Exploring Second Life: an exercise in digital ethnography

February 10, 2014February 10, 2014 / annmarie hoyt / 6 Comments

second_life_logo

Second Life is a virtual world where people interact online as their virtual selves. A person can have a integrated realistic avatar, one that is more of an augmented self, or an immersed version of self.

Let me just say, that if you’re the type of person, as I am, who doesn’t like to read the instructions when you get a new piece of software or a new device, then Second Life probably is not for you. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the draw of interacting anonymously and in world with no consequences. I also see the benefit for practical applications like education and research. I have no doubt that there are very real friendships that have been formed, much the same way many people have “Facebook friends” they’ve never actually met. You just have to have the patience to get past the learning curve of Second Life.

I was entering Second Life for research purposes. I was trying to learn more about it and some of its basic functions. I thought I’d be a combination of passive and active, both observing and interacting. Let me just say that there is so much to learn about Second Life that it is impossible to give a good account of this virtual world having only spent five hours in it. Even though Second Life is not as well-known or as populated as it was in it’s heyday, it still has, relatively, a lot of regular users. I thought it would be a valuable place to visit to better understand researchers who have used it in ethnography.

Most of us like to plug and play. That simply isn’t possible with Second Life. I did some research reading a few blogs before beginning my use of Second Life, and it seemed fairly straightforward. However, once I was in the world, there was a lot that I just couldn’t figure out.

Most of the simple controls are straightforward, but the controls are by no means intuitive. I expected them to be much easier to navigate than they were. Things like walking, flying, chatting, and making basic changes to my initial appearance were pretty easy. For some reason, I just could not seem to get my hair right, though. Since I didn’t have the patience to wait or have the desire to take the time to figure it out, I decided to go to a place where I could buy the kind of hair I wanted.

First Edits to appearance

One of the, seemingly, easy things about Second Life is that if you don’t want to take the time or don’t have the knowledge to create something, you can buy it. I didn’t think I’d be able to get a good idea of this virtual world without exploring, so I visited several shops. I looked at and demoed hair styles, clothing, and animations and decided to buy a few. In order to do this I needed Linden Dollars, so I went to my account and purchased over 3,000 Linden Dollars for about $15 US dollars. After demoing a hairstyle I liked, I decided to purchase it. The trouble was, once I purchased it, I couldn’t find it. I looked and searched in my inventory. I checked the “Recent” tab, but it was no where.

confusing hair

I had different troubles with clothing. I purchased several outfits and some jewelry. Although I was able to put on most of the clothing, some of it wouldn’t go on my body, and instead looked like I was trying to wear a poster around my waist. Try as I might to figure out what I had done wrong, I couldn’t correct it. So, I added that to my wasted spending.

troubles wearing new clothing

But my purpose of entering Second Life was not only to explore the controls, but also to interact, so after buying some funky dance move animations, I transported to a dance club I found in my search.

I went to a dance club where people were dancing by themselves. I saw in the chat that some people were referring to the music and the voice of the DJ, but I could not hear either. After some investigating, I discovered I’d accidentally turned off the sound when I had denied using the Smart Voice feature. I found the answer on the community page, which has lots of good suggestions and answers. Basically, I Googled anything I didn’t know how to do, and that’s how I would find blogs and discussion posts that would help me.

So, I went back to the club and I danced. And it was fun. For about a moment. Then it was old. I realized that the only people talking to each other clearly knew each other. When I went back to this same club several hours later, it was almost exclusively couples dancing together.

So far I had had exactly two people talk to me the entire time I had been in Second Life. I had tried to initiate conversation by saying hello to one and asking a question, and, after my clothing fiasco, complimented another’s very nice dress. That’s as far as is it went.

Herein lies the main point of my observations while in Second Life. For those who are used to the world and have built virtual homes, businesses, and relationships in it, Second Life would be a great place to live online. If you’re new, there is a heavy technical learning curve that can be discouraging. You also miss out on a lot of the relational parts that would build value to the experience, simply because it isn’t easy to get to know people. I particularly found it difficult to gauge people when chatting with them. Where people engaging in a medical education pilot in Second Life found this helpful in discouraging judgment when asking questions, I found the lack of expression added to the confusion of meeting and communicating with new people. When you’re meeting a person out in the “real” world, you can read their body language and hear the tone of their voice. While it is possible to hear someone’s voice in Second Life if they’re using Second Voice, most of the people I encountered were not using it, and we were relying solely on typing and reading in the chat feature. If someone had added the appropriate animations to communicate body language, they could use those. But that comes back to the learning curve. To effectively communicate while in Second Life, you’d have to have a library of animations.

So, if you’re interested in a virtual world experience and have a lot of time to dedicate to it, I can see Second Life providing an escape and a unique experience. I would like to add that the developers make it very clear, as shown in the screen shot above that I took while registering, that nothing is private that you do in Second Life. Given the widespread provocative clothing, animations, and locations, I think that’s important to remember.

Sharing Religious Content on Social Media – Survey Results

February 5, 2014 / annmarie hoyt / 12 Comments

Last week, I put together a questionnaire to survey people about their use of social media with regards to how often they shared religious content. You can find out about how I structured my questionnaire HERE. This week I am sharing my results. (Note: If you’d like to view larger images of the graphs and charts, just click on them to view the full size images.)

I must admit, I had no idea what sort of response I would receive posting my questionnaire on my Facebook profile, Twitter feed, and a Facebook group, but I did not anticipate receiving as many as 270 completed responses. The amount of data I was able to compile, gives the results more validity, in my opinion.

By far the most heavily used social media platform was Facebook. 100% of the respondents said they used it, with the next highest being LinkedIn with 44%, then Pinterest with 42%, and Twitter with %40. This makes sense, since I posted the link to the questionnaire on Facebook.

Others that were written in included SnapChat, Yammer, Trello, and YouTube.

Most people share content on social media sites More than Once a Day.

The demographics were heavily female, 70% to 30% male.

And 58% were aged 35-54. After reviewing these numbers, I am second-guessing these age groupings I used from a standard bank of questions on Qualtrics, and probably should’ve broken up this into two groups.

43% of the respondents graduated with a 4-year College Degree, the next highest being those with Master’s Degrees at 18%, with those completing Some College next at 17%.

The smallest groups were those with Doctoral Degrees and Less than High School, each being only 1%.

The vast majority of those surveyed (89%) share their own photos, videos, and updates.

81% share content from friends, and 61% share content linked from websites.

When broken down by religious affiliation, those identifying themselves as Christians dominated the numbers with 78%.

The next highest was Other at 13%, 7 of whom wrote in they were Agnostic, and 4 Catholic.

Of those who identified themselves as Christian, the highest percentage was Roman Catholic with 21%. The next highest was 17%, saying they don’t attend formal worship. While most of the respondents were Christians, I think these results help show the variety of Christian backgrounds amongst those surveyed.

40% of those surveyed attend worship Once a Week.

The next highest was those who said they Never attended formal worship.

61% responded that they share content that expressed their religion on social media.

39% said they did not.

Of those who share content expressing their religious beliefs, the fewest respondents share either once a day or more than once a day, and the most respondents shared 2-3 times a month.

So that’s a run-down of the basic data. Here’s where it gets interesting. When cross-tabulating the data, you can see some interesting trends.

The data shows, as seen in the table above, the more often a person shares content on social media, the more likely they are to share content that expresses their religious beliefs.

The data also shows, as seen in the table above, that those having completed less than high school and those having earned professional degrees are the most likely to share content that expresses their religious beliefs.

As seen in the table above, the data supports that those aged 25 and under are more likely to share content that expresses their religious beliefs.

You can see in the table above the kind of religious content people are sharing by age.

Women are more likely than men to share religious content that expresses their beliefs.

Christians are more likely to share content that expresses their religious beliefs than the other religions, having the only positive ratio of 2-1.

The results also show that those Christians who identify themselves as Baptist and Anglican are the most likely to share religious content, followed by Evangelicals.

Lastly, attendance at worship has a big impact on people’s willingness to share religious content that expresses their beliefs, as seen in the table above. Those who attend worship at least once a month are significantly more likely to share content on social media that expresses their religious beliefs.

If you’d like to take a look at the geographical data in relation to how often a person posts religious content, you can take a look at the table, Frequency of sharing religious content by location.

I wasn’t at all surprised that most of the survey’s respondents lived in Florida. What did surprise me was how many from outside of the U.S. responded. Incidentally, I received a negative comment about me generalizing those who “do not reside in the U.S.” inferring that I was a typical American, not seeing others as valid. I must assure everyone, I simply didn’t expect to receive many responses for my little survey, and certainly not any from those living outside the U.S., since most of the people I know live here in Florida. The results were given a snowball effect when four online friends decided to share the link the questionnaire on their own pages.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to take the survey. I hope you all enjoyed reading about the results as much as I did.

Survey Says?

January 29, 2014January 29, 2014 / annmarie hoyt / 13 Comments

Surveys. There are so many of them! From the U.S. Census, to the random online questionnaire, to the one at the bottom of the receipt in your wallet, it seems someone wants to know our information and opinions about almost everything!

Since I’m considering doing some deeper research into how much religion is a part of people’s social media activity, I thought I’d put together a questionnaire using my own Facebook and Twitter accounts to survey my online friends and followers about whether posting about their religious beliefs is a part of their social media habits. After reviewing a few sites to determine which would best facilitate my questionnaire, I decided to use Qualtrics.com. I liked the format of setting up my survey questions, how it looked visually, and the ease of reading the reports.

I started by letting the respondent know that for the purposes of this survey, I’d like them to answer based on their personal use of social media, not any pages they may manage. I thought this was an important distinction to make. The first question was a question to weed-out any respondents who did not meet my criteria — mainly, that they use social media. I used Qualtrics’ “skip logic” feature, so a respondent answering “none” would immediately skip to the end of the survey.

The second question asked about the respondent’s “religious affiliation.” If they answered “Christian” or inputted “Catholic” or “Roman Catholic” (non-case sensitive), they would then be moved to a question looking for more specifics about their denomination, or way they choose to worship in the Christian faith. If they chose any other the other answers, it would jump to the next question about how often they attend formal worship services.

I then asked several demographic questions about gender, age, level of education, and geographical location. I asked these questions for two reasons: I’d like to know the results, in terms of who is answering my questionnaire, but also to see if there are any links between any of these specific demographics and their occurrences of religious postings to social media, or lack thereof.

I then got to the point of my questions asking how often they share content on social media. If they answered “Never,” they’d be immediately moved to the end of the survey. All of the other answers given would give me valuable data to compare to a later question.

This question was followed with one asking if they share content from “yourself or outside sources that expresses your religious beliefs?” Again, if they answered “No,” they’d be immediately moved to the end of the survey.

The final two questions asked about the frequency of the content they share that expresses their religious beliefs, followed by a more specific question about the kinds of content they share that expresses those beliefs.

You may find yourself asking, why is this all important? Well, I’ll tell you. According to a 2011 New York Times article, the Jesus Daily Facebook page had more engagement than Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, or Manchester United. PageDataPro.com shows that Jesus Daily remains in the top spot for PTAT still.

I believe many people of faith are using social media to nurture and express their faith. However, according to a 2013 article which sites a Carnegie Mellon University study, this sort of behavior may be effecting a job candidate’s ability to get hired. All of the effects of expressing your religious beliefs on social media may be difficult to quantify, but it’s a very interesting topic that I hope to learn more about. This questionnaire is just one small part in that process.

If you’d like to participate in my survey by answering my questionnaire, it will be available HERE through Saturday, February 1, 2014. I’ll be posting about the results next week, so stay tuned!

Building SEO, Brick By Brick

January 15, 2014 / annmarie hoyt / 12 Comments

If you build it, they will come . . .

Passing Hasbro this year as the world’s second biggest toy manufacturer, Lego is the subject of my SEO keywords search today. Being mother to an 8-year-old boy, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone not being familiar with the Lego brand. It should come as no surprise since Lego controls 85% of the construction-toy sector here in the United States. They are even about to release a movie I’ve seen heavily advertised on DisneyXD and other channels my son likes to watch, which I actually think I will enjoy seeing.

The Lego brand has been steadily on the rise with the Lego Group’s share of the global market 7.1% in 2011, 8.6% in 2012, and 8.8% in 2013, so I was expecting some great results from my SEO keyword search. I discovered through research that Lego was known for their creativity, constructive play, and strategic play. But, let’s face it, Legos are toys kids play and create with. They’re educational building tools, but they’re sets of toys. So with all that in mind, the keywords I searched for and the results were:

building blocks (10th page, last result)
constructions sets (1st page, last result)
educational toys (2nd page, 1st result)
building sets (2nd page, 1st result)
blocks (3rd page, 8th result)
bricks (2nd page, 2nd result)
star wars toys (2nd page, 4th result)
building bricks (1st page, 9th result)
strategic play (1st page, 8th result)
creative play (6th page, 2nd result)

Now, in my recording of these results, I think it’s important to note that I only recorded results from official Lego sites. Often, sites like Amazon, Target, ToysRus and others would appear in the search results higher than the official Lego pages. I think the vast majority of Lego buyers are probably doing what my professor, Dr. Selepak, is doing and going directly to Amazon, or other trusted shopping sources. These sites are, obviously doing their own promotion through SEO, and it’s a win-win for all involved. The results I listed above also don’t show other things like blogs, lists, and other sites that had the word “LEGO” either in their title or description. I did an extra search for “legos” just for fun, and the first three were official Lego sites, followed by Wikipedia, then retailers ToysRus, Amazon, and Target.

I am by no means an expert on code, but in taking a look at the Lego website coding, I saw little evidence that SEO best practices were used. By the nature of the product and the vast number of varieties available, many of the keywords were found in the text descriptions throughout the website, but the code chose to refer to items by their product names, which were much less descriptive.

I found the most surprising and interesting find to be the keywords, “building blocks” coming so far down the list results of my search. When I think of Legos, they’re essentially building blocks. However, in researching for this assignment, I learned they’re so much more. They’re a brand that was almost bankrupt just over a decade ago, due largely in part to trying to create things that were “un-Lego-y.” Now they’re using ideas that are “obviously Lego” and making them profitable again. With large growth in Asia and a focus in that developing market, I am hopeful they will be around for many years to come!

annmarie hoyt

Story is my love language.

Spring Semester 2014

Exploring Second Life: an exercise in digital ethnography