Ulrika Bennerstedt - short presentation
Title: Phd student
Unit: Learning and Teaching Unit
Ph: +46 (0)31-786 2818
E-mail: ulrika.bennerstedt@ped.gu.se
My research interest – Avatar-mediated Interaction
The nature of human cognitive activity is not biologically given once and for all. Cognition is shaped through history, where the cultural artifacts our species develops structure action, communication and thinking. Cultural artifacts become “mind tools” (cf. Luria, 1976, Wertsch, 1998). Just like the introduction of written language in a culture has been shown to change the way people interact with the world, questions has been raised about what sort of change will follow with the introduction of technology (cf. Turkle, 1995). Online game worlds, like The Lord of the Rings Online, are a new arena for communication and socialization. In these worlds people interact in historically new ways, especially when they have the aim to role-play (RP). What sort of skills does it take to be able to interact in these environments? What is it a skilled role-player must handle? Are these games the start of a major cultural change in how we think and learn and can we even see online game players develop a new form of literacy?
The overall focus in my PhD research concerns avatar-mediated interaction. The concept ‘avatar’ refers to computer gamers’ characters in game worlds. Thus, the player act and communicate through the avatar in, for example, an online game as of World of Warcraft. Furthermore, my interest is in online games, or more specific, massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), as World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online.
What do I indicate with mediated communication and interaction then? First, one of my ambitions is to study a special kind of avatar-mediated communication and interaction, namely the ones who take place in servers (in MMORPG’s there are different types of servers attracting different player types) with role-playing in. I want to highlight the competence of communicating by text and textual emotes in chat channels with being able to interact on a more mundane level (as of being competent of using the games system for steering and handling the avatar in different ways). Second, in role-playing servers there are certain ways other players do and assume other players to do in textual communication between avatars. Thus, gamers must adapt to these practices in several ways. In role-playing events players show by using different footings (Goffman, 1981) if the avatar is in-character (IC) or out-of-character (OOC). Such textual practice is done in a milieu (different chat channels in a social game world) where other role-players demands skills in how to frame (using Goffman’s concept framework) and adjust to shifts between these activities.
Following this interest in textual communication in MMORPG, another interest is verbal communication between players and how this is mixed with textual communication (i.e. using chat channels).
My third interest resides in how gamers manage their play in an online game environment. One aspect is how role-players collaborate by using the IC framing to do game specific tasks. Thus, they translate game mechanics into a narrative activity. The second aspect concern how gamers manage collaboration in places where players have specific roles to fulfill and how they go about doing such work without verbal or textual communication taking place. In other words, what other cues than verbal or textual communication is used in such activities.
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