OddBall90

To Rudi, Thank you for the advice, I will definitely find and read that. However hopefully, there will be a positive response in some form, as this is a topic I have a great interest in and would love to investigate thoroughly with an in depth and insightful outcome; only possible with the help of the residents online. Thanks again.

Hi DanielRavenNest, Your response and questions are both perfectly understandable and reasonable and I am more than happy to try and reply to the best of my ability. I never presume to see the users of Second Life as an almost faceless and blind resource for my own usage, as the very nature of the project I have chosen and Second Life itself, revolves around the intricate and fascinating nature of peoples differences and choices about themselves, their avatar and their behaviour. I only hoped as a fellow lover of online interaction software to use some insight from the community. To the first question, I have considered this and in past research studies have had similar issues. However each response will be carefully considered and placed in correlation with others, compared with the array of reading I have already completed and the yet further studies I have to examine. I have not started this study blind and have, from the previous literature, an expectation of what I will find Should anything contrary to that come up, then I more than welcome it, fake or not, as every anomaly helps to the define the edges of a bigger picture. I have partly answered the second point already, but yes I have done thorough reading on this topic before I began as this project is too important to my overall degree to not take it seriously. The focus I have started upon has been covered before in one way or another, but the exact method and form of empirical investigation has not, as far as I am aware; and under the rules of various sociological writers, even the same study carried out with varying methods is always useful for breaking new ground. As for the nature of the random sampling, I understand that this specific forum concerns only general announcements of avatars and will be posting the same thread on other forums which have some link to the study depending on feedback found here. However, the population sample I am using is the rather large society of Second Life residents themselves as the comparative element is real world identity formation, not in-world subculture identity formation.Therefore any response from any Second Life resident is valuable. Hopefully that is useful to you, and answers the questions as succinctly as possible. Thank you for taking the time to post on the thread, any feedback at all is highly appreciated.

Hi Everyone, I am a Third Year student at Loughborough University in England, using Second Life as the focus for my final project. As a long term user of interactive worlds and games, the subject is a passion of mine, and any help towards the project would be greatly appreciated. I understand that this will take some time out of your day and require some effort, plus I would like to give back to a great community, so I am trying to gather together a small fund so that people who contribute could be reimbursed- although this may not be much I'm afraid. I would also be very willing to share the results of the final finished piece with any who are interested. The project itself looks at how people use avatars to construct and portray identity within Second Life, versus how the same process occurs within the external world. Looking to discuss whether the avatar is just an extension of an offline driver (a close mirror of an existing identity) or if the avatar is a tool to explore a new persona and escape into a different world. If you would be interested in participating, please don't hesitate to contact me at j.whittle-09@student.lboro.ac.uk , or IM me in world on my newer avatar (Oddball90). There is a short questionnaire to be filled out (all data received will be used anonymously and in accordance with the Data Protection Act), which I hope will be insightful and offer the chance to shed light on the complex dynamic between avatar and user. Thank you again for your time.