[Air-L] avatar research ethics

[dddumitr at ucalgary.ca]

The relation between an avatar and a human being can be as simple as "this
is my puppet and I am its puppeteer"; or as complicated as "this avatar is
actually me, free of any constraints, able to be and do whatever I want".
Measuring this relation is hard if not impossible. I have certainly met
both, not only in other people, but also in myself; I guess I have not
'invested' too much in it. My yahoo avatar is of extremely little
significance to me. Should my SL or MUD avatar be killed or raped, I would
have to deal with more complex emotions and it would affect me in many
ways (the 2007 book "Second Life Herald" by Ludlow and Wallace is an
interesting read from this perspective, also raising the economic
perspective on the relation avatar-human, at least in SL).

The problem in my view is the fact that we tend to think of avatars (and
the technology behind them) as independent of the human element. How do
things change when they are perceived as 'extensions of the self' or when
the boundary between human and technological gets undermined?

On the other hand then, everything - including this post - may be
approached and studied as extensions of the self. So, like one participant
said, does that mean one cannot look at cartoons without ethics boards'
approval? I do not have a solution to propose; it only seems to me that
both arguing that everything online is susceptible to ethics - and arguing
that avatars or blog posts or forums are only instruments and tools used
by human beings (and therefore not requiring ethics approval) - both are
simplistic.

Delia Dumitrica
PhD Candidate
Faculty of Communication and Culture
University of Calgary