They have been busy in Umeå last week (read previous post) Mikael Jakobsson defended his PhD Virtual worlds and social interaction design (fulltext)
In his abstract he writes about his explorations of the virtual worlds:
I have found that participants in virtual worlds are not anonymous and bodiless actors on a level playing field. Participants construct everything needed to create social structures such as identities and status symbols. The qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds cannot be measured against physical interaction. Doing so conceals the qualities of virtual interaction. Through the concepts of levity and proximity, I offer an alternative measure that better captures the unique properties of the medium. Levity is related to the use of avatars and the displacement into a virtual context and manifests itself as a kind of lightness in the way participants approach the interaction. Proximity is my term for the transformation of social distances that takes place in virtual worlds. While participants perceive that they are in the same place despite being physically separated, the technology can also create barriers separating participants from their physical surroundings. The gap between the participant and her avatar is also of social significance.
This is important stuff since it goes beyond the simplified perceptions of the online world. It is particularly interesting for those who intend to create regulatory systems which effect these environments.