Well, I can think of a few situations in which this is an issue. I'm hesitant to give too many details for fear of causing someone further embarrassment, but I do know someone who was quoted in a published, peer-reviewed piece of research and identified by avatar name, which gave me (and plenty of other people) enough information to identify the "real person" behind the avatar. Anyone who can Google could have done the same, and it was not a flattering quotation! I teased him about it as a friend, but I'm sure some people were less kind! It's a bit like saying quoting Mark Twain is sufficient to make Samuel Clemens anonymous, I suppose. Even if that wasn't the case, I always further anonymize avatars and online handles in my work because using them is a threat to online identity as much as "real identity". Even if no one could associate my offline "real" persona with my avatar in a MMOG or Second Life or even on a message board, I can still be impacted by it in major ways. My avatar might not be "real", but the way other avatars interact with it is a very real part of my experiences, and things attributed to it are a very real part of my identity, even if "only" online. Kristin Lindsley On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 7:09 PM, Gordon Carlson <gordycarlson@gmail.com> wrote:
A common method for protecting individuals is obscuring their identity via pseudonyms etc. Isn't this sort of the function an avatar plays? Assuming you do not divulge the real world identity, isn't anonymizing or otherwise protecting avatars sort of redundant?
I am all for leaning on the side of caution, but either avatars are already pseudonyms for people or the avatars aren't real and should not be covered by IRB. I can't see a case for them actually being human, though I am very much up for hearing one...
Thoughts?
-Gordon Carlson -PhD student, UIC
On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 6:04 PM, Steve Jones <sjones@uic.edu> wrote:
If I may ask: Why? Is it because the avatars somehow "represent" humans (or vice versa)? Can we be sure that the "harms" we may identify in the case of human subjects are ones that could also harm avatars? Might there be avatar-specific "harms" to which we should attend? What was behind the Review Board's decision? And how does it define "online identity?"
Sj
On Mar 7, 2008, at 3:22 PM, Marj Kibby wrote:
Dr Marjorie Kibby, Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture Faculty of Education and Arts The University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia Marj.Kibby@newcastle.edu.au +61 2 49216604
Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> 03/08/08 4:26 AM >>> The question was.... "When I take pictures of any random person using a building in sl, am I doing human subjects research?'
Our Review Board guidelines say that online identities must be afforded the same protection from harm as real world identities. They would see avatars as human subjects.
Marj
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