In world, you can contact me, "wata
Klata", a.k.a. Bruce Edmonds (shown in the picture) or just drop
by. There is a list of interesting places in SL is available
here, places in SL to learn about SL.
You have to subscribe to use Second Life and install their software but
this is free. You can subscribe using this link.
Why Second Life is Interesting to Social Researchers
Several reasons:
It is real social interaction resulting in real communities,
furthermore these are (largely) new
real communities forming and developing.
As a contrasting case with respect to real life. Some
things (e.g. the strength of some social norms, topologies of
interaction, effective annonymity) are different in Second Life, as
compared to real life, so it is interesting to see how this results in
different social styles/forms/institutions.
Features of Second Life make social research easier including:
the ease of logging data, the anonymity of people, interest in the
virtual world...
For sociological introductions to these issues see:
The CPM is conducting research into social norms in Second Life.
For more details see the NormWatch page at http://cfpm.org/sl/normwatch.html.
Workshop on Simulation and
Second Life
This is a worshop co-organised by Bruce Edmonds of CPM and Aleks
Krotoski of the University of Surrey that was held on 7th
September 2007 in Hyperborea
in Second Life. For more details see its web page at http://cfpm.org/sl/sim-sl.html
