[Air-l] commodification of online spaces

[Sara M. Grimes]

Hi Rebekah - 
At the risk of tooting my own horn, I've been involved in a couple of
projects on children's online games that you might be interested in:

Grimes, Sara M. & Shade, Leslie R. (2005). "Neopian Economics of Play:
Children's Cyberpets and Online Communities as Immersive Advertising in
Neopets.com." International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 1(2):
181-198.

Chung, Grace and Sara M. Grimes (2005). "Data Mining the Kids: Surveillance
and Market Research Strategies in Children's Online Games." Canadian Journal
of Communication 30(4): 527-548.

I also have a chapter in Patrick Williams and Jonas Heide-Smith's upcoming
book "The Player's Realm" on TOS contracts in children's online games, which
deals with commodification:

Grimes, Sara M. (Forthcoming). "Terms of Service, Terms of Play in
Children's Online Gaming." In Williams, Patrick and Jonas Heide Smith (Eds.)
In, The Players’ Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 


Betsy Book also has a paper on advertising in online games that includes
HabboHotel. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=536422

Leslie Regan Shade has a chapter on gURL.com called "Gender and the
Commodification of Community: Women.com and gURL.com" in Community in the
Digital Age. Eds. Darin Barney and Andrew Feenberg, Rowman and Littlefield,
2004.

Seth Grossman has a great article in the Yale Law Journal on the  regulating
advergames called "Grand Theft Oreo: The Constitutionality of Advergame
Regulation"

Good luck with your search!


Sara M. Grimes
PhD Candidate/School of Communication
Research Assistant/Applied Communication + Technology (ACT) Lab
Simon Fraser University

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:35:40 +0100 air-l at listserv.aoir.org wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Is anyone doing work or can anyone suggest work that's been done
> around the commodification of spaces for children and young people
> such as MySpace, Neopets, Habbohotel or Flickr?  I'm particularly
> interested in spaces that are for designed youth
> participation/production.  I've found one reference to Neopets
> (Harris) and one to Habbohotel (Seiter).  Thanks!
> 
> Rebekah Willett
> 
> Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media
> Institute of Education, University of London
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