[Air-L] avatar research ethics

[Radhika Gajjala]

The avatar is an identity unto itself - with a logic and history and  
social location in-world in secondlife. If you name the avatar - there  
are community formations that link the avatar to various social  
contexts - so naming the avatar might lead to tracing the avatar even  
"RL" - but even if it does not, secondlifers are very particular about  
their avatar privacy as well.

at least this is my perception - I have been in secondlife in various  
modes since 2003 - and have encountered many people (including myself)  
who identify quite strongly with their avatars in-world - we have  
lives there (ridiculous as this may sound) and really just as much as  
I would not like my living room to be broadcast online (twittering is  
selective - so those of you who see me avidly twittering - dont for a  
moment think that's everything that's going on;-)) - I would not like  
everything I do on secondlife revealed. But revealing my avatar name  
in someone's research will allow for connections to be made.

Having said that - there are many in-character bloggers and those can  
probably be used as published texts - again taking all the other  
cautionary notes that were said earlier into account.
On Mar 7, 2008, at 7:09 PM, Gordon Carlson wrote:

> A common method for protecting individuals is obscuring their  
> identity via
> pseudonyms etc.  Isn't this sort of the function an avatar plays?   
> Assuming
> you do not divulge the real world identity, isn't anonymizing or  
> otherwise
> protecting avatars sort of redundant?
>
> I am all for leaning on the side of caution, but either avatars are  
> already
> pseudonyms for people or the avatars aren't real and should not be  
> covered
> by IRB.  I can't see a case for them actually being human, though I  
> am very
> much up for hearing one...
>
> Thoughts?
>