Deviant Behaviour

Hi everyone,

I'm an MSc student at Edinburgh University and am doing a study into deviant behaviour (such as littering, abuse, spamming) in Second Life. I intend to discover how people experience deviant behaviour and what they think of it. I've designed a short questionnaire for people to fill in order to help me do this.

I would like to invite anyone who is interested in this and willing to help to fill the questionnaire in. It should take maximum 10 minutes to complete, is completely confidential and hosted on a secure site to ensure confidentiality and data protection. All questions are optional so if you don't want to answer a particualr question, thats fine.

The url is https://www.survey.ed.ac.uk/secondlife/

If you have any concerns, comments or queries, please feel free to email me [email]s0671786@sms.ed.ac.uk[/email] or IM me in-world.

Thanks in advance,

Heriot Bleriot (IRL: Jake Phillips)

Deviant?

That's a rather extreme term for what mostly seems -- from your description -- to be low-level anti-social behavior. Even just bad manners.

"Deviant" has a connotation of sexual inclinations that are considered to be socially unaceptable, not dropping an unwanted prim on someone's land.

I take your point Regan and thx for pointing it out- I am also looking at harassment, stalking and sexual aggression- maybe I should have put this in my introduction- apologies.

Heriot

You need to have the blessing of LL before doing this sort of thing.... I would contact them first before soliciting any more research.

I took your survey. I was just wondering if it would be ok to ask Heriot here if you have been enjoying your Second Life. Did you have a bad experience and want more done to stop griefing? (That's the basic codeword for all annoying things someone does to another resident in Second Life) Did you want to do this survey and include Second Life for a school project, and because you are enjoying your time here? I'm just curious.

Gaybot, first of all, thanks for completing the survey. I enjoy my time in SL immensely. I decided to do this project because I am interested in why people commit 'crime' (i appreciate this a strong and loaded word) in certain communities. SL seems a pretty strong community with really interesting characterisitcs and differences to RL so I thought it would be interesting to see what people think of it in a 'virtual' setting. I was already spending time in-world before thinking of doing this- two things in my life- criminology and SL have come together... thats all!

Isablan- thanks, for your message. Robin Linden posted a message to the educator's list on 10 January saying that LL had got rid of the requirement to authorize all research projects as long as the research is passed by the individual researcher's institutional research ethics committee. I hope this clears up your concerns.

Heriot.

Groovy. Carry on! *waves*

This is no longer the case - LL changed the applicable TOS a couple of months ago.

[Edit: looks like I was too slow replying ]

Crime is a well-defined concept in RL, where we have a body of legislation, as well as fairly accepted cultural standards, that define legal vs illegal behavior.

But to bring that concept into SL is a somewhat problematic shift. As a virtual environment, and one in which role-playing often dominates behavior, defining "crime" is much more subjective.

For those of us who see SL as a technology platform for extending our RL interests, rather than as a fantasy setting for roleplay, our tolerance for some boisterous behavior might be rather low. Certainly lower than that of residents who see SL as a complete fantasy environment which suspends the social rules of RL.

By it's very nature, some residents will engage in behaviors in SL that they would never engage in RL. Their perception of this behavior as a "crime" has altered according to location, so who are you to redefine it back to RL standards?

As just one example: One resident's extramarital affair is another's roleplay game. Same action, but much different perceptions of its significance and repercussions.

Interesting study. Are you planning to make the results public at anyt point? I suspect the majority of SLers are somewhat less chilled about harassment than I am so I'm quite curious to see the results

I agree that the use of the word 'crime' in SL is problematic, hence me putting in inverted commas.

I don't intend to redefine it back to RL standards, the behaviours which are of interest are ones which are listed on SL's Police Blotter website and are in the Community Standards. I wonder why people violate them ( a body of legislation in essence) in SL, when they wouldn't do it in RL? I suppose thats down to an individuals subjective perception of what RL and SL are and what defines acceptable behaviour. These are all questions i'm interested in and hope to get to grips with some of the answers (or at least understand a little more) in time.

Just an observation, but perhaps you are going about this backwards.

The people who will tend to read here and respond to your survey will likely (for the most part) be the victims, not the perpetrators. If, while going home from work today, i am robbed, how would i as the victim know the reason "Why" the robber chose to rob me. Perhaps the robber is desparate to feed their family, or perhaps they just got their jollies from committing the crime.

I submit that perhaps you should go in world and ask the griefers directly (and be prepared to be attacked, shot, caged, orbitted, spammed, etc). In the US, we have a Television show called "America's Dumbest Criminals". Everyone of those criminals had to sign a waiver to allow their face and name to be used on the air. All of them did, despite how foolish they look, for the chance to get on TV. Properly worded and presented to the griefers, and i suspect that you might have them eager to answer your questions, in a manner similar to how computer hackers are eager to talk to reporters to boast about their deeds, so long as the deed can't be directly linked to them. In this you would have to establish your credibility with the griefers.

Good luck with your project.

sorry to laugh but .. ROFLMAO ahahah... YOU THINK LITTERING IS DEVIENT ?

you need to start looking up the torture and rape rollplay sims ... thats some sick stuff .

Take time to delve a bit deeper into the bowls of SL and you will find all manner of thing going on here that i would consider far more devient .

slave trade .... child porno ....pedophile rings ... satanic worship .....racist cults ..and NO ..im not kidding ... this stuff happens here .

This post might get pulled ... but if you see this in time ... look deeper

I like your suggestion- An offender survey would be very interesting but, unfortunately, time constraints for this project ruled it out because it would require a lot more time- as you say, the perpatrator's confidence is required and that takes time.

i suppose that if something is roleplay then it is consensual so there are no victims as such? littering may not be 'as deviant' but it probably affects more people and, crucially, affects people who don't want to have their land littered.

I agree ... I think i was just trying to point out that far worse things happen here than a few prims being scattered around

saying that ..im a tidy freak ..i hate prims being left about

Just wanted to say thanks to all of you who filled in my questionnaire! The data will prove very useful to my project.

If anyone missed this the first time this was posted and wants to fill the survey in please feel free. Read the first message in this thread to see what it's all about. The questionnaire will be online for a couple of weeks so there's plenty of time left!!

Thanks again to all of you,

Heriot