[Air-L] SL Journalism research

[Annabelle]

Hello all, 

I¹ve been lurking on this list for a little while now and think the time has
come to speak up. I am an undergrad Honours student from Sydney Uni and am
researching SL for my thesis. This list has been very generous with honours
enquiries before and I am hoping to tap into that expertise!

I¹m looking at the role of journalism (using a fairly broad definition) in
Second Life, and how this impacts upon governance and the idea of a Œpublic
sphere¹ within SL. I am planning to research this through using a public
forum in SL and a blog, complemented by individual interviews and textual
analysis of some of the journalistic publications themselves. I would really
like some feedback on whether anyone has done this kind of research before,
how successful or otherwise it was and any tips on how to get it up and
running. 

I would also love to hear from anyone who has done any research or study of
journalism in virtual worlds. I¹m particularly interested in the idea of
journalism as Œpublic conversation¹ and ideas about the public sphere and
public opinion negotiation. I know there is a growing body of work on
governance in virtual worlds (or the lack thereof) and would also appreciate
any pointers towards any new or social science based work in this area
(there appears to be lots of scholarship around legal questions of
governance and not so much on the social/political side ­ but maybe I¹m
wrong!).

Thank you for any help or pointers. Will keep the list posted on when the
public forum is happening and hopefully see some of you there in SL.

Regards, 

Annabelle Boyd Jones

Honours Student, Department of Media and Communications
The University of Sydney
e: annabellebj at student.usyd.edu.au