Week4's lesson, Wiki Formation and information on Second Life

In this week's lesson we were given an in depth understanding of what is meant by the terminology 'Online communities' and what that also means about who we are online . Online communities inevitably aims to address issues of sustainability, regeneration, social inclusion and healthier economies by focusing on the use of new communications technologies in communities and neighbourhoods.

This week also gave us a chance to progress with our group wiki, which I must say is coming on really well. There is some really good information inputted on it, however, I feel that we need to sort out the overall design and layout of the page as there is far too much text on it and not enough images. I do realise that this is an academic piece of work but I also know that it's meant to be user friendly for students.


We were each assigned different parts to focus on for this project, my part is 'deception online'.
For this I will be giving a concised definition of what 'deception' actually means. I will then be illustrating the three main questions which I have choosen to focus on for this section as the subject on deception is so broad.

• Are we really who we say we are online?
• How easy is it to hide your identity online?
• How easy is it to commit identity fraud?
  

With reference to these three questions I will be analysing Dyson, E (1997) article on 'who are you and does it matter?' in the Guardian Online Dec 1997 p.11, Baym, NK (1998), The emergence of online community' in Jones, SG ed. Cybersociety 2.0: revisiting computer-mediated communication and community, Sage California and Donath, S.J (1996) 'Identity and deception in the virtual community' at http://judith.www.media.mit.edu/Judith/identity/identitydeception.htm

In addition, I will be looking at social networking sites in particular Myspace, facebook and second life. Are we really who we say we are on these sites? as we could potientially be a paedophile.
There are countless anecdotes concerning online deception, in particular the story of a (multi-user-domain) which I will elaborate on when inputting information on the group wiki.


I read something in the 'London Lite' that was very alarming to me about Second life and I thought I should share it with you as well as using it as the basis of case study for my group project.
The article reads:

'Child abuse fear in Second Life'
'Internet detectives are hunting for paedophilies using the web community to
abuse virtual children. A probe into Second Life, a site where users can create
and control characters, found that paedophiles had created a playground to
carry out sex acts on virtual children. Police now fear that the abuse could
spiral into the real world and said "We'll infiltrate these rings." 'John,G London Lite Wednesday 31st October 2007 pg3


I think that we need to be more cautious online although there is security maintained in 'net communication' and not take certain things online for granted.