Social Networks in virtual worlds

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Social Networks in virtual worlds

• Aleks Krotoski
• University of Surrey

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Overview

• The Social Life of Virtual Worlds
• What does it mean to be close?
• Informal learning in virtual worlds
• Who teaches who what?
• Important Ethical Concerns
• In research and in general practice

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But before we get ahead of ourselves

• The differences between online and offline
• Anonymity
• Physical appearance
• Physical proximity
• Greater transience (more weak ties)
• Absence of social cues

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So how can the interactions in cyberspace be
meaningful ?

• In traditional definitions of community,
  thered be no such thing in cyberspace
• How can you develop meaningful relationships with
  people youve never met?

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Its been happening for years

• These virtual worlds are the places which the
  online communities are tied to

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Places of ritual

• London Memorial in Second Life
• Between 12-1pm on 7 July 2005, over 150 Second
  Life residents visited. It was open for 7 days
  and racked up thousands of visitors
• Fewer than 10 claimed any British ties
• Makers motivations were altruistic and purely
  community-driven

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Places of collaboration

• Neualtenburg an experiment in collective
  democracy

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Places of friendship
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So how does it happen?

• The same reasons offline community does
• Make friends, offer support, meet like-minded
  others
• What we know about online relationships
• Proximity and frequency of contact
• Similarity
• Self-presentation
• Reciprocity self-disclosure
• Consistency

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• Virtual worlds are designed for sociability
  people must rely upon one another to survive and
  advance
• Anonymity becomes Pseudonymity
• Whatever role trust plays in offline communities,
  it plays in online communities because these
  interactions are human-bound

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Social Learning Theory

• We learn from those around us
• We learn from similar others
• We adapt these learnings for our own goals
• Social norms dictate acceptability

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Social Capital

• We learn from those we trust
• We learn who to trust through reputation

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Building reputations

• Trust is based upon
• past experience
• which is either based upon functional goals or
  pre-existing social relationships
• or some kind of disinterested third party (e.g.,
  Craigs List or MySpace)
• You Must Comply
• A non-official policing force in a space where an
  official police is absent
• The emphasis is on friendship and dedication to
  the group
• Rejection is cruel

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How the heck do you measure this?Social Network
Analysis
studies social relationships as a series of
interconnected webs. focuses on
inter-relationships rather than individuals
attributes
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SNA offers

• A measure of the social context, as defined by
  the actors within that context, rather than the
  researcher
• Identification of key people for use as
  independent variables in social influence
  assessment
• A map of the direction information will spread,
  including rate and possible barriers

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SNA and friendship

• Whos connected with whom?
• How closely?
• How many people are they connected with?
• Who else is connected to this many people?

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Asking personal questions

• Surveys
• Who do you know?
• Who do you communicate with?
• Who do you trust?
• Define your relationship
• Whos trustworthy? (Poortinga Pidgeon, 2003
  Cvetkovich (1999) Renn Levine, 1991)
• Whos credible? (Renn Levine, 1991)
• Who do you compare yourself with? (Lennox
  Wolfe, 1984)
• Whos the most prototypical?

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N675
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• This N75
• But what does it mean if someones considered
  close or distant?

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The micro-network influence

• Density
• Position
• Role
• Direction

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Results Single explanatory variable (General
Communication)

• The greatest prediction comes from general trust
  followed by credibility, which is not surprising,
  as this is proposed in Sherifs (1981) contact
  hypothesis.

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Single explanatory variable General Trust SNC
categories

• Effect of interpersonal closeness on mode of
  communication (e.g., Garton et al, 1997)
• Offline communication contributes the most to the
  estimate of General Trust. Online public
  communication contributes the least.

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Spare a thought for ethics

• Be transparent
• Give something back
• Talk to anyone who asks
• Follow ethics guidelines (AoIR, UNESCO and others)

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In Sum

• Closeness has implications for social learning,
  even in the virtual environment
• Virtual communities operate in very similar ways
  to other communities both on and offline
• They bring together distributed individuals based
  on common experience, motivations and reputation
• This is particularly true for virtual world
  participants because of the explicit social
  design of the software
• Trust varies according to communication medium
• Trust is paramount
• Dont jeopardise that trust.

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• Thank you!
• E A.Krotoski_at_surrey.ac.uk
• W http//www.toaskid.com
• SL Social Simulation Research Lab, Hyperborea