:: Netwoman ::

:: Sunday, December 23, 2007 ::

Are you an obsessive online gamer?

In case you're concerned about whether you - or someone you know - is "addicted" to online gaming, here are some proposed questions to ask yourself. From the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery...

EverQuest addiction? Many laugh at the thought, yet more cases are being seen each year. The highly addictive nature of online role-playing games impacts children and teenagers the most, but a growing number of adults are also getting hooked, and the latest craze is to online sports fantasy games.

Answer "yes" or "no" to the following statements to see if you may be addicted to online gaming:

1. Do you need to play online games with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve the desired excitement?
2. Are you preoccupied with gaming (thinking about it when offline, anticipating your next online session)?
3. Have you lied to friends and family members to conceal extent of your online gaming?
4. Do you feel restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop online gaming?
5. Have you made repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop online gaming?
6. Do you use gaming as a way of escaping from problems or relieve feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or depression?
7. Have you jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, or even risked your marriage because of your online gaming habit?
8. Have you jeopardized a job, educational, or career opportunity because of your online gaming habit?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, you may be addicted to online gaming. These are common warning signs that you have lost control, lied, or possibly risked a relationship to support your gaming behavior. Why wait until it is too late to seek out help? Contact our Counseling Services today to receive fast, caring, and confidential advice to stop online gaming or read through our library of Books and Tapes to help you find the information you need to understand Internet addiction and steps towards its recovery.

:: Netwoman 11:16 AM [+] ::
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Overcoming 'Real Life' Physical Barriers in Second Life

From RNIB -

Wheelies in Second Life

Second Life has drawn a lot of attention from accessibility circles this year and has been a hot topic of conversation across the blogsphere. While there are technical barriers of access for some groups of disabled people such as people with sight problems there are some huge benefits for others.

This video shows Judith, who has cerebral palsy, being interviewed about her Second Life experience by Roger Hudson and Russ who runs the Web Standards Group mailing list. Judith uses a head wand and keyboard to use a computer and spends a lot of time at Wheelies in SL, a club set up by Simon Walsh who also has cerebral palsy. In Simon’s own words, “Wheelies aims to make guests feel comfortable about disability as well as dancing and just plain having a good time”. I’ve spent a lot of time there myself hanging out with Simon listening to the resident DJ Cataplexia Numbers and other great acts who play live. You can even borrow a wheelchair from a line up just outside the front door.

:: Netwoman 11:06 AM [+] ::
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Revisiting the Internet Addiction Hype - Gaming & Teens

Article by Molly Shaw
Does your Teen Live a Second Life Through the Monitor?

As one of the first countries to have nationalized cheap broadband access, 90% of South Korea's households are now avid subscribers. As a result, PC Baangs (Internet cafes), have become some of the most lucrative businesses in the country. Teens swarm to these dimly-lit cafes before, during and after school to escape reality and play games like StarCraft, EverQuest, and Warhammer. In addition, countless online auction sites have popped up, targeting teen gamers addicted to buying virtual commodities. Because of their growing popularity, several cable channels are broadcasting online gaming competitions. Just as reality TV stars have reached A-list status in the U.S., top StarCraft gamers make six-figure salaries and have celebrity status.

To fight the war on web addiction, a growing number of hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and Outward Bound-like boot camps are offering treatments. Many of these therapies stress physical activity as a means to strengthen the addicts' bodies, weakened by sleep deprivation and sedentary lifestyles, and help them reconnect emotionally to the physical world.

We're back to conceptualizing the pervasiveness of internet use and gaming as 'addiction' and focusing on the amount of time spent online gaming.

So what is so addictive about these virtual realities? Playing MMORPGs and Second Life can have a therapeutic effect on players by filling emotional or psychological voids they experience in real life. These virtual worlds allow teens and adults to live fantasy lives through their alter egos, A.K.A. avatars. Players find approval, recognition and respect in their alternate realities, and form virtual relationships that are sometimes even more fulfilling than those in real life.

While the article makes some interesting points, and perhaps valid ones - there's no empirical research to support any of these claims & assertions. We have numbers, we have the amount of time people are spending playing online games - but what we don't have is any social research or context to understand what's really going on here - other than psychological speculation & old paranoia. There are always extreme cases out there, but we can't generalize this to the population...

:: Netwoman 10:51 AM [+] ::
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Teens and Social Media

New Report from PEW Internet & American Life

Teens and Social Media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media.

Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004.

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area - posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.

While it seems we can see some gendered patterns of technology use (for example, that girls blog more - perhaps more journals and diary types of blogs), girls are starting to become more of the creators than simply users of technology - this is a good sign. What's not clear is why teen girls are less likely to post video. Is this a tech issue? Many cell phones have photo & video capabilities, but is this about the social affordance of media technology, or is this showing us a gendered tech-divide?

Amanda Lenhart et al also note:

There is a subset of teens who are super-communicators -- teens who have a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and email. They represent about 28% of the entire teen population and they are more likely to be older girls.

More evidence of gendered communication patterns; girls as the communicators and kin-keepers - at any age.

PDF HERE

:: Netwoman 9:30 AM [+] ::
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Our Lives in Digital Times

New Research Report from Statistics Canada.

by George Sciadas

This paper uses statistical information to begin to shed light on the outcomes and impacts of information and communications technology (ICT). Some of the expected outcomes associated with ICT are presented, while factual evidence is used to demonstrate that these outcomes have so far not materialized. The paperless office is the office that never happened, with consumption of paper at an all-time high and the business of transporting paper thriving. Professional travel has most likely increased during a period when the Internet and videoconferencing technology were taking-off; and, e-commerce sales do not justify recent fears of negative consequences on retail employment and real estate. The paper further demonstrates that some of the key outcomes of ICTs are manifested in changing behavioural patterns, including communication and spending patterns.

PDF is available HERE.

:: Netwoman 9:25 AM [+] ::
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Big Brother Watches Everyone - But Can We Watch Back?

Watching the Watchers: Why Surveillance Is a Two-Way Street
If governments and businesses can keep an eye on us in public spaces, we ought to be able to look back.
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Suddenly, cameras are everywhere. As this month's cover story notes, the recent boom in video monitoring—by both the state and businesses—means we're all being watched. It's like something out of George Orwell's 1984. Except that, unlike Orwell's protagonist Winston Smith, we can watch back—and plenty of people are doing just that. Which makes a difference.

The widespread installation of recording devices is not all bad: ATM cameras helped prove that Duke students accused of rape couldn't have committed the crime. And we all sympathize with the goals of preventing terrorism and crime, though it is not proven that security cameras accomplish this.

Nonetheless, the trend toward constant surveillance is troubling. And even if the public became concerned enough to pass laws limiting the practice, it's not clear how well those laws would work. Government officials and private companies too often ignore privacy laws. (In a notorious recent case, Hewlett-Packard executives were caught spying on the phone records of reporters covering the company.) Besides, the technology of surveillance is becoming so advanced—biologists are now attaching tiny cameras to crows' tail feathers to observe the birds' tool use in the wild—that in reality there's not much we can do to ensure privacy anyway.

Interesting article on surveillance and some unintended consequences of Big Brother, with some useful arguments about the current state of surveillance. The article leaves us with some food for thought about who might be watching, and why we can't watch back - or can we?

:: Netwoman 9:17 AM [+] ::
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Virtual Medical School

Written by Bertalan Meskó

Forget those late nights on the wards grappling with real patients to perfect taking a history for the MRCP - medical training is going virtual. Second Life, the online 3D world, is set to become the world’s largest medical training institution and, as Bertalan Meskó reports, it could change the way we view education entirely.

One of the earliest projects is the Ann Myers Medical Center - a virtual medical school - where medical education gets a unique opportunity to find new ways of training medical students. It was created to test the possibilities of virtual training for real world medical and nursing students.

There are dozens of physicians, medical students and animators behind this unique project who pledge their sparetime and money to this idea. AMMC currently has a voluntary staff consisting of consultant specialists, medical students and several nurses.

Interesting piece looking at educational uses of Second Life for Medical Training. The article gives some useful links to other Sims as well, such as Genetics Island.

:: Netwoman 9:10 AM [+] ::
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CITASA Annual Meeting Call for Papers

The ASA annual meeting online paper submission site is now open. You can now submit papers to the Section paper sessions and Section roundtables.

Note, you need not be an ASA or CITASA member to submit a paper for the annual meeting.

**Remember to indicate on your submission that you would like your paper consider for the CITASA Roundtables if it is not accepted to a paper session.

=============================================
CALL FOR PAPERS
American Sociological Association
Section on Communication and Information Technologies (CITASA) August 1-4,
2008 Boston, MA

This year's section sessions:
1) Community & Technology
2) Communications & Society
3) Sociology of Communications & IT
4) Roundtable Session

Accepted papers are eligible to be included in the 2nd annual CITASA special issue of the journal Information, Communication and Society (iCS).

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 16, 2008

COMMUNITY AND TECHNOLOGY
Organizer:
Keith N Hampton, University of Pennsylvania khampton AT asc DOT upenn DOT edu

Description:
Recognizing the diverse definitions of community, this session is open to empirical, theory, and design submissions related to the study of community and new information and communication technologies. Topics may include:
virtual communities, communities of interest, geographic communities, community informatics, distributed communities, inter-organizational communities, learning communities, social networks, and ethnographies and case studies of community.

COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIETY
Organizer:
Keith N Hampton, University of Pennsylvania khampton AT asc DOT upenn DOT edu

Description:
The sociology of communications at a societal or institutional level. The sociology of communications is framed broadly to include the study of mass media, interpersonal communication, entertainment media, broadcast media, mobile media, the Internet, verbal and non-verbal communication, and advertising. Examples of topics include: media institutions, media ownership, globalization, cross-cultural comparisons, learning intuitions, audiences, work, law, and identity.

SOCIOLOGY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND IT
Organizer:
Keith N Hampton, University of Pennsylvania khampton AT asc DOT upenn DOT edu

Description:
Open session on any topic related to the study of new information and communication technologies. Quantitative, qualitative, conceptual, critical, and theory contributions are welcome. Topics may include: health, politics, work, relationships, virtual environments, social networks, teaching, software, hardware, the Internet, cell phones, mobile computing, etc.

ROUNDTABLE SESSIONS
Organizer:
Lee Humphreys, University of Wisconsin lhumphreys AT asc DOT upenn DOT edu

Description:
Open to all areas within the sociological study of communications and information technologies.

ALL SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2008 PROGRAM MUST BE MADE VIA THE ASA ONLINE SYSTEM.
The deadline to submit a paper is January 16, 2008

Those submitting papers to a regular session are strongly encourage to indicate that they would like their paper forwarded to the Roundtable Session if there is not room for their paper in a regular session.

Authors submitting papers to regular section sessions will be will be notified of the acceptance of their paper by February 20. Authors submitting to the section roundtables will be notified by March 14.

IMPORTANT REMINDER
ANNUAL SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION AND SOCIETY All papers accepted for presentation during a CITASA section session, the CITASA Roundtable Session, the CITASA Pre-Conference and Graduate Student Workshop (to be announced soon!), or any ASA session at the 2008 meeting, is eligible to be included in the 2nd annual CITASA special issue of the journal Information, Communication and Society (iCS).
More information on the special issue will be available soon.

Looking forward to seeing you in Boston!

Keith Hampton
CITASA Chair

:: Netwoman 12:46 PM [+] ::
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WoW Skills Transfer

What can we learn from MMORPGs? How to trick a Moose of course! Torill links to the Norwegian story of a 12 year old boy:

In the article he describes how he first yelled at the moose, distracting it so his sister got away, then when he got attacked and the animal stood over him he feigned death. "Just like you learn at level 30 in World of Warcraft."

Who says you can't learn anything from Gaming? I wonder though if he collected the leather pelt for Crafting later?

:: Netwoman 10:56 AM [+] ::
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On the internet, everyone knows you're a Dog (or cat!)

New York Times article that talks about social networking sites for cats & dogs. I have Catbook (thru Facebook), but not for my dogs (although I created websites for them years ago).

While the article is a bit tongue-in-cheek, I think it points out the importance of homophily in our social networks; we create and maintain communities (both online & offline) around points of shared interests & activities - however quirky it might be.

Hey Spot, You’ve Got Mail
By MICHELLE SLATALLA

That is how I ended up at an online social network called Dogster, where my plan was to ask for help after I joined the site.

Or, I should say, after Otto and Sticky joined.

Think of Dogster as Facebook for canines. There, my dogs (along with 346,639 other four-legged members, as of last week) had their own profile pages that listed their likes and dislikes, personal mottoes — Otto's is "Are you going to finish that?" — and best tricks ("catching seedless grapes in mid-air").

So what if my dogs could barely type, much less upload photos of themselves wearing Santa hats?

We live in an era where there is a social network to cater to any niche group you can think of, including infants whose parents create Facebook profiles for them and then expect the godparents to pretend to correspond with the babies. Why shouldn't pets arrange play dates online or blog about their health issues?

Or as Ted Rheingold, the founder of Dogster, put it in a phone interview last week, "It's not weird at all."

Mr. Rheingold has a dog, of course. But more important, he has seen the simple photo-sharing site he started in 2004 grow into a popular meeting place where pet owners communicate online and, in some cases, in the real world. One group of 100 West Highland terrier owners who met on Dogster convened at a (dog friendly) motel on the Carolina coast.

It was perhaps inevitable that Dogster spawned Catster, which had 145,551 members of its own as of last week. Coming next: horses, birds and fish will get their own sites, too, Mr. Rheingold said.

:: Netwoman 12:48 PM [+] ::
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