Abstract
This chapter outlines a typology of genres of ethnographic research with regard to virtual worlds, informed by extensive research the author has completed both in Second Life and in Indonesia. It begins by identifying four confusions about virtual worlds: they are not games, they need not be graphical or even visual, they are not mass media, and they need not be defined in terms of escapist role-playing. A three-part typology of methods for ethnographic research in virtual worlds focuses on the relationship between research design and ethnographic scale. One class of methods for researching virtual worlds with regard to ethnographic scale explores interfaces between virtual worlds and the actual world, whereas a second examines interfaces between two or more virtual worlds. The third class involves studying a single virtual world in its own terms. Recognizing that all three approaches have merit for particular research purposes, ethnography of virtual worlds can be a vibrant field of research, contributing to central debates about human selfhood and sociality.
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Notes
- 1.
I mention only gay Indonesians here for brevity: in this work I also discuss lesbian and transgender Indonesians.
- 2.
See Boellstorff 2008, chapter 2 for an extensive listing of scholarly work on MUDs.
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Acknowledgments
A draft version of this chapter was posted on the Savage Minds blog in August 2008. I thank the moderators of that blog, in particular Alex Golub, for their kind support. I thank also readers who commented on the draft, including “Montgamery McBlackwater” and Matthew T. Bradley.
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Boellstorff, T. (2010). A Typology of Ethnographic Scales for Virtual Worlds. In: Bainbridge, W. (eds) Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-825-4_10
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