Synergy Theory

Synergistic Theory 1

Running head: SYNERGISTIC THEORY

Synergistic Theory: Presence and Social Constructs in the “Third Places” of Online Games Mary F. Casey Cleveland State University COM 530 Spring 2007

Synergistic Theory 2

Synergistic Theory: Presence and Social Constructs in the “Third Places” of Online Games

Convergence. It’s the buzzword in many industries that are touched by technology in any way. Convergence may be the hallmark of new media and its effect on communication. Multiple media channels have combined to bring us new methods of doing business, buying products, and consuming entertainment. Recently, widespread broadband Internet access combined with the professional quality of digital audio and video equipment available to consumers has even put content creation in the hands of the consumers themselves. Convergence is a good word to describe today’s multimedia channels, but an even better word is synergy. Synergy, from the Greek synergos, means a combination of things that create more than the sum of their parts. Synergistic media, such as watching TV clips on the Web or movies on a mobile phone, or communicating with others in 3-D virtual worlds, are becoming more accessible and being used by more consumers every day. Understanding this synergistic media is not a matter of finding one theory to explain phenomenon; it will take a new look at proven theories, each which explains a facet of this rich and complex ever-evolving media, and develop a synergistic theory to further explain new media effects. The first steps towards creating synergistic theory to explain converging media is to start with an in-depth look at one small corner of this new media model, which

Synergistic Theory 3 concerns mass communication but spreads across organizational and interpersonal communication channels. The creation of community has been studied by communication scholars from a number of approaches, building on work from sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists. Recently, the beginning of a shift from geographical to virtual communities has been studied from both sides of the issue. Online communities, which existed even before the World Wide Web on BBSs, MOOs, and MUDs, have been studied for 25 years now, usually from the perspective of either educators and activists who have a need to know how to successfully build community to better teach and raise awareness, or PR and advertising, which wants to build community for brand loyalty and increased spending. But there is one place online where communities spring up without a guiding hand, and create bonds resulting in deep friendships, love and even marriage – inside online games. Studying the dynamics of community-building inside MMORPGs (Massively Muliplayer Online Role Playing Games, also known as MMOGs, Massively Multiplayer Online Games) requires looking at the games from a number of ways. Quantitatively, we need to look at how many players are creating communities, and who they are. This research is currently being done at Stanford and at the Palo Alto Research Center, as well as other universities and game companies. But this kind of research doesn’t answer why these players are creating community. For that, a more qualitative look needs to be taken. Some research using focus groups has been done, but data to support a convergence of mass communication (presence and CMC) and interpersonal/organizational (social

Synergistic Theory 4 construction) theories has not been gathered yet. I would suggest that communities inside MMOGs are social constructs of reality, following the definitions of the players as actors interacting with the game and each other, sharing social meanings and consequently constructing a social reality, following the definitions of Berger and Luckmann ( 1966). The importance of having a shared social construct not connected to geography is also an extension of Oldenburg’s discussions on "the third place." This theory has been mentioned in Ducheneaut, Nickell and Moore’s 2004 study of Star Wars: Galaxies, a popular MMORPG, as well as studies suggesting that the Internet is allowing us to create new virtual social spaces unhampered by physical geography (Howard, 2001; Castronova, 2005; Williams, 2006). Presence is another theory explaining part of the ease of creating community. Bracken, Lange, and Denney (2005) studied how online gamers feel spatial, social, and co-presence. They found that all gamers interviewed felt immersed in the game while playing, which is the definition of presence following Short, Williams, and Christie’s 1976 theory. Bracken, et al., stated that their study additionally defined online video games as collaborative virtual environments. By the mid-90s, scholars were redefining virtual reality as a real or simulated environment in which a perceiver experiences telepresence, a mediated perception of environment (Stuer, 1995). None of these theories alone can explain the complex interaction of people and mediated interfaces that make up online communities. These perceived shared societies take mass communication to a new level, a synergy of traditional interpersonal

Synergistic Theory 5 communication and mass media. The synergistic theory of converging media postulates that these separate theories combine to create an overarching explanation of the compelling interest of the general public in new media communications, with adoption rates1 reaching those of television. We will first look at current theories that explain certain behaviors towards and with new media generally and MMOGs specifically, and then discuss the combination of these theories and how they synergistically explain the above-mentioned behaviors. The synergistic theory may even predict future behaviors, without knowing what new media channels advances in technology will bring.

What Came Before To apply our synergistic theory, we will need to understand the many facets of a community inside a MMORPG. First we will define community, and review some of the theories that have been used to explain successful online communities in the past. Next we will consider MMOGs and community, followed by MMOGs and presence, then a look at the background of virtual environments and online games. We will then review the construct of social reality and “the third place,” finally discussing the synergy of these theories as a way of studying a converging medium.

Community Rovai (2002) outlines the most essential elements of community: mutual interdependence among members, sense of belonging, connectedness, spirit, trust, interactivity, common expectations, shared values and goals, and overlapping histories among members. These elements can be separated from the physical, by looking at what people do

Synergistic Theory 6 together, rather than where they do things together (Wellman, 1999). It is becoming accepted that online communities are a valid social construct, and many researchers have looked at online communities, either from a computer scientist’s or sociologist’s point of view, and occasionally both, as when researchers from Information Systems departments use communication theories as a framework for analyzing and understanding online communities (Sieckenius de Souzaa & Preece, 2004). Preece (2000) noted that one of the problems faced by online communities was the potential misunderstandings that happen in a mainly textual exchange. Another was that it takes longer for relationships to form, due to lacking physical cues in conversations, and needing to send more messages to reach a consensual understanding. She uses social presence theory (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976) to explain this. Social presence theory uses face-to-face communication as the standard for assessment of how successfully media convey a sense of being physically present. The lack of verbal and non-verbal cues in text-based online communities, even when the communication is enhanced by a static avatar2 and emoticons (punctuations used together to simulate a smiley face, wink, or other expression), can cause the aforementioned misunderstandings. She suggested that in the future, software may advance to the stage of being able to represent our actions and non-verbal cues, and this would facilitate online communities to better mirror their physical counterparts. Indeed, advances in technology have given us avatars that can express the gamut of emotions from sorrow to joy. (Figure 3) Since the late 1800s, sociologists have argues that technological advances will lean to the destruction of community, starting with Tönnies in 1887, who argued that

Synergistic Theory 7 industrialization was causing people to move away from their primary community based on family and their immediate neighborhood, which he called Gemeinschaft. Instead they formed Gesellschaft, often translated as “society,” groups that form around a common goal or interest, using what Tönnies called the "arbitrary will." The definition of community changes as the world changes, and today, there is still no consensus about what an online community actually is. As noted by Sieckenius de Souzaa & Preece (2004), there is “…no agreed upon definition. This is due to the strong multidisciplinary interest that this topic inspires.” Sociologists focus on networks of social relations, ethnographers on the roles and activities of small groups of individuals, and technologists on the structure of the underlying software supporting the community, each coming from a different perspective and therefore focusing only on a small part of what the umbrella title of online communities is about. Their definition, following work by Preece (2000), is: “An online community is ‘a group of people, who come together for a purpose online, and who are governed by norms and policies’.” This is a necessarily broad definition, yet succinctly states the necessary components: people, purpose, and some sort of governance.

Community in MMOGs Community in MMORPGs is gaining some interest as a field of study, but most of these studies are either narrowly focused on one particular game, or are broad studies gathering general demographic and motivation information (Ducheneaut & Moore, 2004; Ducheneaut, Yee, Nickell & Moore, 2006; Yee, 2002, 2006, in press; Williams, Ducheneaut, Xiong, Zhang, Yee, & Nickell, 2006). Many of these studies are taking

Synergistic Theory 8 place at the Xerox Palo Alta Research Center, or PARC. One group of PARC scientists, Ducheneaut, Nickell and Moore (2004), explored sociability in one MMORPG, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG). Based on both months of ingame ethnographic observations and computerized data collection, they evaluated whether or not the cantinas, gathering places inside SWG, fit Oldenburg’s notion of “third place.” Oldenburg (1989) postulated that home was our “first place” and work was our “second place,” and the coffeehouse, lounges, bars and bowling alleys we frequent in our spare time for sociability are our “third places.” Ducheneaut, Nickell and Moore showed that the game is structured in such a way that a player could meet the criteria of a “third place” by feeling a duty to stay beyond the ability of the place to provide satisfaction, and therefore, “potentially, the entire game world could be a third place.” Although they did look at sociability, they looked at it from a design perspective – how can game designers better create spaces in their games to encourage sociability – and not from a communication scholar’s perspective – how does the sociability foster communication and community building. How game designers can build in “community” as a feature was studied by others, including Humphreys (2005). In a paper presented to the National Communication Association in 2003, Siitonen summarized his findings of an ethnographic study of Finnish gamers. He sought to answer the questions, what does the community mean to the players, how strong is the presence of a community in player-to-player interaction, and what type of communication contributes to the sense of community. His sample consisted of eleven gamers, who played a variety of games from MUDs to MMORPGs. He found there is no single

Synergistic Theory 9 standard for a virtual gaming community, and that communities usually differ in three dimensions: the importance of social networks, the importance of mutual task-oriented goals, and the importance of a particular game. He suggests that further studies need to be done: “Virtual gaming communities offer an intriguing and diverse context for learning about the process of building and maintaining community through computer-mediated communication. Many questions still are to be answered, though.” (2003:17)

Presence and MMOGs Other studies of MMORPGs have looked at the sense of presence in games. Bracken, Lange, and Denney (2005) studied how online gamers feel spatial, social, and co-presence, and found that all gamers interviewed felt immersed in the game while playing. Social presence, again following Short, Williams, and Christie’s 1976 theory, was felt deeply by some players but not by others, with a skill component, rather than a lack of cues, explaining the difference. Those players with a competence in playing felt more social presence than those who needed to concentrate on how to play. Co-presence was felt by all gamers, with a higher level of “togetherness” felt by guild or clan members in MMORPGs than by the casual online gamers. Guilds or clans, formal groups formed to reach a common goal in MMORPGs, demand a high level of participation from their members, and these players often communicate via voice, text, forums and email outside of the game (see also Williams et al, 2006).

Virtual Environments Bracken, et al., also stated that their study additionally defined online video games as collaborative virtual environments, or CVEs. Also called VEs, for virtual

Synergistic Theory 10 environments, CVEs were originally defined as the spaces where virtual reality technology was experienced. This special type of mediated reality has been at the forefront of the work in presence theory since the 1980s. By the mid-90s, scholars were redefining virtual reality as a real or simulated environment in which a perceiver experiences telepresence, a mediated perception of environment (Stuer, 1995). This new definition took the meaning of a VE from something tied to a hardware system, usually of the gloves-and-goggles type, to any space where the feeling of presence is mediated. As such, the definition perfectly describes many of the new convergent media channels, including MMOGs. Using avatars to communicate inside a VE was not limited to games. In Schroeder’s (ed.) “The Social Life of Avatars” (2001), a number of social and computer scientists share their experiences in VEs created as learning spaces and chat rooms as well as games. Many of the technical and social observations were artifacts of their time; users are seldom constrained by worries of too low bandwidth or limited access to a computer in today’s world of sub-$500 PCs and nearly ubiquitous broadband.

Social Construction of Reality The fascination of being able to create an avatar to represent a character in a game that may or may not have any correlation to gender, race, size, or even species in the real world is one of the attractions of being able to construct a shared reality inside a MMOG. The social construction of reality theory (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) explains much of this fascination, as it takes the concepts of actors, persons and groups interacting together in a social system form, who, over time, play out concepts that eventually become

Synergistic Theory 11 habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized. In the process of this institutionalization, meaning – people’s knowledge and beliefs - becomes embedded in society. Social reality is therefore said to be socially constructed. People playing avatars in MMOGs are interacting in institutionalized roles, in a space where an agreement has already been consciously made to suspend disbelief and share in the reality of the game world, are socially constructing their reality. In MMORPGs like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) and Everquest (Sony Online), the race and class of your character determines your role in many interactions. The gameplay depends on each kind of character, for example, warrior, mage, and ranger, to act in an institutionalized manner, respectively fighting, doing magic/healing, and guiding. In social games such as Second Life (Linden Labs) or The Sims Online (Electronic Arts), there are fewer preset institutionalized roles, therefore a more personally constructed social reality, with more room for unusual behavior and physical representations that run the extremes of the spectrum, from hyper-real avatars created from photos of the players, who interact in representations of their real-life homes and offices, to hybrid creatures living in multi-colored forests that could never exist on Earth. Even in these environments, however, a mutually-navigated consensus on reality, especially social reality, must be held to or a player risks being disregarded, rejected, or even banned for not conforming to the social contract.

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Third place The importance of having a shared social construct not connected to geography is an extension of Oldenburg’s discussions on "the third place." This theory, as mentioned earlier in connection with Ducheneaut, Nickell and Moore’s 2004 study of SWG, is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. Oldenburg states that “third places” are important features for civic engagement and establishing feelings of a sense of place. Putnam (2000) postulated that society is spending less time in these “third places” and blamed the Internet, but recently many authors and researchers are repudiating that view by suggesting that the Internet is allowing us to create new virtual social spaces unhampered by physical geography (Castronova, 2005; Williams, 2006).

The synergy of presence and social construction Presence, especially telepresence, creates a space where people feel comfortable meeting in Internet mediated communication. The social construction of reality that Internet-enabled spaces encourage allows users to go beyond the geographic or physical constraints of face-to-face meetings or finding like-minded others. Either one of these explanations alone is enough to explain the popularity of communities online, but the two theories combine to synergistically create something more – a virtual portal to nearly anywhere, anytime. All that’s needed is a computer, an Internet connection, and some easily available software, and you can talk to a sympathetic friend while being entertained in a paradise, or laugh with a group of friends while adventuring and killing monsters.

Synergistic Theory 13 The synergy of interpersonal communication in a mass communication context enhances both the social aspect as well as the entertainment value. Email and instant messaging are two of the more common uses of the Internet, but both are limited in presence. There is no feel that your correspondent is really “there” with you. Likewise, PC and console role-playing games and simulation games are very popular, and players find enjoyment in them, but it is generally a solitary activity, or shared with one other. There isn’t an entire world of people to choose to play with. The synergy of presence and social building creates the perfect environment to build community and create a third place.

More synergy in today’s communication media This synergy of convergent media is seen in places outside of online games, and with theories that explain other media effects. The synergy of presence with parasocial theory, the attachment a viewer or consumer gets with fictional characters or constructs, combine in multiple media channels when a popular TV show’s associated Web page streams condensed episodes, and gives the opportunity for fans to connect with each other and with the show’s characters or cast members3. The consumer receives a richer experience and forms a more loyal attachment to the characters of the show, and the networks and advertisers are beginning to see the increased worth of bringing these personalized multimedia experiences to their audiences. Parasocial interaction (PSI) is described as the relationship between media users and media figures. Horton and Wohl (1956) were the first to look at the interaction between users of mass media and representations of humans appearing in the media

Synergistic Theory 14 (“media figures,” such as newscasters, actors, celebrities and even fictional characters.) These relationships are integrated into the “usual social activity” of the user’s lives. Although few people form psychologically unhealthy attachments to media figures, many people feel a fondness for media figures without believing they have a personal relationship with them; creating additional communication channels and giving media users the opportunity to communicate directly to the media figure will move the relationship along the social continuum in Giles’ PSI model (2002) from mass mediated to one-to-one, thereby increasing the attachment. NBC is one of the broadcast companies that are using media besides television to give their viewers more entertainment and information related to their shows. For example, the popular drama “Heroes” has an associated web site, nbc.com/heroes, where viewers can not only view full or condensed episodes they may have missed in a streaming Web player, but also get further information on favorite characters, chat with other fans, read blogs ostensibly written by the show’s characters, or view a webcomic starring a character who can interface with the Web. The viewer’s parasocial relationship with “Heroes” characters becomes enhanced by the addition of other media types, and this creates more opportunities for the viewer to establish weak ties not only with the characters but also with other fans through the use of chat rooms and forums. “Heroes” fans have even more chances to use multiple media channels to get information. There are text messages available from “Heroes,” and a number of MySpace pages and additional websites with more supplemental information. The synergy of the parasocial relationships and the computer-mediated social construction of reality causes a

Synergistic Theory 15 experience far richer and deeper than simply viewing a television show could ever give. Another synergistic combination is the use of mass media channels in business to increase communication between employees and save on travel expenses by using video conferencing. The combination of presence, including telepresence4 (the sense of being there) and co-presence (the sense of being there together), with a socially constructed reality, gives employees the feeling that they are all in a boardroom together. Adding in new technology like digital whiteboards and collaborative PC applications establishes a virtual meeting that contains all the interactions of being there together. The synergy of the converging media and information channels is mirrored by the synergy of the mass and interpersonal communication.

Summary Mass media usage and effects have been studied for the past century, and quite often, the overarching conclusion is that people are not communicating with each other the way they used to in the past. This conclusion is used to blame or vilify mass media for increased violence and sex in society, loss of social capital and community activity, and general desensitization of the public towards previously shocking behaviors. While this may be true, these inferences neglect the obvious but overlooked fact that society has changed. Rather than focusing on the negatives, we should consider the benefits of new convergent channels of mass media. For example, since some forms of neighborhood community are being replaced by online communities, we should concentrate on how to best use online communities with traditional neighborhood mass media to increase social capital. The synergy of mass media forms and organizational and interpersonal

Synergistic Theory 16 communication create an enriched kind of communication, changing communication networks from being geographically based to existing in both virtual and real places, with time shifts and collaborative work possibilities that couldn’t exist in the past. This synergy also affects business, government, and education, which can use the multiple media forms to enhance current communication channels and become more interactive and responsive. Yes, we as a society have become desensitized and attention-deficit, so instead of bemoaning the loss of traditional media use and effects, we should use the new synergistic model of new media augmenting the old ways, to create a more dynamic and functional communication paradigm.

Synergistic Theory 17 Resources Berger, P.L. & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Anchor Books. Brabant, S. (1982) The Computer as a Construct of Social Reality, XII/3 SIGUCCS Newsletter Bracken, C. C., Lange, R.L., & Denney, J. (2005). Online video games and gamers’ sensations of spatial, social, and co- presence, Paper presented at FuturePlay 2005: The first international academic conference on the future of game design and technology. Brants, K. (1989). The Social Construction of the Information Revolution. European Journal of Communication, 4, 79-97. Childress, M. D. & Braswell, R. (2006). Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games for Online Learning, Distance Education, 27:2, 187–196. Ducheneaut, N., Moore, R.J. (2004). The social side of gaming: a study of interaction patterns in a massively multiplayer online game. In: Proceedings of CSCW 2004, ACM, New York, 360-369. Ducheneaut, N., Moore, R.J., and Nickell, E. (2004). "Designing for sociability in massively multiplayer games: an examination of the “third places” of SWG." In J.H. Smith and M. Sicart (Eds.), Proceedings of the Other Players conference. Copenhagen: IT University of Copenhagen. Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Nickell, E., & Moore, R.J. (2006, April) “Alone Together?” Exploring the Social Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games, paper presented at CHI

Synergistic Theory 18 2006 Proceedings, Games and Performances, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada. Giles, David C. (2002).“Parasocial Interaction: A Review of the Literature and a Model for Future Research.” Media Psychology, 4: 3, 279 - 304. Hannemyr, G. (2003). The Internet as Hyperbole: A Critical Examination of Adoption Rates. The Information Society, 19: 2, 111 – 121. Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). Mass communication and para-social interaction. Psychiatry, 19, 215–229. Howard, P. (2001). Days and Nights on the Internet: The Impact of a Diffusing Technology. American Behavioral Scientist, 45:3, 383-404. Humphreys, S. (2005). Productive Players: Online Computer Games' Challenge to Conventional Media Forms. Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies 2(1), p37-51. Laurel, B. (1993). Computers as theatre. Reading, MA:Addison-Wesley. Lee, K.M. (2004). Presence, Explicated. Communication Theory, 14(1), 27-50. Miniwatts Marketing Group. (2007) World Internet Usage Statistics News and Population Stats. Retrieved 04/05/2007 from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm Mortensen, T. (2006). WoW is the New MUD: Social Gaming from Text to Video. Games and Culture, 1(4), p. 397-413. Oldenburg, R. (1989). The great good place. New York, NY: Marlowe & Company. Ondrejka, C. (2005). Changing Realities: User Creation, Communication, and Innovation in

Synergistic Theory 19 Digital Worlds. Themis Group (online) Pew Internet & American Life Project. (2006). Internet Adoption: Percentage of U.S. Adults Online. Retrieved 04/19/2007 from http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/Internet_Adoption_4.26.06.pdf. Preece, J. (2000). Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Chichester: Wiley. Preston, J., Booth, L., & Chastine, J. (2004). Improving Learning and Creating Community in Online Courses via MMOG Technology. In: Proceedings of the 35th SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Norfolk, Virginia, 2004. Retrieved on 10/27/06 from http://cims.clayton.edu/jpreston/Pubs/sig2004_01.pdf. Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Rovai, A. (2000). Building and sustaining community in asynchronous learning networks. The Internet and Higher Education, 3(4), 285-297. Ryan, M.-L. (2001). Narrative as virtual reality: immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. Schroeder, R., ed. (2002). The social life of Avatars: presence and interaction in shared virtual environments. London: Spronger-Verlag. Seay, A.F., Jerome, W.J., Lee, K.S., Kraut, R.E. (2004). Project Massive: A study of online gaming communities. In: Proceedings of CHI 2004, ACM, New York, 1421-1424.

Synergistic Theory 20 Retrieved 11/30/2006 from www.cs.cmu.edu/~afseay/files/44.pdf. Sieckenius de Souzaa, C., Preece, J. (2004). A framework for analyzing and understanding online communities, Interacting with Computers 16, 579–610. Siitonen, M. (2003). Building and Experiencing Community in Internet-Based Multiplayer Computer Game, paper presented at National Communication Association, Miami Beach, April 2003. Steinkuehler, C., and Williams, D. (2006). Where everybody knows your (screen) name: Online games as "third places." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), article 1. Retrieved 11/29/06 from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/steinkuehler.html Stuer, J. (1995) Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence. In Biocca, F. & Levy, M.R., eds. (1995). Communication in the age of virtual reality, Hillsborough: Erlbaum. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Williams, D, (2006). Why Game Studies Now? Gamers Don't Bowl Alone, Games and Culture, 1:1, 13-16 Williams, D., Ducheneaut, N., Xiong, L., Zhang, y., Yee, N., & Nickell, E. (2006). From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft, Games and Culture, 1:4. Woodcock, B. (2006) An Analysis of MMOG Subscription Growth – Version 21.0.

Synergistic Theory 21 http://www.mmogchart.com. Yee, N. (2002). Facets: 5 motivation factors for why people play MMORPGs. http://www.nickyee.com/facets/home.html. Yee, N. (2006). The Psychology of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage, , [ To appear in Avatars at Work and Play: Collaboration and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments, edited by Schroder, R. & Axelsson, A.,London: Springer-Verlag. ] Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., Urbanek, M. , et al. (2005). The Unbearable Likeness of Being Digital: The Persistence of Nonverbal Social Norms in Online Virtual Environments, (In press in CyberPsychology and Behavior)

Synergistic Theory 22 Figure 1

Figure 1. The Evolution of Avatars, as seen by the pixilated representation of a female in Habitat, 1984, and the author’s custom-designed, photo-realistic representation of a female in Second Life, 2006

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1

The adoption rate of Internet usage is popularly thought to be greater than that of television, but the actual adoption rate is much more difficult to compute. Gisle Hannemyr sought to empirically prove the adoption rates of Internet usage, and refers to the difficulty of determining when and where to start measuring usage, since the Internet had more than 400,000 users before it became publicly available in 1989, and the figure used to determine television and radio’s “irreversibility,” that point from which usage grew beyond inventors and enthusiasts, is only 100,000. (Hannemyr, 2003). Hannemyr found the rates of Internet, television, and radio adoption over time to be nearly equal. The Pew Internet & American Life Project gives an Internet adoption rate of over 70% for the U.S. based on surveys as of April 2006 (pewinternet.org, 2007), and Miniwatts Marketing Group’s World Internet Usage Statistics News and Population Stats Web page gives a world-wide penetration estimate of around 17% (internetworldstats.com, 2007). 2 The word "avatar" was used by the early online game "Habitat" to describe their online graphical user representations. The game ran as an online service for Commodore 64 users from 1986 to 1988, and was not widely known. The term did not become popular until the author Neal Stephenson used it in his book Snow Crash (New York: Bantam, 1992) to describe the simulation of the human form in the Metaverse, a virtual-reality version of the Internet. In the Metaverse, an avatar was an important indicator of social status, as having a finely detailed and unique avatar showed off programming skills, whereas beginners would only have off-the-shelf purchased avatars. This attitude is present in many MMOGs today, when special or unique items convey the high level of skills needed to acquire it - or the cash available to purchase it. Photojournalist Robbie Cooper’s Alter Ego project, which photographed gamers and paired them with their in-game avatars, has recently been published as a hardcover book. This is an enlightening look at a random slice of gamers of all kinds. Excerpts are available on the BBC News Web site at “In pictures: Online gamers unmasked,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/technology_online_gamers_unmaske d/html/1.stm. 3 A study is currently being undertaken at Cleveland State University looking at text messages from characters in television shows. The USA Network and Bravo both have complex Web sites to give additional opportunities for views of their popular cable dramas and reality shows a chance to interact further, creating strong parasocial interactions, thought to be explained by the uses and gratification theory. The team of graduate students are doing context analysis on text messages from fictional characters in “Monk” and “Psych” and from contestants in the reality show “Workout,” all of which have extensive Web pages with blogs ostensibly written by the shows’ characters, chat rooms to interact with other fans, and highlights from episodes available for viewing in a computer browser. It is thought that it may become a new trend in advertising and broadcasting to incorporate mobile media usage into blanket media coverage, which has already included Internet channels with print and audio/video broadcasting. 4 In the emailed “Network World's Convergence & VoIP Newsletter, 05/07/07,” Larry Hettick describes attending a video conference at a facility built by the Cisco networking company, called the TelePresence Center. The room was set up so participants sat on one side of a table facing three HD screens. Hettrick said the other participants at the distant location “looked and sounded like they were across the other side of the table; if fact the two “halves” of the table were actually located in Herndon, Va., and in San Jose, Calif.” According to the newsletter, there seemed to be only two things missing - participants couldn’t shake hands, and they had to exchange business cards electronically instead of across the

table. It’s interesting and apt that a company would use the name TelePresence for this nextgeneration video conferencing solution, although I’m sure that most of the business users don’t know the theory behind the name.