alph Schroeder, Professor, Technology and Society, Chalmers University: Social Interaction in Virtual Worlds

Multi-user virtual environments of various types are becoming ever more widely used. But how do people interact within these environments? And what can social science offer for our understanding of these interactions? This presentation will use the examples of internet-based virtual worlds (such as Activeworlds) and research from experimental studies of interaction between users to look at a number of issues in multi-user virtual environments: trust, religion, geography, leadership in groups, the sense of co-presence, communication in text-based exchanges in graphical worlds, and the sense of 'community' in virtual worlds. The question that can raised in relation to all these areas is how technology shapes social life and vice versa, and my argument is that there is a complex relationship between them in the case of multi-user virtual environments, but that progress can nevertheless be made in analyzing this relation with the help of the relevant social science tools.

Välkommna!
Per-Olof Ågren