Week 10 Constructing the Other (Part II)

Articles Read

Turkle, S. (1995). Aspects of the self. Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet (pp. 177-209). New York: Simon & Schuster.

Turkle, S. (1995). TinySex and gender trouble. Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet (pp. 210-232). New York: Simon & Schuster.

Sherman, R. C., End, C., Krann, E., Cole, A., Campbell, J., Klausner, J., Birchmeier, Z. (2001). Metaperception in cyberspace. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 4(1), 123-129.

McDonough, J. P. (1999). Designers selves: Construction of technologically mediated identity within graphical, multiuser, virtual environments. Journal of American Society for Information Science, 50(10), 859-869.

Article Summaries

Turkle, S. (1995). Aspects of the self. Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet (pp. 177-209). New York: Simon & Schuster.

In this chapter, Turkle told us several stories of MUDders, and explored the relation of playing MUD and psychological growth. MUDs provide worlds for anonymous social interaction where you can play various roles. They blur the boundaries of self and role, real and virtual. For some people, the use MUDs as a way to work through their real life problems, for some others they used MUDs to “act out” the real life difficulties, which may or may not lead to bringing possible solutions to real life problems. Turkle’s conclusion is that MUDs are highly evocative and provide much grist for the mill of a psychodynamic therapeutic process. If “acting out” is going to happen, MUDs are relatively safe places. But it is also true that, taken by themselves, virtual communities will only sometimes facilitate psychological growth. Though it provides us opportunities for self-discovery, and even self-transformation, sometimes, such experiences fail to help us to resolve tensions in the real world, just like unsuccessful psychotherapy.

Turkle, S. (1995). TinySex and gender trouble. Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet (pp. 210-232). New York: Simon & Schuster.

In this chapter, Turkle explored the common phenomenon of virtual gender-swapping. As she found out one strong motivation to gender-swap is to have TinySex as a creature of another gender. It is an opportunity to explore conflicts raised by one’s biological gender. In addition, by enabling people to experience what it “feels” like to be the opposite gender or to have no gender at all, the practice encourages reflection on the way ideas about gender shape our expectations. Virtual sex is also the centerpiece of many people’s online experience. TinySex raises the question of what is at the heart of sex and fidelity, and it raises the question of how we communicate with our children about this.

Sherman, R. C., End, C., Krann, E., Cole, A., Campbell, J., Klausner, J., Birchmeier, Z. (2001). Metaperception in cyberspace. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 4(1), 123-129.

The study was to compare meta-accuracy of WWW homepage creators to meta-accuracy of people in face-to-face interactions. It was found that the participants assumed that others’ impressions based on homepages were more positive than they really were, and that others saw them as more more likeable and having more in common with then than was the case. In contrast, participants in the brief face-to-face interactions were rather accurate in gauging the impression others formed of them. It was also demonstrated that the source of online inaccuracy seems to be lie in people’s belief that others develop the same impression of them in both online and offline contexts. In fact, perceivers are significantly influenced by whether the information they are receiving is based on face-to-face interaction or on cues obtained from a WWW homepage, and tend to develop less positive impressions on the basis of WWW homepages than on the basis of brief face-to-face interactions.

McDonough, J. P. (1999). Designers selves: Construction of technologically mediated identity within graphical, multiuser, virtual environments. Journal of American Society for Information Science, 50(10), 859-869.

This paper examined the designers’ actions affecting identity performance within graphical virtual environments and the manner in which those decisions interact with larger social contexts of dominance based on race, class, and gender. It was found that designers’ inscriptions of their users within software are constantly evolving. In addition, the way designers’ own identities and social location may influence users’ construction of identities within the systems those designers create. The author also provided four pieces of suggestions for the designers on how designers may approach the construction of virtual environments without unwittingly contributing to patterns of dominance in society.

My Reaction

Take an issue in any of these readings and talk about how you have seen it play out in your second life experience (with others).

I had the experience of pretending to be a male with popular instant message software in China. It was usually the rule that if you were girl, there would be 3 to 5 people invite you to chat with them within five minutes. But if you were a boy, you had to reach out and invited other people. Nobody would invite you first. So I found who was online, added them as my friends (All I added were “girls”.), and invited them to chat. In many times, they took no notice of me. Not surprising! They had too many invitations. But there were times when I was lucky. As I chatted, I found I should very often take the initiative: to start a topic, to ask a question, and to control the directions of conversation, which I seldom did when I was chatting as a girl. What’s more, sometimes I intentionally tried to be firm, and to be aggressive. If you were timid and gentle, girls would just ignore you. There were too many polite “gentleman” online. However, being firm, aggressive, and sometimes perhaps a little bit impolite would attract their attention more quickly and also raise their curiosity, so that those “girls” would like to talk with you more. It was interesting that even in the virtual world, I am such an easy going, non-aggressive, polite girl. But at that time, as I was pretending to be a male, I turned out to be someone quite contrary to the real life me. At that moment, I felt myself as a strong, confidence, and aggressive male.

Questions for Discussion (My Questions)

1. When we are constructing a virtual “me”, how can we make sure that our experience on cyberspace help us with real world problems instead of worsening the situation?

2. What is moral or immoral in the cyberspace? How much deception is acceptable, and how much is immoral?