Middaugh /Kahne/Evans: Civic Engagement in Virtual Worlds
Filed at 10:27 am on September 10, 2007 in Civic Engagement • 1 comments
Do civic activities in virtual worlds translate beyond those contexts? Researchers from the Civic Engagement Research Group ask how participation in online games might help young people develop capacity for active citizenship.
Like the physical world, virtual worlds can offer young people experiences with democratic action, the chance to build civic skills, and a range of experiences that parallel best practice in civic education (simulations, debates, collective problem solving, etc). For example, an Alphaville election for SimsOnline (an example provided in Jenkins, 2006) provoked debates about community needs and government policy (how decisions will be made) and gave some participants an opportunity to practice recruiting others in an organized effort to change the way their community is run. The kinds of collaborative activities encouraged in the virtual world in World of Warcraft, such as raids requiring the coordinated efforts of many players, can provide opportunities for players of any age to practice organizing a sizeable group who very likely may have differing opinions about how to proceed. Users who collaborate in SecondLife to build an island can have an experience with the efficacy of collective action.
And some forms of participation in a virtual world can be viewed as civic participation in and of itself. On Democracy Island in Second Life, participants use the virtual world as an interface through which to discuss real-world issues and real-world institutions conduct activities that, when disrupted (as in the bombing of ABC Island in Second Life, see here) have some real-world consequences.
These examples point to the potential of virtual worlds for helping to promote civic engagement. However, many questions remain. Two we are studying right now are:
Does participation in a virtual world lead young people to develop a sense of commitment to and capacity for participation in society beyond those specific virtual contexts? Is a person who organizes a group of WoW players more capable of organizing a group outside of that context? Do the players who debated the Alphaville election have greater interest or insight into in real-world politics than the average citizen does?
Do different models of civic engagement emerge from different kinds of participation in virtual worlds? Our prior studies of civic education suggest that different kinds of community activities promote different kinds of active citizenship. We wonder if different community activities in a virtual world also promote different conceptions of virtual citizenship that then translate into real-world civic activities. For example, do those who witness the Alphaville elections have a different conception of what it means to try to influence their virtual world than those who experience the bombings in Second Life?
We would love to hear people’s thoughts.
This post is co-authored by Ellen Middaugh, Joe Kahne, and Chris Evans.
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Comments (1)
1: Dave H. Crusoe from Harvard Univ. '05 & 07 at 11:22 pm on Monday, October 8, 2007
A very interesting research question that makes me wonder what dimensions you’re measuring to explore an outcome.
To me, it seems logical that civic identity is very much a part of self-concept (efficacy, etc). It isn’t a stretch to imagine that individuals in a virtual environment maintain a very different self-concept in the virtual space in comparison to world space.
So the question has at least two parts; the first is, what are the psychological/social components of civic identity online, and how do they compare to the same components offline? What translations are possible, and what does the scaffolding look like?
Or, more fundamentally, is civic engagement even defined the same way in an online space, as compared to an offline? Sorry to meet your questions with yet more questions, but it’s all in the hopes of getting closer to an answer…
Cheers!
—Dave
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