Transmedia Communication

Author(s):  
Sharon Stoerger

Virtual worlds have the potential to foster new forms of educational communication among students and their instructors. These digital exchanges in virtual worlds are facilitated by computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools such as text-based media and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). This chapter will investigate the media that were used to support student-instructor interactions in three continuing education courses situated in Second Life (SL). Based on these observations, text chat was more effective than VoIP at supporting educational discussions during these class sessions.

Author(s):  
Stephen A. Schrum

As creative people inhabit virtual worlds, they bring their ideas for art and performance with them into these brave new worlds. While at first glance, virtual performance may have the outward trappings of theatre, some believe they don’t adhere to the basic traditional definition of theatre: the interaction between an actor and an audience. Detractors suggest that physical presence is required for such an interaction to take place. However, studies have shown that computer mediated communication (CMC) can be as real as face-to-face communication, where emotional response is concerned. Armed with this information, the author can examine how performance in a virtual world such as Second Life may indeed be like “real” theatre, what the possibilities for future virtual performance are, and may require that we redefine theatre for online performance venues.


Author(s):  
Sharon Stoerger

Technology is changing at a rapid pace, and information is becoming a more prominent feature in society. Advocates of educational technology contend that virtual worlds will revolutionize education. Many of these arguments in support of educational uses of technology emphasize the fact that virtual worlds have the potential to foster a more student-centered learning environment. This research involved the analysis of synchronous text chat and observational data collected from Second Life® (SL) continuing education courses at three different course levels – beginner, intermediate, and advanced. To support or refute these findings, unstructured interviews were conducted with SL course instructors and students. In general, the SL instructors relied heavily upon teacher-centered methods. However, the results of this study suggest that the use of student-centered approaches in virtual world – ones that draw from constructivist epistemologies – have the potential to create a more effective learning situation for the students.


Author(s):  
Chaka Chaka

This chapter characterises the evolution of computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies into social participation technologies (SPTs). With respect to the latter, it explores blogs, social networking sites (e.g., Facebook and MySpace), media sharing sites (e.g., Flickr and YouTube), virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life), massively multiplayer online games (e.g., Lineage and World of Warcraft), and mashups in varying degrees. It also contends that SPTs serve as instances of inscription and attention technologies in relation to users employing them. In addition, it delineates new genres, changing discourses, emerging literacies, online socialised learning and changing learners associated with SPTs. Against this background, the chapter provides, first, a short overview of the evolution of CMC technologies into SPTs. Second, it presents a case for new genres, changing discourses, emerging literacies, online socialised learning and changing learners in the context of SPTs. Last, it outlines some of the future trends likely to influence SPTs in relation to genres, discourses, literacies and online socialised learning.


2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioanna Nikolaou

Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are rapidly becoming recognized as a technology of substantial future importance for marketers and advertisers due to the great growth of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). In recent years virtual worlds have become highly interactive, collaborative and commercial; these worlds would have the potential to be new channels for marketing content and products, integrating ‘v-commerce’, or ‘virtual e-commerce’. Virtual Worlds clearly demonstrate how the boundaries between the physical and the virtual are becoming more fluid as individuals are interacting with digitally constructed entities. This paper aims to explore the literature in order to illuminate some of the issues related to consumption in virtual worlds and offer a better understanding of virtual participants’ consumption practices.  


Author(s):  
Adilla Anggraeni

This chapter discusses the need for drama, interpersonal closeness, informational susceptibility, and compassion for others and their influence towards gossiping behavior via social chatting applications. Technological advancements have enabled people to communicate with each other at the convenience of their homes and in real time. This change, however, also means the changes in human behaviors, such as computer-mediated communication, can be shaped by the richness of the media that people can use to convey their thoughts and opinions. The existence of different chatting applications has fulfilled the needs of human beings to be connected and to interact with each other, and the interactions that take place can be in the form of gossiping and spreading information that may not necessarily be accurate.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabela Melchor-Couto

Technology has made an invaluable contribution to foreign language (FL) teaching, particularly so in recent years. The advanced technical capabilities offered by digital games, including voice and text chat, take the use of computer-mediated communication in language learning one step further, allowing for remote, anonymous and situated learner interaction. This article presents an overview on how virtual worlds (VWs) are being used for educational purposes and for FL teaching in particular. A literature review on existing research has been included, covering areas such as FL interaction, impact on affective variables and attitudes towards the use of these environments. Special attention will be devoted to how VW interaction may affect students’ anxiety, motivation and self-efficacy beliefs. Finally, teacher perceptions will be explored through the data collected among 179 secondary school FL teachers participating in the EU-funded TeCoLa project (‘Pedagogical differentiation through telecollaboration and gaming for intercultural and content integrated language teaching’).


Author(s):  
Lhoussain Simour

Electronic connections allow the individual to be at various global sites while sitting in front of his or her computer. By being electronically connected, one’s participation in virtual worlds raises important questions about the nature of our communities and problematizes our identities. This paper examines how experiences in virtual interactions affect people’s real lives and what impact computer mediated communication has on the formation of a virtual community and its relation to individuals’ identities. Virtual communities stimulate experiences that redefine the basic concepts and contexts that have characterized the essence of human societies. They offer new contexts for rethinking the concept of identity and provide a new space for exploring the extent to which participation in computer mediated interaction modifies the subject in terms of identity, leading to a reconstruction and a reconstitution of self.


Author(s):  
Lhoussain Simour

Electronic connections allow the individual to be at various global sites while sitting in front of his or her computer. By being electronically connected, one’s participation in virtual worlds raises important questions about the nature of our communities and problematizes our identities. This paper examines how experiences in virtual interactions affect people’s real lives and what impact computer mediated communication has on the formation of a virtual community and its relation to individuals’ identities. Virtual communities stimulate experiences that redefine the basic concepts and contexts that have characterized the essence of human societies. They offer new contexts for rethinking the concept of identity and provide a new space for exploring the extent to which participation in computer mediated interaction modifies the subject in terms of identity, leading to a reconstruction and a reconstitution of self.


Author(s):  
Sverker Johansson ◽  
Ylva Lindberg

This chapter aims to describe how cultures have emerged in interactions among users of the multitude of online platforms that have become available over the past few decades. It discusses innovations regarding uses of representations to communicate identity, time, and space in social practices with technology, and how cybercultures are played out in theory and in practice. Cybercultures resemble cultures in the non-virtual world—but display significant differences regarding social rules, identity, and spatiotemporal issues. Case studies of three types of cybercultures in social media: information and knowledge building on Wikipedia, culture, and virtual world building on Second Life, and dating practices on online dating services, such as Tinder, will shed light on how cyberspace allows for developing both symbolic representations and social practices through computer-mediated communication (CMC), and how users are situated in the continuum virtual-real.


First Monday ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald E. Day ◽  
Hamid R. Ekbia

What is digital experience? This question is of interest to different discourse traditions, each of which would answer it differently. The literature in Human-Computer Interaction, Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), virtual worlds, and Artificial Intelligence, for instance, each present distinctive understandings of the concept of 'experience' and, consequently, of 'digital experience.' However, if we start with the concept of experience as an event, the common historical lineage of these distinct understandings reveals itself. We are interested in this historical lineage, and would like to explain 'digital experience' as a historically developing category. For this, we begin by returning to discussions on two modern concepts of experience (Erlebnis and Erfahrung) in the mid-twentieth century works of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. Then, we discuss three forms of 'digital experience' -- simulated, embedded, and artificial -- and we suggest that these experiences constitute a modern understanding of experience, namely, as a tension between experience as an embedded or 'situated' event and 'experience' as one that is had. By focusing on this tension, we hope to shed light on some of the shared underlying assumptions among disparate discourse traditions.


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