Anikto LLC

Gender, Disability and Identity in Virtual Worlds

A panel discussion took place this week at the International Communication Association Conference in Chicago on conceptual models of inclusion. Among the topics discussed was the role of identity, disability and gender in virtual environments such as Second Life.

Members of the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the Temple University College of Science and Technology presented a fascinating study on how groups of people choose to self-identify online. Anikto was honored to play a small part in this research, based on ongoing studies of how people with disabilities participate in online communities.

Some key top-level findings from the presentation included the following:

• One stated purpose of the study was to explore how attributes of gender, disability and identity provide an understanding of behavior within the Second Life environment
• Schemas of behavior can be developed cognitively as a child, or they may be learned through social interactions experienced over time
• Virtual worlds provide complex interaction and customization controls, affording a high level of personalization and engagement
• Search groups were classified as those categorically identified with aspects of Sexuality, Gender, Disability, Race/Ethnicity and Aging
• Sexuality-identified groups comprised the highest number of distribution, assuming 51% of the categorical group ratio
• Disability-identified groups represented only 5% of the total amount of filtered criteria, which is surprising given that 20% of gamers self-identify as having some form of a disability
• Whether a person decides to disclose a disability in-world is a highly personal choice, perhaps offering a perspective on the complexities of anonymity within virtual environments

Although these are merely selected highlights, what is particularly intriguing about this research is the dovetailing between gaming technology and characteristics of community. Somewhere there exists a subset investigation to determine how these new forms of engagement could enhance such participatory activities as applying for a job or making friends.

A caution could be made that the reason for the comparatively low number of disability-identified groups is the difference in approach among people with varying disabilities. People who live with autism spectrum disorders and Asperger’s syndrome may tend to be more guarded due to a lack of public understanding; whereas someone demonstrating visual evidence of a disability (such as a wheelchair) may decide that such attributes should be transparently conveyed, both in-world and in real life.

What this means from both a user experience and a technology level remains to be seen. Whatever the conclusions, it is clear that some intriguing questions and dilemmas are forming around this notion of the virtual self and how it corresponds to our interpretation of physical ability. Mark Stephen Meadows touches upon this in his book I, Avatar when he mentions the blurry line between the body born as flesh and its digitally-created facsimile:

The psychology of avatars extends into the real world just as our personalities extend into the virtual. Avatars encourage a fracturing of psyche and personality. Almost like cable cutters, they split us open and strip our different personas into individual threads, so we can splice them with other threads on the other end … Maybe avatars comb out the sometimes tangled parts of our personalities and allow us to view them in the light to asses their health, value, and identities. What fragment of my personality does that best represent? Why did I choose it?