Dr John Martino from the Victoria University School of Education is conducting research into the social & communication aspects of both the creation of the Avatar 3D online virtual environment as well as into how young people actually engage with each other in the Avatar space and interact with the space itself.

In particular as part of the research the project team will examine:

• Elements within a 3D computer game space (Second Life) and related online collaboration tools (Web 2.0 based chat, messaging, blogs, forums) and their effect on issues of social inclusion.

The sample used for the research aspect of Avatar comprises a group of young people from a range of youth focused programs (such as the Sunshine Visy Hub and a range of after-school projects) will provide ideas, structures, and characters for the use within the virtual 3D space. Victoria University’s computer games students and staff will provide technical and production skills to facilitate the use of the virtual 3D space. A core group of 10-30 young people will be interviewed both in person in the virtual 3D space in order to provide an insight into how young people interact within this space. A larger group of young people will feed into this process in a range of ways in order to help populate the space and build the content.

The Research Component

Victoria University’s School of Education will conduct research throughout the project on how new technology influences the building of social relationships between young people. The research methodology will involve the use a range of of tools to analyse and describe what is going on within this space:

• Interviews.

  In-depth interviews are perhaps the most widely used qualitative research method. In-depth interviews as a technique are designed to elicit a vivid picture of a subject’s perspective on the research topic.

• Participant observation

  Participant observation is a widely used qualitative research technique that has its roots in traditional ethnographic research, whose objective is to help researchers learn the perspectives held by a study group.

• Textual Analysis

  Electronic transcripts of online communications through chat, email or blogs will be collected, coded and analysed for their meaning. The analysis of text is a widely engaged in practice with the domain of qualitative research (Perakyla, 2005).

• Social Network Analysis

  Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers and other information/knowledge processing entities. Entities are visualised as nodes within a network, while relationships and flows are shown as nodal links. SNA is used to analyse human relationships by evaluating the location of nodes within a network. Network location is determined by assessing the importance, or centrality, of a node to the network as a whole. Network location can tell us a great deal about how knowledge and influence are both transmitted and consolidated in social environments. It was originally developed by the IBM corporation to assist in corporate organisational restructuring.

• Grounded Theory
  Our use of Grounded Theory draws on the work of Glaser (2002) this research project will adopt the view that ‘all is data’, by which we mean that what is: ’going on in the research scene is the data, whatever the source, whether interview, observations, documents, in whatever combination. It is not only what is being told, how it is being told and the conditions of its being told, but also all the data surrounding what is being told. It means what is going on must be figured out exactly what it is to be used for, that is conceptualization, not for accurate description. Data is always as good as far as it goes, and there is always more data to keep correcting the categories with more relevant properties.’ (Glaser 2002)

Outcomes

A range of publications documenting the project development, conduct and findings will be produced over the next two – three years for dissemination to a range of audiences.

Avatar Literature Review