ABSTRACT

This book aims to provide insights into how ‘second lives’ in the sense of virtual identities and communities are constructed textually, semiotically and discursively, specifically in the online environment Second Life and Massively Multiplayer Online Games such as World of Warcraft. The book’s philosophy is multi-disciplinary and its goal is to explore the question of how we as gamers and residents of virtual worlds construct alternative online realities in a variety of ways. Of particular significance to this endeavour are conceptions of the body in cyberspace and of spatiality, which manifests itself in ‘natural’ and built environments as well as the triad of space, place and landscape. The contributors’ disciplinary backgrounds include media, communication, cultural and literary studies, and they examine issues of reception and production, identity, community, gender, spatiality, natural and built environments using a plethora of methodological approaches ranging from theoretical and philosophical contemplation through social semiotics to corpus-based discourse analysis.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

part I|59 pages

Creating Second Communities

chapter 1|17 pages

Liberate your Avatar

The Revolution Will Be Socially Networked

chapter 2|22 pages

An Imagined Community of Avatars?

A Theoretical Interrogation of Second Life™ as Nation through the Lens of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities

chapter 3|18 pages

Programming Processes

Controlling Second Lives

part II|70 pages

Creating Second Identities

chapter 4|24 pages

Embodiment and Gender Identity in Virtual Worlds

Reconfiguring Our ‘Volatile Bodies’ 1

chapter 5|14 pages

The Body of the Avatar

Constructing Human Presence in Virtual World

chapter 6|30 pages

The Grips of Fantasy

The Construction of Female Characters in and beyond Virtual Game Worlds

part III|69 pages

Creating Second Spaces

chapter 7|24 pages

Second Chances

Depictions of the Natural World in Second Life™

chapter 9|22 pages

The Event of Space

Defining Place in a Virtual Landscape

chapter |6 pages

Afterword

Virtual Worlds and the Research Question