Hi Rebekah - At the risk of tooting my own horn, I've been involved in a couple of projects on children's online games that you might be interested in: Grimes, Sara M. & Shade, Leslie R. (2005). "Neopian Economics of Play: Children's Cyberpets and Online Communities as Immersive Advertising in Neopets.com." International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 1(2): 181-198. Chung, Grace and Sara M. Grimes (2005). "Data Mining the Kids: Surveillance and Market Research Strategies in Children's Online Games." Canadian Journal of Communication 30(4): 527-548. I also have a chapter in Patrick Williams and Jonas Heide-Smith's upcoming book "The Player's Realm" on TOS contracts in children's online games, which deals with commodification: Grimes, Sara M. (Forthcoming). "Terms of Service, Terms of Play in Children's Online Gaming." In Williams, Patrick and Jonas Heide Smith (Eds.) In, The Players’ Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Betsy Book also has a paper on advertising in online games that includes HabboHotel. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=536422 Leslie Regan Shade has a chapter on gURL.com called "Gender and the Commodification of Community: Women.com and gURL.com" in Community in the Digital Age. Eds. Darin Barney and Andrew Feenberg, Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. Seth Grossman has a great article in the Yale Law Journal on the regulating advergames called "Grand Theft Oreo: The Constitutionality of Advergame Regulation" Good luck with your search! Sara M. Grimes PhD Candidate/School of Communication Research Assistant/Applied Communication + Technology (ACT) Lab Simon Fraser University On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:35:40 +0100 air-l@listserv.aoir.org wrote:

Hi all,

Is anyone doing work or can anyone suggest work that's been done around the commodification of spaces for children and young people such as MySpace, Neopets, Habbohotel or Flickr? I'm particularly interested in spaces that are for designed youth participation/production. I've found one reference to Neopets (Harris) and one to Habbohotel (Seiter). Thanks!

Rebekah Willett

Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media Institute of Education, University of London _______________________________________________ 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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