Virtual Worlds as a Public Sphere

This is a joint project between The Sammy Ofer School of Communications at IDC and the UNLV Hank Greenspan School of Journalism and Media Studies. Our goal is to explore social aspects of virtual worlds, and in particular issues of policy debate and persuasion – how are these affected by this unique medium?

The project includes several threads:

• Group debate experimentation
• Using a software "bot" to study human behavior
• Ethnographic study
• A study of the legal aspects of virtual worlds

As part of this project we have carried out the Virtual Worlds, Real People conference, held in Herzliya, Israel, in January 2008.

Participants:

• IDC, Principal investigators: Doron Friedman, Yuval Karniel, Amit Lavie-Dinur
• Research assistants: Ran Stone , Tomer Hendl
• UNLV: Anthony Ferri, Lawrence Mullen, Susanna Priest