Virtual journalist brings new reporting issues to forefront

Offentliggjort 11/01/2006, senest redigeret 11/08/2006

Af Jack Jackson

(Article on James Au’s session at 'Knock Knock')

James Wagner Au has discovered a new potential for the field of journalism that has been underestimated, overlooked and misunderstood by many others in the media. For three years, Au worked as an “embedded journalist” inside the virtual online world of Linden Lab’s Second Life, a place created almost entirely by its users with their PCs from around the globe. Au told about his experience and insight for journalists at the “Knock Knock” conference (link) in Århus in September 2006.

Second Life-reporter James Wagner Au - an example of the complete web 2.0 journalist. Photo: CFJE/Morten Fauerby

Second Life is one of several so-called massively multi–user online games that has grown very fast in popularity over the past few years. With about 800,000 total “residents,” Second Life has long since moved from a type of game to be an online world -- though Au says it’s more like a country.

Users create 99.9% of the content while they participate online, and their experience is streamed to their computers in real time. Second Life has its own currency called Linden dollars, and these can be exchanged for $US on the open market. People within Second Life have opened businesses, designed clothing, games, buildings, and so on, and some people are so involved and so talented, they earn enough money to live on in the “real world.”

Residents are embodied in so-called avatars, their online alter egos, and they design these to look like people, animals, monsters -- or whatever their imagination can come up with. They speak with other avatars online via chat, which is run though translation programs into 10 languages.

A blog from the inside
Linden Lab hired Au to write about life within Second Life in 2003 -- what were people building? how were they interacting? what was happening inside this virtual world?

James Wagner Au in real life. Photo: CFJE/Morten Fauerby

Au wrote his reports in a blog, New World Notes. He immediately found himself covering a battle inside Second Life -- where pro-war and anti-war residents had built a wall to separate themselves, and some residents began shooting virtual bullets at each other. It was the first of many parallels to the real world (and in particular USA’s development and history) that he experienced. Covering this war -- and Second Life residents’ experience of law and order in general -- became one of the major themes Au unraveled as a virtual reporter. Au found his reports to be allegorical explorations of how role playing affects people’s concepts of greater societal issues, including also trust and fidelity and race and identity.

“One user was a white woman from the US,” Au told conference delegates. “She put on the avatar skin of a black woman and people started treating her differently. It changed the way people interacted with her.”
Au also interviewed private detectives in Second Life, who set up sting operations for people suspicious that their online lover was cheating on them.

Virtual reporting tool
Au was also reporting on news in Second Life -- another major theme.

“There are actually a lot of newsworthy things happening in the virtual world,” he said, “particularly as the metaverse [i.e. the virtual online representation of reality] becomes the web’s next generation.”

Au told about a fully functioning virtual ecosystem called Spargos Island, for example. “Right now people are working on artificial ecosystems at universities. Here [in Second Life], you can just go in and look from your own computer.”

Second Life also has a town where different kinds of catastrophes are simulated. “This is used to train real emergency workers in how to operate,” he said. Real world political and social figures are also entering the virtual world, making a direct measurable impact on real world news -- the third major theme. One excellent example included Governor Mark Warner, a top democratic runner for the US presidential race in 2008. Warner held a press conference and town hall meeting inside Second Life, addressing his avatar-based constituency.

Collective dream
Although nothing in Second Life is physically real, Au said that the feeling of being in this virtual world and interacting with other users in real time is almost like living a collective dream.

“Because of the way our minds work, when you are seeing these people’s avatars, you start seeing them as real people with voices as opposed to just words on the screen, and you engage with them as real people. Second Life and other virtual communities are forming the next generation of the web, and the importance of this must not be overlooked by journalists.

“Instead of a limited interface on the web, you can be in the data. It’s embodied in your alter ego. You move through the data, you exist in the data stream, moving through it and adding to it.”

Future of the Internet
In an longer article in the SecondLife magazine 'First Monday' Au writes about his Second Life experience, he says that he has interviewed strippers and Catholic priests, combat veterans and peace activists, socialist utopians and midget warmongers.

“And even though none of these persons really exist -- except as data bits in a San Francisco server farm -- they’re part of the best story I’ve ever been lucky enough to cover as a journalist,” he wrote. “I’ve come to believe that it’s an inadvertent advance report on the future of the Internet, and how we’ll interact in it in decades to come.”

James Wagner Au, full-time journalist in Second Life. Photo: CFJE/Morten Fauerby

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