This link has been bookmarked by 3 people . It was first bookmarked on 22 Jul 2008, by Tara McGowan.
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23 Jul 08
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22 Jul 08
Tara McGowanArticle on Friendships forged online- possible characters? Bailenson & Yee interviewed on virtual identity!!!
virtual avatar socialnetworking social internet psychosocial friends identity Bailenson VHIL Stanford
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he thinks of the friends she's met online, the people she's connected to and bonded with on sites like Second Life, Facebook and MySpace.
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But virtual worlds - where people create computer-generated representations of themselves called avatars and play games, build societies, and meet for chatting, parties and more - also encourage deep, I-feel-like-I've-known-you-all-my-life friendships.
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Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which was created five years ago to study social behavior in virtual worlds. "This is a large part of our population putting stock into our online selves."
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ick Yee, also of the Lab, was a graduate student when he conducted a survey of 30,000 gamers that found that nearly 40 percent of men and 53 percent of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends.
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Howard Rheingold, the critic and writer who is credited with inventing the term "virtual communities,"
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Colin Trethewey is a spokesman for Weblo, a virtual world where people can buy and sell every property on Earth with real currency. He tells of one of Weblo's stars, who is a woman living in a small town on Canada's west coast. In real life, she's isolated by her location. Online, she's the mayor of 50 major cities, including Pittsburgh.
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"Friends online seem to be less conditional. They tend to give you honest, unconditional advice," Christina said in an e-mail interview.
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"My avatar doesn't have any injuries. She doesn't get hurt when she falls down," O'Keefe said, quickly adding that she doesn't present a false self to her online friends. "I'm just as real out there as I am out here."
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Kimberly Young, a clinical psychologist who teaches at St. Bonaventure University and the director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery in Bradford, Pa. "Already, we see people engaged more with their BlackBerry than with each other when they go to bars, dinner or anywhere."
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Rheingold said that even if online friends don't become best friends, there's a benefit to building a "portfolio of weak ties." When you experience something traumatic, he explained, like losing your home, you're most likely to seek shelter from one of your closest friends or relatives. But when you lose a job or are seeking a mate, a sizable network of weak ties can come to the rescue.
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21 Jul 08
Howard RheingoldHoward Rheingold said the things that are missing from online communications - lack of judgmental facial expressions, tone of voice, body posture - can feel like an advantage to some people.
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