Understanding identity in online worlds

For Rosa Mikeal Martey, professor in Journalism

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and Media Communication, the relationship between identity in the offline world and identity construction in a virtual world has always been of research interest. For her dissertation, Martey studied gender identity and perception in online job applications. Her current research involves understanding how social norms develop in digital spaces. "I'm interested in the way people interact with, use, and respond to technology as they perform and craft those identities," she says. "Identity is a fluid category that emerges in different spaces and is influenced by the space itself."
To study those spaces and the ways identity is created, Martey has participated in three major projects funded by Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) that explore how digital technology is used for education and exploration.
SCRIBE (Social and Cultural Research in Bounded Environments) investigated how people pick their avatars and interact on screen and how people present themselves based on gender and age. "One of our questions was: if we watch people online, can we tell who they are offline," says Martey.
To do this, the researchers created a mini game within the multiplayer games World of Warcraft and Second Life and found that there are a few ways you can tell who is behind the elf, orc, or goblin you see on the screen, but not many.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-identity-online-worlds.html