Thanks for the link Lauren! At least the article doesn't end up as creepy as it starts out. I'm with you -- I was getting hives from the whole first paragraph. Club Penguin is a pretty safe site; I don't think the reporter could have gone too far without getting kicked out. I spend time in Habbo, a site that used to attract a lot of pre-teens, but has now positioned itself for the older teen market. I never lie about my age (but you can use numbers in chat there), and I would never go "on a date" with ANYone there. There are some weird sexuality/bonding builds in these environments; Club Penguin lets you hold flippers; Habbo doesn't allow body contact between avatars, but they do offer double beds in the catalog in which two avatars may, looking very flat, eyes straight ahead, lay side by side. CP has a more moderator-intensive presence. I wouldn't worry about my kid in CP as much as I would an under-ager in Habbo. I think there's a lot of in-world research to be done in these sites; I'm currently looking at how religion and ceremonies get represented, and I'm doing a long-term study on memorials -- kids make rooms and decorate them to memorialize their pets, their friends, stars who die, events like the holocaust and 9-11, etc. But I don't see anything to be gained by using language that sexualizes the embodied researcher or the researcher's experience. :-D. Deanya emmiedee in Habbo Lois Ann Scheidt wrote:
Lauren, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if their "date" was also an adult posing as a kid. It's an issue of like attracting like...most 12 year olds have pretty clear vocabulary and interest limits that don't vib with the average adult. I always wonder on those DateLine predator installments how many of the guys would have actually found kids...or if they were actually attracted to the "kid" in question because the kid wasn't a kid. An intellectual question only.
Lois Ann Scheidt
Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA
Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and IUPUC, Columbus IN USA
Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com
Quoting "Lauren M. Squires" <lauren.squires@gmail.com>:
I haven't been following the recent ethics discussion on the list too closely, but I know that part of that discussion is "academics" v. "journalists" or other kinds of cultural analysts and the responsibilities/standards they hold themselves to. So it was that this article in Slate kind of threw my jaw open:
http://www.slate.com/id/2173910/pagenum/all
it starts out... "I'm not sure, but I think I went on date with a 12-year-old last night. We met at Club Penguin, a social networking site for preteens. I was a blue penguin, new to town. She was pink, and carrying a surfboard."
A reporter posing as a 12-year-old in an online environment specifically for kids? And then talking about one of the experiences as a "date"? This is really interesting given that so often reporters are telling us that adults are always trolling for kids online and it's SCARY. The reporter even writes:
"Creating a penguin is simple, though the entire sign-up process emphasizes safety in such a way that a curious adult can't help feeling like a predator."
Great to know about the safety measures, but red flag for me about the process of getting the article. I understand that adults want to understand what kids are doing online, and I appreciate this attempt at getting into the culture rather than assuming things about it based on non-participant experiences, but why not interview some of the 12-year-olds instead?
thoughts?, Lauren
-- lauren m. squires lx: http://polyglotconspiracy.net cmc: http://sociocmc.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@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
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