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In this chapter, the authors explore the concept of actorial identity through analysing the construction of legal persons as actors, centred on the argument that there is an ontological separation between living men and women and their legal representations. The authors propose an analytical frame based in part on the games studies literature, wherein actorial identities known as ‘Avatars’ are created by performative declarations that articulate Avatars with Players (living persons). The Avatars act within a bounded ‘Matrix’ while being controlled by Players who are outside the Matrix. In applying the frame to the legal Matrix, the authors distinguish between living persons, natural persons and artificial persons, and introduce the concepts of first-order and second-order Avatars. The authors then employ the analytical frame to model the use of legal Avatars by Apple Inc. and illustrate how cryptocurrency technology enables the creation of Avatars that can transact outside legal systems. The frame also helps explain how autonomous systems could acquire actorial identity and then functionally participate in the legal Matrix.

This chapter evaluates the potential of virtual worlds for intercultural collaborative learning. A case study of a global lecture series is presented that used a virtual world as a platform for intercultural student collaboration. Students' subjective reports served as a basis for exploring cross-cultural differences in the perceived usefulness of virtual worlds for intercultural collaboration, and to examine what they have learned from working in an intercultural virtual team, what problems occurred, and how they resolved them. Based on the evaluation results, suggestions are provided for a culture-aware design of virtual worlds to facilitate intercultural collaborative learning and the development of intercultural literacy.

One can read the history of MMOGs as a history of the development of the body (avatar) in the internet. To make the classical terms of sociology of the body fit the field of MMOGs, this chapter builds on the social world perspective to leave the dichotomy between real (offline) and virtual (online) behind. MMOGs are seen as one of numerous social worlds (rooted in the here and now) and not as distant planets. In the Here and Now the body is an everyday matter of course. According to Goffman’s interaction order Face-to-Face interaction is the prototype of interaction and the influence of technical artifacts (pen and paper, telephone, etc.) negates its constituting elements – immediacy and reciprocity. Immediacy and reciprocity are interrelated with the body. Although MMOGs are technical artifacts, MMOGs re-establish elements constituting the body. The avatar becomes a key artifact and an inescapable necessity in experiencing the world of MMOGs. Therefore compared to other online-places, MMOGs expand the accessibility that is typical for the internet with the possibility of “physical” presence. But this physical presence is rather a semiotic body (or body-social), than a body in physical terms. The avatar therefore seems to be an intersubjective accomplishment pointing to group affiliations. Applying to the body, it is therefore not just skin and bones it is also socially constructed. The avatar is expressed or embodied society.

Using the perspectives of dramaturgy and symbolic interactionists like George Herbert Mead and Carl Couch this study focuses on paid sex work in the hypermodern, virtual world of Second Life. Using seventeen semi-structured interviews and six months of ethnographic fieldwork, I find that the employment of sexual scripts, carrying off a successful erotic scene, and the creative use of communication and embodiment are highly valued in escorts’ performance of Second Life sex work. Escorts craft an online persona that is a digital representation of the self, which is manifested in the embodiment of their digital body or avatar. In addition to digital representations of the physical self, Second Life allows for multiple methods of computer-mediated communication, and escorts are able to re-embody the first life body through the trading of first life pictures, voice cybersex, and web cam cybersex. The data allow the conclusion that most escorts are unwilling to re-embody the first life body for reasons of personal safety and the desire to restrict access to the first life self. I find, however, that there is a porous boundary between first life and Second Life in which the first life self comes through in the Second Life persona. In the concluding remarks, I explore the implications this study has for the negotiation of privacy for new social media actors who are reluctant to fully disclose their lives yet perform a persistent, archived persona for friends and followers on the Internet. This study contributes to a small, but growing, body of literature on Second Life and expands the existing work on embodiment and privacy in the digital realm.

The ability for learners to interact online via their avatars in a 3-D simulation space means that virtual worlds afford a host of educational opportunities not offered by other learning technology platforms, but their use also raises several pertinent issues that warrant consideration. This chapter reviews the educational use of virtual worlds from a design perspective. Virtual-world definitions are explored, along with their key educational characteristics. Different virtual-world environments are briefly contrasted, including Second Life, Active Worlds, Open Sim, and Minecraft. A wide variety of virtual-world uses in schools and universities are examined so as to understand their versatility. Key educational benefits of virtual worlds are distilled from the literature, such as the ability to facilitate 3-D simulations, role-plays, construction tasks, and immersive learning. Emergent issues surrounding the use of virtual worlds are also analyzed, including cognitive load, safety, and representational fidelity. One higher education and one school level vignette are provided in order to offer more detailed insight into the use of virtual worlds in practice. Recommendations for learning design and implementation are presented, based on the thematic analysis of contemporary virtual-worlds research.

Purpose — The principal hypothesis of this program of research is that people's choices of which resources to own are a function of expected travel needs.

Methodology/approach — This chapter reports recent research using a stated-choice survey design that is innovative in two respects. First, respondents are asked to consider two types of choice having different time horizons but which are thought to be linked in a strategic-tactical structure. The two types of choices are (a) purchasing ‘mobility resources’, which include commitments such as car ownership and subscription to carsharing services and (b) choosing a mode of transport for a particular instance of travel. The second methodological innovation is that respondents indicate their choices in the context of giving advice to a demographically similar ‘avatar’.

The development of a technique for ‘empirically constrained’ efficient design is discussed, as is its application to this survey. This objective is to provide survey designs with a high degree of statistical efficiency whilst maintaining plausibility in the combination of attribute levels. Field data from an empirical application (n = 72) was collected and analysed.

Findings — The proposed method for efficient design proved successful. The main substantive findings from the empirical application are presented, along with detailed results relating to how different demographic classes of respondents engaged with the instrument. For instance, living with one's partner and living with no children at home were associated with high scores on a scale of similarity between the experimental choice context and one's real-world mobility choices.

Research limitations/implications — The proposed techniques appear promising, though the empirical results must be viewed as indicative only due to the size and coverage of the field data sample.

The aim for this chapter is to better understand the dynamics of social communication processes within Second Life®. Understanding communication processes in 3D online social virtual worlds is vital in embracing contemporary social issues and improving interpersonal and organizational relationships as these environments are rapidly growing in popularity in the education sector. In this chapter, we observed an undergraduate communication class and discussed four powerful interrelated forces behind the students' communication processes: (1) gamer status; (2) avatar appearance; (3) physical proximity; and (4) virtual proximity. Our findings can inform Arts and Science educators in general and Communication instructors in particular about how learners socially communicate and interact within a 3D online social virtual world and how teachers can foster students' communication and collaboration in this environment and support their content creation and collective knowledge building.

Preparing future teachers requires teacher educators to share both theory and its translation to best practice. Traditional approaches to this learning process include textbooks, case studies, role-play, observation, and eventually fieldwork in a classroom. Understanding what their future students need or appropriately responding to situations in the classroom is far different than the reality of teaching in schools. Although case studies provide an opportunity for perspective taking, collaboration, and developing problem solving skills in a safe environment, it is still a relatively passive experience. The use of virtual worlds to create engaging simulations offers a possibility in bridging this gap between theory and practice. The School of Education and Human Services at Seton Hall University has designed a virtual world simulation to provide college students with the opportunity to be immersed in a virtual classroom setting in which they take on the roles of avatar teachers and grade school students who may require various modifications/accommodations. This chapter will discuss the design and implementation of this project. Data were collected on the students’ experiences in order to assess possible learning gains, affordances of the technology, and lessons learned for future educators who are considering the implementation of virtual world technologies.