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

这是一项社会学研究，研究的是人们在《第二人生》这样的三维虚拟社区中，如何自愿培养“虚拟文明”和值得信赖的身份。这个探索性的项目将对几个精心选择的虚拟地点进行比较的人种学研究，在这些虚拟地点中，所谓的“灵性”或“自助”发挥着重要作用。这些虚拟网站很耐人寻味，因为当人们分享他们的内心体验时--这通常被认为是高度隐私的--这通常意味着对他人的深度信任。但在3D虚拟世界中，化身演员的真实身份往往是隐藏的。该项目旨在阐明这些虚拟网站是如何在地理上相距遥远的“陌生人”之间创造虚拟文明和信任的，以及哪些特定的文化机制促使和使这些化身形成值得信赖的身份。到目前为止，对虚拟世界的研究往往以强调确保可信度的技术和监管方面的方法为主。相比之下，这项研究是社会学的，因为它定位了在特定文化背景下协作知识项目的互动背景下出现的礼貌和信任。例如，社区实现虚拟文明文化的实际建设的方式，可能在一定程度上取决于与“精神途径”相关的共同超越形象。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，但它的含义尚未在虚拟的在线环境中进行探索。该项目将研究这些特定地点文化的发展和个人化身文明行为的出现以及他们可信身份的发展密切相关的关系过程。该项目将有助于提供所需的知识，使具有用户创建内容的虚拟世界成为具有社会意义的协作知识生产的积极基础。这项研究的潜在意义可能超越虚拟社区动力学，因为由虚拟世界的独特特征塑造的新社会形式可能会反过来迁移回现实生活，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.