Virtual Civility, Trust, and Avatars: Ethnology in Second Life

这是一个社会学研究的方式，人们自愿发展“虚拟文明”和值得信赖的身份在三维虚拟社区，如第二人生。这一探索性项目将对几个精心挑选的虚拟地点进行民族志比较研究，在这些地点中，所谓的“精神”或“自助”发挥着重要作用。这些虚拟网站很有趣，因为当人们分享他们的内心经历时-通常被认为是高度私密的-这通常表明他人的深深信任。但在3D虚拟世界中，化身演员的真实的身份往往是隐藏的。该项目旨在阐明这些虚拟网站如何设法在地理上相距遥远的“陌生人”之间创造虚拟文明和信任，以及哪些特定的文化机制促使这些化身发展出值得信赖的身份。到目前为止，虚拟世界的研究往往被强调确保可信度的技术和监管方面的方法所主导。 相比之下，这项研究是社会学的，因为它定位的礼貌和信任，出现在特定的文化背景下的合作知识项目的international背景下。例如，社区实现虚拟文明文化的实际建设的方式可能部分取决于与“精神方法”相关的超越性的共享图像。“这一观察结果完全符合马克斯·韦伯和埃米尔·涂尔干等社会学家的经典但仍然有影响力的理论，但其影响尚未在虚拟在线环境中得到探讨。该项目将研究这种特定地点文化的发展与个人化身文明行为的出现以及他们值得信赖的身份的发展密切相关的关系过程。该项目将有助于使虚拟世界与用户创建的内容积极的基础上，社会有意义的协作知识生产所需的知识。这项研究的潜在意义可能超越虚拟社区的动态，因为虚拟世界独特的特征所形成的新的社会形式可能会反过来迁移到真实的生活中，成为人类互动中信任和文明的新标准形式。

This is a sociological study of the ways in which people voluntarily develop "virtual civility" and trustworthy identities in 3-dimensional virtual communities such as Second Life. This exploratory project will develop a comparative ethnographical study of several carefully chosen virtual sites in which what might be called "spirituality" or "self-help" plays an important role. These virtual sites are intriguing because when people share their inner experiences - which are usually considered highly private - this would normally indicate a deep trust of others. But in 3D virtual worlds, avatar-actors' real identities are often hidden. The project is intended to clarify how these virtual sites manage to create virtual civility and trust among geographically-distanced "strangers," and what specific cultural mechanisms prompt and enable these avatars to develop trustworthy identities. Studies to date of virtual worlds tend to be dominated by approaches that emphasize technological and regulatory aspects of ensuring trustworthiness. In contrast, this research is sociological because it locates the civility and trust that emerge within the interactional context of collaborative knowledge projects in particular cultural settings. For example, the ways that communities accomplish the actual building of a virtual culture of civility might in part depend on shared images of transcendence associated with 'spiritual approaches.' This observation is entirely in line with the classical but still-influential theories of sociologists like Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, yet its implications have not yet been explored in virtual, online environments. The project will study relational processes in which the development of such site-specific cultures and the emergence of individual avatars' civilized behavior, as well as the developments of their trustworthy identities, are intimately connected. This project will contribute to the knowledge required to make virtual worlds with user-created contents positive grounds for socially meaningful collaborative knowledge productions. The study's potential import may go beyond virtual community dynamics, because it is possible that the new social forms shaped by the unique characteristics of virtual worlds may then in turn migrate back out into real life, becoming the new standard forms of trust and civility in human interactions generally.