posted in one context could also appear in another. She found that users normally assume that posting things on a forum meant that the information would only be available there. Instead, restrictions to information does not really occur in the digital world. It allows for storage that does not exist in the physical world, where oral speech is not always recorded and kept. This would sometimes lead to misrepresentation of the self, as information could not be represented fully. People can misinterpret or only have access to a certain part of the personal information. She suggests that text alone is not rich enough as compared to information in the physical world where one could convey “through body and fashion.” Another part of her reading describes how the presentation of self could be multiple. People can create various accounts to represent certain parts of themselves, such as for work or for personal use. In some ways, managing several accounts gives people the agency to limit what they want to present. This is similar to Turkle’s idea that the self can be “multiplied without limit” online.
Turkle formulates her argument by analyzing “Multi-User Dungeons” (MUDs) which refers to the multi-user games that “provide worlds for social interaction in a virtual space”. To her, people can represent themselves virtually, at times projecting their inner desires and the virtual world acts as “places of escape” when their physical world gets tough. Like Boyd, she argues that people have the freedom to decide what they want to be online giving them a certain sense of power. She then discusses how this freedom might actually lead the question of the existence of the “true self”. It is indeed true in that the true self is now difficult to grasp as people are influenced by the digital world every single day as they are exposed to so much information and ideas that would affect their thoughts and character in one way or another.
As for Nakamura, she tries to associate the virtual world with the real world through the discussion of gold farming in the online game, World of Warcraft. Gold farming is a term used to refer to people who spent hours playing and achieving certain levels in online games and then selling these to other players who would then pay with real money. She discusses the tension as a result of gold farmers who were often known to be Chinese. Gold farming has thus “become racialized as Asian, specifically as Chinese.” Many were discontented with the occurrence of these farmers and thus result in the separation of 2 social environment; “leisure players” and “worker players” which were connected with profit-making. She uses the concept of ‘machinima’ as a site to understand how racial remarks are exemplified. Users have the autonomy to create videos of their own, contributing to the media universes. This allowed them to create their own worlds and share it with others, including the inserts of racial remarks that are intended to mock gold farmers. As such, it is interesting how in all three readings, the writers are trying to make the connections between the digital and physical worlds as they believe that instead of the general assumption that both worlds are separate, they are actually very much interconnected with each other, affecting each other in various ways.
This week’s readings draw in on the impacts of online and virtual activities on the real world both in terms of social interactions as well as in the construction of the sense of self of individuals.
Boyd touches on the idea that information in the digital realm can be ‘frequently archived, sorted and searchable,’ making it easy to be taken out of the situational context in which they were found. Hence, messages and data can be misinterpreted with minimal effort and it becomes more worrying when ‘the subject lacks the ability to control their representation.’ Furthermore, when using the digital interface, social interactions become greatly restricted by what can be conveyed and perceived within the space. Thus, users have to be able to have the tools and means to guard their reputation and identity against such misrepresentation. Although one can create multiple accounts online, and associate context locally, it is still a temporal solution that does not address the architectural flaw within the system. Boyd’s argument holds true especially when cases of identity theft are on the rise and there is no concrete way to prevent such misuse of information updated online.
Turkle highlights the ability of an individual to change his or her self constantly in the virtual world, in order to find one’s true self. This is done as the online self can be decentred and multiplied through the evocative capacity of MUDs. Games like these blur the boundaries between reality and virtual space, and help individuals to re-experience, re-imagine and re-work their reality and grant them control and mastery, as they assimilate MUDs into their daily routine. Although the digital space is not ‘real’, there is no denying that it has a relationship to the real world. Hence, the virtual sphere becomes a play space where thoughts about reality can emerge.
Nakamura is concerned about the Machimina, a digital space where consumers contribute to the creation of counter-narratives that game developers and the industry do not want to acknowledge. More specifically, Nakamura focuses on the racially divisive discourses that are being spread in the machinima of World of Warcraft where other players cast Chinese gold farmers, and leisure players under the veil of hatred. This notion of participatory media is derived from Jenkin whose stance we read about last week. However, Nakamura puts Jenkin’s idea into perspective as she uses empirical data to highlight how participatory media favours certain consumers over others. Those with privilege are able to dominate while those without are left to fend for themselves. In this instance, the Chinese service/player workers are not considered citizens in this digital space despite working in the space, because they do not have the opportunity to own avatars. Hence, Machimina can be considered a strong advancement in the virtual realm and is controlled by certain users and consumers who contribute to unequal social relations.
All the readings this week can be seen in relation to Heidegger’s concept of the essence of technology, where the happenings in the digital world though virtual, can eventually affect us, our knowledge and our social interactions in the tangible and real world.
This week’s readings have a focus on how identity is negotiated through new media especially in interactive media platforms such as Usenet, MUDs and MMOs. These three authors looked at how people interact in these media platforms and how their interactions and development of their identities are shaped by these virtual spaces.
For Boyd, she is interested in how the structure of these platforms shapes social interactions. She compared the physical and the digital realm and noted how differences in “the power of architecture” and “lack of embodiment” have impacted social behaviour, especially communication. She mentioned how everything that is written online can come back to haunt one as everything is archived and this is different from the experience of when one is in the physical realm. This archiving of stuff online can lead to misrepresentation as well and it can render the affected parties powerless to do anything about it as they cannot remove stuff that is already archived in the digital realm. However, not everything is beyond the affected parties’ control as there are ways in which one can ensure that some information remains private. Some users manage their identities online by having many accounts, self-censoring themselves online, etc. and she mentioned the example of having different email accounts for different purposes. She believes that there is a need to have self awareness, especially about what they do online and the traces they leave. Once they are aware of that, they would have a better idea of how they should control and manage their identities in the digital realm.
Unlike Boyd who looked at the differences in spaces, Turkle looked at how the virtual world has become a therapeutic avenue for those wishing to escape their real lives, explore identities that they could not in the real world and how the virtual world has also enabled these players to come up with solutions to deal with their problems in real lives. It is more complex than having a separate virtual identity and a real, physical identity as these two identities tend to affect each other and such identity boundaries get blurred and she mentioned a few cases in her work to explain why this is so.
I would think that Nakamura looked further into the complex relationship between the real and the virtual worlds. She basically analysed how capital accumulation in the real world works in the same way in the virtual world and that this quality of accumulation makes MMOs addictive. Players are out to accumulate as much capital as possible and start to compare the process of such accumulation as similar to the real world. She claimed that avartarial capital is almost an equivalent of human capital, social capital, etc. and that like the real world, MMOs will end up being “socially debased and racialised” and that there will be “radically unequal social relations, labour types, and forms of representation along the axes of nation, language, and identity.” She concluded as such because of the racialised identity given to Chinese players of World of Warcraft who are seen as gold farmers and workers rather than leisure players.