[UCI-Calit2] Seminars Tuesday July 10 - on computer games and on blog readers

[Stuart Ross]

Calit2 presents the first in a series of summer seminars by faculty mentors for “SURF-IT,” Calit2’s interdisciplinary summer research program for undergraduates. Each event will feature two faculty mentors from the program. A light lunch will be available at 11:30 a.m., prior to the seminars.  The event is open to the public.

Tuesday, July 10
Calit2 Building, Room 3008
 
12:00 Noon: “Beyond Play – Artificial Worlds and Gaming Capital”
Peter O. Krapp, Assistant Professor, Film & Media Studies
   Undergraduate Fellow:  Nathaniel Pope, Economics

When players of computer games buy and sell game items with real money, and when real profit can be made by working in the game, then new social and cultural relationships emerge -- the familiar separation of play from productivity begins to disappear. There are now many game-based economies from which people can and do draw a real-money profit. World of Warcraft, Everquest and Second Life are familiar examples. This project will use quantitative and qualitative methods to understand the response to these phenomena from game developers and players, and will trace a history of what passes for “play” and what constitutes a “game.” Can such emergent play resist classification as “work,” and must it do so to maintain subscriptions? 

12:30 p.m.  “Blog Readers”
Bill Tomlinson, Assistant Professor, Department of Informatics
   Undergraduate Fellow:  Mark Sueyoshi, International Studies

Blogs have become a powerful force in the news media, a popular outlet for self-expression, and the object of an increasing amount of academic research. Most research thus far has focused on the bloggers – social network analyses between bloggers, tools to assist in blog publication, and understanding the presentation of self through a blog. But blog readers can also play a very large part in shaping the blog, and they often do – through channels such as comments, email, IM, and in-person interaction.  This project is a study of blog-reading practices in order to understand the role of the reader in this increasingly prominent medium. The investigation will consist largely of ethnographic-based methods, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and experience sampling, as well as other methods, including automatic tracking and logging of reading patterns.

 




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