Virtual worlds research can provide insights into important social questions such as racism and ethnic discrimination. An exploratory study of a “Muslim” avatar in Second Life provides intriguing findings that beg for more in-depth research.
Methal Mohammed teaches English as a second language in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University. She first came to the US as a Fulbright Scholar from Baghdad, Iraq. As part of a class in visual culture, she created a Second Life (SL) personal avatar, “noorelhuda Beb”. “Noorelhuda” first dressed in long trousers, a long sleeved shirt and white shoes. She had “basic” features and long brown hair. She teleported to several sites to make friends but spent most of her time sitting alone.
The researcher decided to add a hijab (headscarf) to her avatar. Noorelhuda with her hijab then set out to a variety of sites to meet other avatars using the question, “I am new here, can you please help me?” Avatars she met either commented briefly or turned away and kept going.
A handful of vignettes from noorelhuda’s visits reveal that she was making some progress establishing contacts and engaging in constructive conversations related to her hijab and its cultural meaning. Things were going well until noorelhuda decided to revisit an earlier site: a beach resort where other avatars were sunbathing or dancing. She was approached by a male avatar policeman who pushed her into the sea where she drowned. She was “killed.”
This brief study connects to many questions about what SL interactions reveal about Real Life (RL) including racism, sexism, exclusion, appearance-based judgments, and aggression. It also raises the issue of research ethics: in cultural anthropology, it is unethical to carry out undercover research. One has to inform research participants about the goals of the research and protect their anonymity. “Informed consent” is thus an important guideline, but it has the downside of preventing anthropologists from doing research in “natural” situations where actors are not influenced by knowing that their words, thoughts, and behaviors are being observed and recorded.
Research in SL necessarily protects the anonymity of “research participants.” So is it okay for someone like “noorelhuda” to conduct “under cover” research in SL? If she had told people that she was visiting sites and trying to meet people as part of a research project, would her experiences have been different? Would people have been more interested in talking with her, or the opposite? Would people displayed less racism? Would the policeman have “killed” her?
Photo, “A Muslim lady in SL”, from Flickr and Creative Commons.
anthropologyworks 