KCB102 Week 3 Branding Me: Viral Marketing, Buzz and Word-of-mouth

To many people, online digital representations or Avatars are a foreign concept seemingly common to social misfits who spend many of their waking hours playing computer games and avoiding real social contact. It has also been argued that prolonged sedentary behaviour such as playing video games and interacting in online worlds can have a negative effect on health and wellbeing. Recent studies however have challenged this belief suggesting the "Proteus Effect" (Dean, Cook, Keating, Murphy 2009) is present, meaning "users in online environments may conform to the expectations and stereotypes of the identity of their avatars" (Dean, Cook, Keating, Murphy 2009). The suggestion then, is that it is possible that users who create fit, athletic avatars to represent themselves in an online environment may be having a positive effect on their health and fitness in real life. While Yee and Bailenson's (2007) research did not suggest a causal link between avatar representations and exercise, they did find evidence to support their hypotheses. The preliminary findings that "People who are physically active in SL are also physically active in real life, and people with thinner avatars have lower real life BMIs" (Dean, Cook, Keating, Murphy 2009), perhaps poses more questions than it answers about the relationship between our real lives and our online representations of self. Further research will undoubtedly follow as society continues to become more and more plugged in.

References:

Dean, E. Cook, S. Keating, M. and Murphy, J. 2009. Does this Avatar Make Me Look Fat?: Obesity and Interviewing in Second Life. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 2 (2): 4-11.