Question for this Week
Are we taking advantage of the residents of Second Life? Why or why not?
I do not believe that we are taking advantage of the resident of Second Life. We are active participants in the world of Second Life and we are just taking advantage of all the oppurtunities that are avalaible to all members of Second Life. If we had some sort of uneven advantage given to us by linden labs then in fact I believe we would be taking advantage of the Members of Second Life. But unfortunitly we do not have an advantage all we do is use the resouraces that are avalaible to us. I also believe that we are not taking advantage of the resident of Second Life becaue unlike the Rebakah Nathan lady we are being honest with other members of second Life. Now I know I may be only speaking for myself, but if someone asks why I am asking so many wuestions I always inform them that I am a college student doing research for a course. While sometimes I become shunned while taking photos, I have for the most part been embrassed for my research into Second Life and the activities that take place within Second Life.
I sometimes do think that if I was just a member of Second Life I would be embarassed at all the research that is done on my actions. I believe that Second Lie is an escape form the real world and when we look too much into Second Life we begin to go too far into a person's real life. Seond Life is somewhere where people are allowed to escape all of their problems in the real world and do as they please. however, with all the research a person may become embarassed for all of the data collected on their activities and stop doing such activities. But then I think that if this did occur we could just go about taking advantage of fellow members of Seond Life, just as Rebakah Nathan did, by ot informing other members that we are in fact researchers collecting data for a project.
That is my two cents so feel free to comment.
posted by Mike @ 5:32 PM
3 Comments:
"Are we taking advantage of the residents of Second Life?"
I'm interested to know if Ithaca is part of Linden Lab's Campus Second Life program. If your college is part of that program, and you are following your college's research ethics guidelines, you shouldn't need to ask if you are taking advantage of SL residents.
Is Ithaca part of Campus Second Life, or is the college researching residents in Second Life independently?
We are not currently part of the program because we have just been learning the game, observing our own reactions to the game and discussing whether SL is a game or not.
Even if we were part of the program and following the ethics guidelines, there is a question that needs to be considered of taking advantage of the residents. Does our project give anything back to them, for instance. Does an interview situation give the subject an opportunity to express all their opinions? Does a qualitative project that attempts to describe SL do it justice or create a wrong impression about the world to readers? It's a broad question that all researchers have to consider, regardless of the ethics guidelines that institutions put into place.
I think it's great that you would question your college's own ethical standards, you just might not have to struggle so much with the ethics if your class was enrolled in the Campus Second Life program.
One of the most important features of the program is that it lets the residents of Second Life know that you are conducting research, through an official Linden Lab announcement, and via a specific last name assigned to the class (usually named after your college). This helps to cut down on potential backlash from residents regarding your research efforts.
There have been problems caused in the community in the past, prior to the Campus Second Life program being established, because of comments made by student researchers on public weblogs. You can read about prior research ethics issues in Second Life on my weblog here and here. Things have improved a lot since the incidents I documented took place.
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