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Friday, November 11
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PP 409
Avatar-Self Discrepancy and Its Reflections on Self-Presentation in Virtual Environments
A. Sivunen
1
1
Aalto University, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto, Finland
Ways to present oneself in front of various audiences have increased tremendously as computer-mediated communication technologies have developed in
the last few decades.The possibilities for identity building, self-presentation and impression management online are not relying anymore on asynchronous,
textual communication (see e.g. Baym, 1995; Walther, 1992), but are numerous via audio, video and graphical channels (see e.g. Griffith & Papacharis‑
si, 2010; Hogan, 2010; Tiidenberg, 2015). 3D virtual environments (VEs) are one example of communication media that enable various possibilities for
self-expression and impression management (see e.g. Bullingham & Vasconcelos, 2013; Dunn & Guadagno, 2012). These environments can be defined as
communication systems in which multiple interactants share the same three-dimensional digital space despite occupying remote physical locations and
can navigate, manipulate objects, and interact with one another via avatars, digital self-representations in a graphic 3D form (Sivunen & Hakonen, 2011;
Yee & Bailenson, 2007). Impression management, identities and self-presentation have been studied both in two-dimensional and three-dimensional
online settings in several contexts (see e.g.Tidwell &Walther, 2002; Bessière et al., 2007).These studies show that in social networking sites and blogs users
tend to “put their best face forward”(Hancock and Toma, 2009) but still aim at presenting themselves authentically (Ellison et al., 2012; Uski & Lampinen,
2014), whereas in game settings and virtual environments role-playing, gender-swapping and accentuation of certain aspects of one’s avatar may be more
common (Griffiths et al., 2004; Messinger et al., 2008). What is yet not known, however, is how authentic self-presentation and role-play are defined in
3D virtual environments, in which avatar appearance can be very different from users’ offline appearance. In this article, I study avatar-self discrepancy
and its reflections on users’ self-presentation performances and motives in virtual environment Second Life (SL). The users interacted in SL with assigned
avatars that bore some or no resemblance to them, and whose appearance they were able to modify only to some extent, for six weeks. Data was gathered
by conducting semi-structured interviews with the users (N=27) and analyzed with qualitative thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun & Clarke, 2006).
In thematic analysis, the data is encoded with a specific list of themes that may be both inductively derived from the data and deductively generated from
theory and prior research (Boyatzis, 1998). Drawing from self-presentation theory by Goffman (1959), I analyzed users’ online self-presentation in VEs as
synchronous performances (Hogan, 2010). The findings show three different types of self-presentation performances and four different types of motives
that guided these performances. Preordained discrepancies in appearance did not always dominate self-presentation performances. Instead, participants
developed ways to adjust their self-presentation despite of their divergent appearance. The results extend earlier work in this area by unpacking the re‑
lationships between users, their avatars and self-presentation in front of various audiences and contribute to the literature by showing the overlapping
motives behind these self-presentations. Finally, the findings reveal how users’(lack of) understanding of and interest towards particular online context is
intertwined with their online self-presentations.
PP 410
Youth’s Experiences with Online Strangers: Developmental Perspective
M. Cernikova
1
, L. Dedkova
1
1
Masaryk University, Institute for Research on Children- Youth and Families, Brno, Czech Republic
Youth interacting with unknown people from the Internet (so called online strangers) represents major concern for parents and general public (Fleming &
Rickwood, 2004; Madden, Cortesi, Gasser, Lenhart, & Duggan, 2012). Empirical data about the experiences of youth themselves are however scarce and of‑
ten focused primarily on their negative experiences (e.g. Livingstone, Haddon, Görzig, & Ólafsson, 2011). Previous research also mostly utilized quantitative
designs which may result in omission of important parts of youths’ lived experiences and perceptions. In the present study, we analyzed qualitative data
from EU Kids Online III project connected to meeting unknown people on the internet. Interviews and focus groups for this project were conducted with
youths from nine countries (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece, Malta, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom, N = 368). The age span
of the sample includes childhood (age of 9–10 years), early adolescence (11–13 years) and middle adolescence (14–16). Participants were inquired about
potentially negative or problematic situations they may encounter while using the internet and digital technology. Using thematic analysis, we classified
participants’ direct and indirect experiences connected to meeting online strangers. We describe richness of these experiences and classified them in to
five dominant categories, which are sorted by the varying level of interaction with unknown people online. These categories are: 1) one-way interaction,
2) instrumental interaction, 3) initiation of contact, 4) communication, and 5) offline face-to-face meeting. This classification includes both, pleasant and
unpleasant experiences, and brings a wider picture to this problematic. In this presentation we specifically focus on the developmental perspective: how
different are youth’s experiences with online strangers with relation to their age. The results are discussed with regard to youth development (transition
from childhood into adolescence) and categories of situations which children experienced and reported.