Hi Deanya This is an interesting place. My 13 year old son spends considerable time on Habbo and many interesting issues have surfaced - he is a clever little social scientist already. For example, while this might be considered a 'safe' space, issues of homophobia, sexism and racism are prevalent. My son has pointed out these issues not only in their discussions, but also in how the characters interact and the handles they use. Also, people's accounts are often hacked (ie: to put furniture in the 'walls' and also to pretend you're someone else and do silly things so you lose all of your alliances). There is also an interesting hierarchy between players reflected in the occupations they have (they are often gendered as well), and the organization of the virtual society (empress, emperor, prince, princess...consorts & concubines, judges, governors, maids etc etc). What is also neat is that although they are messaging each other on Habbo, there is 'backchanneling' going on through MSN - both for strategy and alliances, but also for backstabbing. My son wanted me to tell you about cokemusic.com as well, which is similar. I would be interested in some of these sources as well as my son and I have a paper brewing :) Thanks! ******************************************** Tracy L. M. Kennedy PhD Candidate - Department of Sociology Graduate Fellow - Knowledge Media & Design Institute Research Associate - NetLab - Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 725 Spadina Ave. Toronto, ON M5S 2J4 tkennedy@netwomen.ca www.netwomen.ca www.kmdi.utoronto.ca/collaborative ******************************************** -----Original Message----- From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Deanya Lattimore Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:26 AM To: air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] social networking and habbo dot com has anyone done any research on the habbo.com phenomenon or others like it? It is a "safe site" for kids 13-18 years old where they create avatar characters and rooms for them, play games and chat. If anyone has information about other sites like this (I'm currently looking into yub.com) or any information about articles on social networking that take place in these kinds of spaces, I would love to hear it. I could probably also use references that survey children's computer use and studies of gendered behavior online. thank you all so much for this great list. Deanya Lattimore ABD Syracuse, Composition & Cultural Rhetoric http://www.deanya.com/ _______________________________________________ The Air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/