The Electric Self: Doing Virtual Research for Real in Second Life®

If we think of virtual worlds as having additional "language" and customs which their participants adopt, it is possible to think of virtual worlds as spaces where identity can be translated from the physical world to the virtual, resulting in a self which occupies a rhetorical third space, where virtual identities have real effects, and real identities operate virtually. This combination of the real and the virtual, and its position as a space of translation, pose specific problems when researchers want to conduct research about virtual lives. Second Life®, a popular online world where people play the "game" of identity, provides a way to investigate how the act of translating one's self can be understood as part of the practice of life narrative, in a new medium.