Performing Self: Questions of Identity Competence in a Virtual World Point to Real Life Constructions

The Author provides an ethnographic examination of interpersonal communication in a virtual world uncovering how the technology of virtual worlds reveals the technologies of culture and how both are a means for shaping our experience of the world and for revealing the world we seek to know.

Digital Devotees: Vernacular Authority in a New Kind of Religious Movement

In this article, vernacular authority is described as the basis of a new religious movement termed “vernacular Christian fundamentalism”. Not just a new religious movement, vernacular Christian fundamentalism is also as a new kind of religious movement – “new” because even as these individuals have grown more connected online, no new central leadership has emerged. Instead, the movement takes shape as its believers engage in a kind of ritualized deliberation that they say generates a new kind of church that exists only on the Internet – what they call a “virtual ekklesia.”

‘You Have to Make Up Your Own Story Here’: Identities in Cyberspace from Twitter to Second Life

The paper opens the discussion on the contemporaneity of the Internet in human life. Today our lives online are not something separate from our lives offline: both are an inherent part of our existence. The Author analyzed the identity and presentation of self in cyberspace from Twitter to Second Life (SL) contexts in terms of: expressions given; embellishment as a minor form of persona adoption; dividing the self; conforming and ‘fitting in’; and masking, anonymity and pseudonimity.

Messages on Memorial Internet Websites Relating to Suicide in Norway and Sweden

The Author presents a study of memorial websites relating to persons who have committed suicide. These websites are set up at the same websites as those that commemorate other dead persons, for example www.tillminneav.se which means ‘to the memory of’. Speaking openly about suicide is both remarkable and unique when contrasted with the reticence of former days. Messages expressed in these exceptional situations have not previously been subjected to scientific analysis. The aim of the present study is to determine which elements are common to memorial websites for both suicides and other categories of deceased persons, and which are distinctive. In addition, a comparison will be made between conditions in Sweden and in Norway.

Matchmaking through Avatars: Social Aspects of Online Dating

The article shows the social aspects of online dating and matching through avatars and how the powerful online applications and attractive social media running on the new devices encouraged people to move into a new space, known as virtual space or cyberspace.

Rules and Boundaries: The Morality of Eve Online

One of the main research topics in the article was the question of morality and ethics within the Eve Online computer game players. The Author decided to use face-to-face interviews with players and CCP employees (the game founder company) and also play the game to get a feel for it, read discussions on bulletin boards, and used various other ways to get information about the game and the people playing it just to make the conclusion that there was so much paranoia amongst the players within the game: everyone was spying on everybody else.

Moscow and St. Petersburg Compete: Negotiating City Identity on Ru.Net

Studies conducted by environmental psychologists, sociologists and cultural geographers show that affiliation of self with place forms a salient part of identity, and even personalities inclined to nomadic life styles identify themselves in terms of location. In people’s relations with space, cities have a special role, albeit one that changes over time. In the second half of the 20th century, erasing of the borders between urban and rural areas, the growth of migration, and globalisation marked by convergence of consumer tastes and patterns have changed the face of the city. The purpose of this essay is to analyse how the identities of the two biggest Russian cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and their residents are negotiated and reshaped in the discourse of Internet users and why the juxtaposition of the two cities has been a pervasive theme in the last decade.