Social Life of Avatars

• 1 Social Interaction in Virtual Environments: Key Issues, Common Themes, and a Framework for Research.- 2 Social Conventions in Computer-mediated Communication: A Comparison of Three Online Shared Virtual Environments.- 3 Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds.- 4 Rest in Peace, Bill the Bot: Death and Life in Virtual Worlds.- 5 30 Days in Active Worlds - Community, Design and Terrorism in a Virtual World.- 6 Lessons Learned: Building and Deploying Shared Virtual Environments.- 7 The Long-term Uses of Shared Virtual Environments: An Exploratory Study.- 8 Social Influence within Immersive Virtual Environments.- 9 Meeting People Virtually: Experiments in Shared Virtual Environments.- 10 Collaboration in Multi-modal Virtual Worlds: Comparing Touch, Text and Voice and Video.- 11 The Digital Divide: Status Differences in Virtual Environments.- 12 The Social Life of Small Graphical Chat Spaces.

From the reviews: "At the heart of this book is a simple question: how do people who meet in computer-generated worlds interact? ... The strengths of this book lie in what it reveals of the orderliness of interaction in virtual environments. ... If you work in this domain, should you have it on your bookshelf? Yes, of course." (Peter Tolmie, New Media & Society, Vol. 6 (3), 2004) "If you are interested in virtual environment (VE) and social interaction in various types of VEs, this book is an excellent resource. This book focuses on how people interact with each other in computer-generated virtual worlds. ... The Social Life of Avatars gives readers two valuable points: how to improve the VEs and the potential that social interaction in virtual environments can be applied in various forms of computer-mediated interaction. Finally, let me recommend this book to you." (Sally Hong, Educational Technology and Society, Vol. 5 (4), 2002)