Telling The Story

If you have been following my previous posts, you know I am working toward submitting my dissertation proposal, hopefully in December 2009. Together, we have looked at the literature (I am still writing the review), and now I am examining my methodology and study design in the hopes of submitting my proposal and human subjects application at the same time.

Lit Review Update: The lit review has been grueling! I have gathered all my books and articles, and after 32 pages I realize I am nowhere near finished. Each time I introduce the name of another theory or school of thought (i.e., postmodernism), I have to explain the thought and include at least a couple of citations. This is happening a lot, with ancillary research at each turn. I imagined trying to describe the avatar of one of my subjects as a mixture of Joan Baez and Janis Joplin but then realized I would probably have to explain who Baez and Joplin are (were) if I used their names. This is going to be a long journey.

As for the methodology, I had previously decided to do an ethnographic case study. There is some difference of opinion on how many subjects I need (I originally thought I would try and study nine subjects but now realize that seven is a more realistic number). In any event, my work will be qualitative and will document the lived experiences of my subjects.

Miles and Huberman (1994) say qualitative data “is sexy.” They say this because rather than analyzing mountains of numbers from masses of subjects (only to conclude statistical information), qualitative researchers convey the way the steps on the old cabin creak under the weight of the visitor or how upon crossing the same threshold that five generations of family members crossed, one I greeted with musty air that is heavy with years of fireplace ash, pumpkin pies and tobacco. Qualitative researchers are storytellers; they are charged with placing themselves (and their readers) in the heart of the everyday lives of their subjects.

No Summer Vacation for Flameheart…

If you have been following my posts, you may have noticed a conspicuous absence since the end of June. Not to worry; behind the scenes things are as busy as ever! First, I began a new position within the University of Colorado – Denver as the Assistant Director of Online Learning for the recently launched Global Energy Management (MS). My role is to translate learning to mobile formats and to stream important events to the Internet.

This takes amazing advantage of my areas of expertise, as well as my interests in virtual worlds. The first month has been exhausting, as I have an hour commute and am now riding public transportation (quite a change from my home-based efforts of the last two years). This makes for some long days, and once I get home my puppy is all but on the attack ☺.

On to my research: My goal was to have my lit review finished by the middle of August, moving on to dissertation chapter three in the fall. That wasn’t going to happen with the job transition and all the reading I have to condense into something coherent to read. The idea of taking three years of reading and writing and condensing it all to 30 pages is intimidating. When I first learned about literary reviews, and the expectation of length, I didn’t know how I could write 30 pages of what amounts to referential support for my work. Now that I am writing, I have 24 pages of my lit review completed (at least a draft) and I don’t feel I have said much of anything! Knowing what I still have to complete, there are at least 10 pages left to complete.

At the same time (wow, this has been a busy six weeks), I have been asked to review an article for the journal THEN. I have written reviews, but have never blind-reviewed another person’s work for publication. This was a great learning opportunity, not only in seeing the level others are writing at but also to be able to critique another’s work. Which reminds me…my own review of Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, was published in the journal of Learning. Media and Technology. Here is the reference:

Wise, D. (2009). Synthetic World Order. Learning, Media and Technology
Vol. 34, No. 2, June 2009, 185–189

Also, check out my other blog: http://houseofflames.com. That blog covers my real-world, virtual world music and events pursuits and covers some exciting things happening on that side of life.

Procedures and Data Collection – Realizing What I Don’t Know (part 3)

In this post we will continue looking at the developmental framework of Erik Erikson.

Phase 5: Identity vs. Identity Confusion. Given what we have seen in the first four phases of identity development, doesn’t it make sense that phase five should bring us to a crossroads? Is it any wonder then how pre-adolescence is a time for a lot of turmoil, particularly if the first four phases have been less than ideal? Some of the characteristics of this phase (according to Erikson) are:

• Task identification vs. Sense of futility
• Anticipation of roles vs. Role inhibition
• Will to be oneself vs. Self-doubt
• Mutual recognition vs. autistic Isolation

Phases 6-8 are part of what Erikson calls the “moratorium phase,” with adolescent risk taking and experimentation (can you say 1960s?). These phases form the main components of psychosocial vitality and ends typically when a person reaches the age where they are ready to make long-term commitments such as marriage or children.

Phase 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation. Erikson states that psychosocial intimacy is not possible without a firm sense of identity, where the ratio of masculinity and femininity is proportional to the identity being developed. It is a time of sexual polarization versus bisexual confusion.

Phase 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation. This is where an adolescent chooses subgroups other than family with which to identify. Whether that is Boy Scouts, the football team, Gangs, or chess club, this is a time where leader-followership (with peers) is established. In its absence is Authority confusion.

Phase 8: Integrity vs. Dispair. This final phase is where a person has (typically) become a young adult, maturing to an acceptance of their place and role in society. It is a time of Ideological commitment versus Confusion of values.

Given Erikson’s framework, is it any wonder that some of us reach adulthood without successful completion of each of these phases? What if something like death or divorce interrupts “normal” development? Do we go back and complete these phases once we have reached adulthood, or are many of us “muddling” through life with an underdeveloped sense of identity. Is it any wonder then, what the draw of an anonymous, virtual world as a place to experiment with roles might offer?

Procedures and Data Collection – Realizing What I Don’t Know (part 2)

Once I abandoned Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a conceptual framework, I struggled to find something that could provide the structure for my research question #1: What factors influence the crafting of identity for performers in virtual worlds? In order to understand how this happens in virtual spaces, you first have to understand how it happens in the physical world. Almost by accident I stumbled on the work of Erik Erikson (1902-1994), whose work in developmental psychology led him to research identity (and identity crisis). His book, Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968) provided me with something of a map on how a healthy identity develops from birth to young adulthood. His graphic framework eight developmental phases (the first four presented in this post):

Phase 1: Temporal Perspective (in healthy development) vs. Time Confusion (unhealthy development). This is in the early stages of infancy where a baby can begin to distinguish things that have a time perspective vs. an impatience with delayed gratification. It is an “I want it now because I don’t trust you to give it to me later” statement.

Phase 2: Self-certainty (self esteem) vs. Self-consciousness (appearance in the eyes of others). This is a period of self-exploration in the development of autonomy from one’s structure. For toddlers, this is an “I do it myself” phase. For adults who seem to need to revisit this phase, it is a self-discovery mechanism. The healthy toddler will develop autonomy from one’s parents; the opposite problem is the development of low self-esteem. Because this typically happens at an early age, an interruption in this process might cause long-term effects in the formation of healthy sense of value. Wouldn’t it make sense to explore one’s value in a virtual world if this is an issue in real life?

Phase 3: Role Experimentation vs. Role Fixation. This is where a child can experiment freely with roles. How many of us “played” cowboy, or nurse, or fireman? How is this different, in essence, than experimenting with a role as an avatar? The opposite effect is to have a role assigned to us (not of our choosing). Did you have to take piano lessons when you were young? Did you have to be the caretaker for younger siblings? If we are assigned a role, it might inhibit the healthy development of the identity of our own choosing.

Phase 4: Apprenticeship vs. Work Paralysis. This is where a young person will either develop the skills and the ability to use the technology and tools of their time, or they will develop a deep sense of inadequacy in their own gifts and talents, given the immediate social environment. In the literal sense, this can be an indicator of class struggle, where family income can predispose one child toward productive advancement and another child toward inferiority.

Procedures and Data Collection – Realizing What I Don’t Know (part 1)

Of course, a study is only as good as its design and data collection. It is akin to building a house with no blueprint. Not only are worldview and method important (those were discussed in earlier posts), the framework one uses to “hang” their research on can make the difference between forcing a theory to “fit” and actually finding answers.

When I first centered on virtual identity as a topic of research, I looked at Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT—you can see its graphical representation at http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/pages/chatanddwr/chat/). CHAT has its roots in Russian psychological research, particularly the work of Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Vygotsky and his colleagues Luria and Leont’ev were proponents of the idea that humans didn’t react directly with their environment. Rather, there was a three-part relationship where humans interacted with their environment through mediating artifacts or tools, such as language. Through the continued work of Luria, Leont’ev and later Cole and Engeström, the activity model developed into more of a collective activity system based on three levels of motive, goals, and the conditions and tools at hand. The theory proposes that it is through activity that identity is developed and constantly amended, depending on the tools, the community and the responses of others during the activity. This has a significant application in a virtual space, where everything is activity-based. In a virtual world, it is almost impossible to exist in a vacuum – interaction with others is a primary reason someone enters the environment. While Cultural Historical Activity Theory focuses on the actual “activity” being studied, another faction of activity theorists are more concerned with the social and cultural aspects of the person engaging in the activity (known as Socio-Cultural Activity Theory). It is this very interaction with others within a group, how those participants respond to our contributions and how we are able to use those responses to move toward an outcome, that influences our identity and continuing membership in the community.

It would appear activity theory perfectly represented what happened in a virtual space. While the concept seemed easy to understand, it is difficult to master the roles within the theory (who is the subject, vs. object, what are tools, how is labor divided, etc.). But I was convinced that Activity Theory best described how interactions (activity) in virtual world transformed identity. I presented a paper on the topic in San Diego, based an entire semester of work on the theory and in the end realized it would take longer to really grasp the nuances of the theory than it would to write the dissertation itself. My work was supposed to make me a subject matter expert on identity formation—not Activity Theory. I finally relented and realized there had to be a better fit.

The Pilot Proposal (part 4)

If you have read the last few posts, you have an idea of what my dissertation study hopes to answer. I am fascinated with what factors contribute to an individual’s choice of personal identity in a virtual world and how closely that identity resembles real life. In the three years I have been involved with the House of Flames, a virtual music venue with a presence in Second Life and now ReactionGrid, I have met many performing musicians and believe as artists they have unique factors determining virtual identity and how that identity interplays with real life. I have had the opportunity to speak with many of them outside of virtual reality and have met several of them personally. I’m excited at their willingness to be part of my study and I can’t wait to gather data about their virtual and real lives.

Up until this point, we have been blogging about the introduction to my dissertation proposal—what components are part of the introduction and how I chose my research topic. The second portion of the proposal is a review of the literature. I covered much of that in previous proposals but also want to draw readers to the work of Turkle, Kondo and others who have researched role-based identity and how we craft identity in virtual worlds. I have recently read two books that I plan to make part of my study:

Boellstorff, T. (2008). Coming of age in Second Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Corneliussen, H. G., & Rettberg, J. W. (Eds.). (2008). Digital culture, play and identity: A World of Warcraft reader. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

The first book is specific to my work in that it looks at Second Life (SL) as the field of study. The author has written an ethnography that looks at the lived experiences of “average” people in SL, and the results of this participant observation over a three year period. If the reader is experienced in Second Life, particularly the early years of the environment, it will bring back a lot of fond memories.

As the second book suggests, it is more specific to the game World of Warcraft (WOW). This game is based on levels of proficiency, which a participant can gain through the accomplishment of tasks. It is basically a Tolkien-esque war game with limited avatar modification once a race is chosen (such as a dwarf). Games such as WOW don’t have the same dynamics as Second Life, which is more of three-dimensional social network. The book does go into the culture and identity of someone who enters a Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVT), making it a useful book across virtual platforms.

With my next post we will move into the third component of a dissertation proposal – the Procedures and Data Collection.

The Pilot Proposal (part 3)

My entrance into Second Life was my first experience in virtual environments. I wasn’t a gamer, unless it was a learning game (my background was in corporate training). I had no experience with creating a custom avatar and had never envisioned myself in three dimensions, except for that virtual model that allowed me to “try on” clothes at www.landsend.com – and that was depressing enough not to ever want to see myself in 3D again. Once I chose my new name and created my avatar, I was IMMERSED. This immersion was to the point where I lost all sense of time and became embedded in my avatar’s identity. While I found it difficult to separate my real life identity from that of my avatar, I met many people who were able to login, conduct themselves in whatever manner they wished (as their avatar), and log out without it seemingly affect their real lives. How could they do that? This brings me to my second research question:

2) Is there a relationship between a performer’s virtual identity and the level of embeddness and interplay with real life?

The rationale for this research question goes (in part) back to Nick Yee and his Proteus Effect, where he has shown that when an avatar changes behavior (and appearance) to gain acceptance in a group, some of those effects migrate back into real life. Yee’s work had to do with appearance—relative attractiveness and avatar height—and how those traits affected social interactions and aggressiveness. Yee showed that if an avatar presented favorable traits, that these traits migrated their way into the real lives of the participants. I also hope to refer to the work of Robert Kegan and his Orders of Consciousness. Kegan’s work, like that of Erikson (mentioned above), is also about development, but Kegan focuses on interactive development for adults in workplace situations and how that affects systems change. Kegan’s work is fascinating to me in the context of virtual environments because at some point in our professional lives we develop to the point where we become agents in our lived experiences as opposed to being the experience itself. A great example of this is in a performance review. How many of us have had a performance review where we took the feedback we were given as a personal attack? The person giving the review may have no idea who we are outside of the workplace, yet we took every shred of feedback as an intimate statement of our value. Truth be told, the review was on performance in the workplace—a role we fulfill during work hours. It wasn’t a statement of value, but that is how we perceived it. Kegan says that this is due to something called the Big Assumptions—things in our lives (usually from long ago) that shape how we perceive the world.

My goal is to show how Kegan’s Levels of Consciousness can apply to how embedded a person becomes in the lived experiences of their avatar and how this level of embeddedness migrates to their real life. My suspicion is that this embeddedness is also a function of how experienced the participant is in virtual worlds (I was finally able to separate my own lived experiences from that of my avatar after about nine months of persistent involvement) but Kegan’s phases illustrate the process nicely. For virtually performing musicians (my target group for the study), this embeddedness may also have to do with the feeback they get from a fan base. It would be easy to remain embedded in a virtual identity if that identity was giving feedback that was salient with an identity one wanted to maintain, as opposed to a real life identity that may have no resemblance to the virtual.

The Pilot Proposal (part 2)

In my last post, I mentioned my research questions and how the introduction to a dissertation proposal requires a rationale for the research questions chosen. That makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, if a student is going to hang their academic career on answering two or three main questions, it would stand to reason they would have to explain why those questions as opposed to any others. In my case, my research questions have to do with the crafting of identity in virtual worlds among performing musicians. Let’s look at the questions individually:

1) What factors influence the crafting of identity for performers in virtual worlds?

The background behind this question has to do with how someone perceives themselves in real life (RL) and what factors someone consciously changes about themselves in virtual reality (VR) in order to create a particular persona. In a VR such as Second Life (SL), a person has almost limitless ways of manipulating their appearance. What is behind those choices?

The background for this question lies in identity development and group perception. If you scrolled back a few posts to my literary review on identity, you will find that my work follows the mind and how we begin crafting our identity with mimicry and gestures. We then assign meaning to those gestures to begin to craft a sense of self. Once we have a sense of who were are, we test that assumption by becoming part of a group. This group will either agree with our perception of who we are, or we will be forced to become what the group finds acceptable (or find another group to join). All this is part of “normal” identity development in the framework of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson.

In real life, we are dealt the cards of our appearance, economic standing, environment, and any number of other factors that create what I call our “cultural footprint.” Some of things are beyond our ability to significantly change…or are they? In a virtual world, it is possible to change almost everything about our real lives, particularly if we can remain anonymous. If we become a virtual blank slate, wouldn’t it stand to reason we would be most likely to change those things we find undesirable in real life? This gets into things like role-based identity and the migration of culture but it also looks at the work of Nick Yee and what he calls the Proteus Effect—the behaviors of an avatar that conform to what is expected by a group in order to gain social advantages. This encompasses more than just appearance; it includes our gestures, behaviors, relationships and the persona we hope to create within the groups we belong to.

The Pilot Proposal (part 1)

My pilot proposal should have several components. Of course there is an introduction where I explain to my committee why I think studying how performing musicians craft their virtual identity is a worthy dissertation topic. To be honest, I think my committee thinks I am off on the fringe someplace but I keep them amused so they let me get away with studying something crazy. To their credit, they see there are implications for studying identity and culture because the world is becoming one global population and the cultural divisions that historically demarcate one culture from another are rapidly dissolving. Clifford wrote about migration of cultures, Giddens writes about modernity, and Michael Wesch researches how social media has made us all part of a globally unfolding story.

The Introduction should also indicate related literature on the subject. In the last several years a lot has been published on 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, World of Warcraft, and Everquest, however even before that there was a wealth of published literature on human-computer interaction, game-based learning, and text-based interation. My own work will focus first on identity formation then apply it to three-dimensional spaces. Once I have identified the related literature, I need to specify I will be doing a case study and my rationale for that choice. In my own situation, my goal is to dig deeply into issues of identity and what factors contribute to that decision for the people I choose to interview.

Finally, the last piece of my introduction is to state my research questions and state how I decided on those questions as a focus of my research. If you have been following my blog, you know the questions:

1) What factors influence the crafting of identity for performers in virtual worlds?
2) Is there a relationship between a performer’s virtual identity and the level of embeddness and interplay with real life?

State tuned for the rationale behind the questions…

Identity Research as Case Study or Phenomenon (part 2)?

In my last post, I mentioned the idea of conducting a phenomenological study as part of my part of my dissertation work. While there are similarities in the nature of what a phenomenological study seeks to uncover, perhaps the biggest drawback (in my opinion) is that it is too rigid and approach for what I am trying to discover. I want to know what contributes to the crafting of a virtual identity for performing musicians in Second Life. While I think this has implications across any number of disciplines, particularly as Social Media becomes more of a part of our daily existence, I don’t know if my work is going to be the foundation of policy or of official procedure in how someone is to create an identity. My goal is to tell a story of what influenced a particular group of people in one virtual world. While I have some of my own ideas of what influences virtual identity, I am less concerned about being proven right than I am in seeing what common themes appear as I interview the people I have chosen. This lends itself to more of a Grounded Theory approach but in that type of study, many more people are interviewed and the results are coded into software to analyze common themes. While I plan to use software to aggregate my data, my goal is to tell the in-depth stories of a handful of people, not the masses.

In the end, my original plan to conduct a comparative case study is still the best choice for my work. With a case study approach, I can be a part of the population I study (I am), I can collect data from a number of sources (I hope to interview as well as videotape concerts) and my goal is to look for generalizations that emerge from the data. It seems well suited to my style of writing, as well as my hope to do some digital storytelling as part of my dissertation. And it enables me to interview fewer people, but in far more depth.