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I have never played WoW, but I do enjoy the idea of playing a game while simultaneously adopting or constructing a new persona or identity as part of the game. WoW and other online MMOs have vast communities with diverse members interacting in various online social setting both within and outside the game realm. I have a particular interest in the way that social media and technology shapes and affects the construction or reconstruction of "our" identities, and how intertwined much of our lives are with the technology we use.

I've never played WOW either but I do buy into the whole idea of an online identity. Non-gamers create one, too, by way of social networking sites--LinkedIn, facebook, Myspace--and some via usernames on online messageboards. It's possible to have several different online identities; the clean and presentable one you use to promote yourself to employers and work colleagues on LinkedIn, the slightly more laid-back Facebook profile, and with the promise of anonymity on message boards and forums, you can really let loose!

My husband and I have spent hours upon hours playing Everquest, so I know first-hand the draw of creating an online persona/identity. It's a way to step out of your everyday life and become someone or something you aren't. For instance, in one game I'm a Dark Fairy with magical powers. Who wouldn't want to be one? It's also a way to have relationships with people all over the planet without giving too much away about your true identity, so the draw for those that are less than comfortable in real-life situations is huge. Not to mention you learn all kinds of things about different areas of the world, so it's a learning experience too!

A Ph.D candidate at U.C. Irvine, Jed Brubaker's research deals with the topic of death on social networking sites (which, admittedly, is something I've never considered before!). When an individual passes, his or her friends, family, and admirers can gather in a digital community to share memories and grieve together. Brubaker studies the language and rhetoric of posts on the social networking pages of the deceased and analyzes how these posts create a living memory in a digital space.

This is the personal site for a research fellow at the University of Oxford, Anne-Marie Oostveen. Her work is focused on SI and I found her list of publications to be interesting, as they address several areas of SI such as online identities, online activisim and public trust issues.

In Malaysia, the government is making it easier to prosecute internet crimes by placing the burden of proving their innocence on the computer owners.

Culture Digitally is a gathering space for social informatics scholars around the world, who come from a variety of disciplines (communication, sociology, media studies, computer science, anthropology). to share and comment on the latest research in the field. The idea behind the blog is that social informatics transcends several different areas of study and so cross-disciplinary collaboration is incredibly important.

What an interesting blog! The dialogue they had titled "(How) Have Technological Shifts Changed Being A Sports Fan?" was so interesting! My focus as I searched through SI literature tended to focus on issues of censorship and privacy, but the idea that technology would impact sports fandom had never occured to me. The stances made by both participants were very well thought out and presented some really good arguments. The role of technology in fandom studies is an area that could be really interesting to dive deeper into.