Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Conclusion
Avatars are extremely important to the progression of communication, since all of their advantages help you communicate with people on the internet in a better and more consistent way. Since an avatar is basically a “graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet” (Lexico Publishing Group, LLC., 2008). This helps a person communicate with many different people in the virtual world, because the virtual world never stops and this way you can express you’re self constantly threw Avatars, even when you’re gone. When (Bugeja, 2005) said that people want to love and be loved, gain meaningful relationships with others, and possibly contribute to the community. This explains why people use Avatars. Another reason why people use avatars is that they are “an embodied representation of themselves” (Bessiere, Seay, and Kiesler 2007). This helps people gain confidence in them selves, which in turn will help them gain some relationships that will last for a long time and this is what people want. We feel that these reasons are why people use avatars; as well reason’s why it will succeed. People will use avatars as the technology becomes more prevalent, since they are now being used in video games as well as the internet. The next step in using avatars will be in the class room, and these advances might be the best of them all. For example this place would be “where a beautiful avatar named Lucy helps Chinese-speaking people practice their English. She asks you questions, which you answer by typing and, hopefully, also speaking, for the practice” (Egen, S., 2005). This will help many different people better them selves and help them gain long standing relationships, and this is what people want. we hope you start to use avatars since they are the next big thing in the communication world as well as the technology world.
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The avatar could be the next evolutional style in the development of communication technology. It seems like the old way of posting emoticons which are used to compensate for the inability to convey voice inflections, facial expression and bodily gestures in written communication (Burnett & Marshall, 2003b), is going be replaced by avatar. Avatar may replace emoticons because avatars convey how you look and how you feel. This would be a tool that fills in the gap of the inability to show emotion when communicating online. This communication tool is also a use for online self-expression and identity exploration. In online self-expression and identity exploration there are positive and negative factors that may occur when using avatars. A positive aspect of using avatars could the re-establishment of a stable sense of self-identity, (Cheung, 2004) especially for those who are introverts and are socially anxious and have difficulty developing friendships in their real-life environment. (Valkenburg, Schouten, & Peter, 2005) A negative aspect of using the avatars could be some use it as a escape, where they shelter themselves from the real world. This could be a barrier in developing social skills, especially for those who over use the communication tool. Although, there are positive and negative factors with this communication technology, the avatar is becoming a trend that is being widely used in many institutions.
References:
Burnett, R., & Marshall, P. (2003b). The Web of Communciation. In, web theory: An Introduction , 45-60.
Cheung, C. (2004). Identity Construction and Self-Presentation on Personal Homepages: Emancipatory Potentials and Reality Constraints. Web Studies , 53-68.
Valkenburg, P., Schouten, A., & Peter, J. (2005). Adolescents' Identity Experiments on the Internet. New Media and Society , 383-402 .
Truth is I decided to view this blog because I had no idea what an Avatar was. The interesting thing is I guess I knew what they were but just not by name. I had at one point a yahoo email and instant messaging account. Where I had created an avatar, it was a great deal of fun and fun for my clients as well whom I conversed with utilizing my avatar. One can use avatars much like one would use a personal homepage to express their identity and their interest. It can give a face and breadth of character to a conversation. Avatars are fun and make the experience much more interactive. It may even help those that struggle with gender norms, that may feel constrained about what is appropriate. Cheung states (2004) “So how people deal with uncertain identities re-establish their stable sense of self-identity? Giddens (1991) argues that, in late modern society, we construct our sense of self-identity by creating a ‘coherent’ self-narrative” (pp.59-60). Avatars could be used for just that. It could help people who struggle with their identity to play out, try on, or experiment with a look, or an appearance that is more like how they feel on the inside. That is not to say deceive some one about your sex, like in the so called ‘experiment’ that Alex did, that was just malicious (Van Gelder, 1991).
References:
Cheung, C. (2004). Identity construction and self-presentation on personal homepages: Emancipatory potentials and reality constraints. In D.Guantlett & R. Horsley (Eds.), Web Studies (pp. 53-68). New York: Oxford
Van Gelder, L. (1991). The strange case of the electronic lover. In C. Dunlop & R. Kling (Eds.), Computerization and Controversy (pp. 533-546). San Diego: Academic Press.
Where will avatars be in the realm of web cam... outside of gaming how relevant are they to users for the net?
The use of an avatar appears be “providing an alternative interaction setting in which interactions and relationships play by somewhat different rules, and have somewhat different outcomes, the Internet sheds light on those aspects of face-to-face interaction that we may have missed all along” (Bargh and McKenna, 2004). Since there are so many who do not have access to computers, I find it interesting to see how avatars cross the digital divide in order to allow those who do have technology access and those who do not (Mehra, Merkel, and Peterson, 2004).
References
Bargh, J. A., & McKenna, K. Y. A. (2004). The internet and social life. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 573-90.
Mehra, B., Merkel, C., & Peterson, B. A. (2004). The internet for empowerment of minority and marginalized users. New Media and Society, 6, 781-802.
I first have to say that I had no idea what this was before I started reading this blog. I completely understand now and I am actually interested. The fact that this helps people socialize and come out of their shell is great. This is one of the best things about the internet is that it really can help people become more social and find a setting that works for them. The idea that people are trying on new personalities online is humorous to me. I think I have done it before but to actually think about it makes you laugh. According to Bargh & McKenna (2004), these online communications become a central very real part of one’s social life. This really helps people com out and communicate with people that it would be hard in other situations. This is a good thing for many people. Good blog and I learned a lot.
Bargh, J.A., & McKenna, K.Y.A. (2004). The internet and social life. Annnual Review of Psychology, 55, 573-590.
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