Living a Second Life

Shout out to Vanessa Schneider for her "Living a second life" coverage on our class in The Ithacan!

Excerpts:

At a recent “playdate” for Qualitative Mass Media Research Methods, a 24-member class studying the virtual community, students were asked to interview Second Life “residents” who participate in one of the world’s many subcultures.

Kim Gregson, an assistant professor in the television-radio department who teaches the qualitative research class and is an authority on video game technology, introduced Second Life to the classroom during a first-year seminar on digital identities.
“What I saw from just their exposure in the freshman class is that there were lots of different kinds of people doing really weird stuff,” she said. 

So Gregson, aka Kim Chihuly, brought it to her research methods course this past spring. During this semester’s class, one of the first projects was to observe other Second Life residents. Rather than studying people in, say, the cafeteria at 8 a.m., Gregson said she thought Second Life could introduce the class to different people from all around the world. 

As Snotrag Steiner searched for vampires, resident Austra Soleil, senior Austra Zubkovs’ avatar, searched for a religious experience. For the past several weeks, Zubkovs has been exploring churches and attending religious services in Second Life.
“For some reason, I just automatically assume people are creepy,” she said. “I got to get over that.” 

As part of a research collaboration focusing on the role of religion in Second Life between Gregson and Rachel Wagner, assistant professor in the philosophy and religion department, Zubkovs is gathering virtual religious objects, including Bibles and Buddha medicine kits, and exploring groups of virtual temples, like the Drak Yerpa Hermitage. At the Pop Culture Association’s annual spring conference, Gregson and Wagner will present their research, display Zubkovs’ objects and play a slide show of religious builds on the Park School island.

Read full article: https://theithacan.org/accent/living-a-second-life/