İmgelem

Yazarlar: Mikail PUŞKİN

Konular:Sosyoloji

Anahtar Kelimeler:Avatars,Virtual identity,Internet forums

Özet: Considering the scope of coverage and the possibilities of World Wide Web to create fictional virtual realities, where people communicate and spend ever increasing share of their time, - the questions of virtual representation and online identity become all the more important for academic investigation. Although the main flow of public online communication has shifted towards social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, online forums still occupy a sizable niche for thematic and more professional or hobby-oriented communication. Current research is analyzing one of the main visual elements used to create visual identity of forum users: the avatars, small (usually static) images that users choose to represent their virtual selves. Current research paper analyzes the degree of attachment and the kinds of meanings that users attribute to their avatars in online forums’ interactive environments. Following the related background research overview on the subject of avatars and upon analyzing diverse sources of data filtered through numerous steps of sampling, and coding a grounded theory procedure is applied.

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