Life in the Second Life

A recap of the #SOJCssm Twitter conversation 1/22/17-1/23/17

By Amanda Lam (@amandaaalam), Desiree Dahlson (@desireedahlson)and McKenzie Edgar (@McKenzieEdgar23)

This week must’ve been an extra special one because it was our first Monday lecture of the term and we also had the privilege of hearing Donna Davis (@dzdavis) speak about virtual worlds and Second Life. Donna is the director of the strategic communications master’s program at the George S. Portland Turnbull Center and focuses her research on virtual worlds and disability communities. You can read more about her work by checking out her blog, here.

Discovering the Unknown

Even after doing the readings for class, many of us had no idea what to expect of the day’s lecture. Social virtual worlds were a rather foreign concept for most. However, Donna made it easy by explaining that most of us have already been exposed to virtual worlds throughout our life. Mainstream examples of virtual worlds include Club Penguin and The Sims, and according to our #SOJCssm Twitter feed, that fact really resonated with the class. However, one thing that was stressed by Donna was that virtual worlds are places, NOT games.

Tweet courtesy of Nick Hudson

Tweet courtesy of Olivia Determan

Tweet courtesy of McKenzie Edgar

Virtual Worlds and Second Life

Diving deeper into our discussion on virtual worlds, Donna introduced us to Second Life. A virtual world that has been around since 2003 and has an annual GDP of $500 million. Although many of us had never heard of the platform, Second Life has an active population of about 500,000 users. A fun fact that we learned was that there are approximately 50,000 residents online at any give time, which is about the capacity of Autzen Stadium.

Next, Donna showed us her personal avatar, Tredi Felismo, and we flew around Second Life. During our brief tour, we were able to meet Solas, a fashion designer with early onset Parkinson’s, and also attended a live concert with other Second Life users.

Donna Davis with her avatar Tredi Felismo.

Second Life can be a cool and fun community to take part in, but these social virtual worlds can also serve as restorative technology that help many online users with disabilities receive the support and care they need. From a 90-year-old woman with physical disabilities, to a girl who grew up deaf and had no one to communicate with, these virtual worlds help individuals find their place and realize who they can be.

Rumor has it that there are a good amount of celebrities on Second Life as well, who use it as a place to escape their fame-filled world and just be an average citizen every once in awhile. Apparently even the late Michael Jackson had an avatar in Second Life!

Our Conversation

We were fortunate enough to manage the live Twitter conversation during Donna’s presentation. The dialogue that was happening on Twitter was almost as interesting as the speaker herself. Thirty-one of our classmates contributed to our conversation during the lecture and we were able to reach 14,032 users during the tweet period.

In total, our online conversation that produced 161 tweets and 111,921 timeline deliveries. We were also able to discuss the pros and cons of social virtual worlds by revealing the beneficial components as well as some of the negative drawbacks.

Thus far this term the Twitter conversation we drove produced the most overall Tweets and reached the most timelines. No doubt the incredibly interesting subject of the lecture helped contribute to this!

Buzzwords from the Twitter conversation courtesy of Hashtracking.com.

Twitter poll courtesy of Amanda Lam