from: _Anthropology Newsletter_ Vol. 35(9) (December 1994) (copyright Jen Clodius and American Anthropological Association1994) _________________________________________________________________ Report from the Field We would like to introduce Jen Clodius, a graduate student in Anthropology at the U of Wisconsin-Madison. Her dissertation research focuses on community formation on the Internet. She is examining how these communities of interest form when there are no geographic boundaries. Clodius has been involved for 4 years in an inter-collegiate course teaching anthropology on the Internet. _________________________________________________________________ Ethnographic Fieldwork on the Internet By Jen Clodius (U Wisconsin) In _Stranger and Friend_, Hortense Powdermaker wrote "The industrial revolution has hit anthropology!" when describing the uses of computers. Little could she realize that, thirty years later, people would be forming "communities of interest" on the InterNet and not using computers solely as tools for statistical analysis. My "field" is DragonMud which, after five years, is the oldest continuously running Multi-User Domain on the InterNet, my "tribe" consists of a stable core group of about 500 people and an ever-changing peripheral group of about 1500 people. The core players describe themselves as being a "family" or a "community" and log on to DragonMud from all over the world. DragonMud's inhabitants, the spaces in which they dwell, and the objects they create and manipulate all exist within a realm comprised solely of text. Interactions occur "real time", and any number of people can participate simultaneously. Conversations scroll up one's screen looking like a play script. For instance: Bedouin says "Dunno if Jops and I are renting a car or doing the T - but I'll get directions and instructions from ya'll closer to December." wapini says "What's the T?" Randall says "MTA" Michael says "the T is the subway system." wapini ahhs.. thanks! Randall says " ... poor Charley and the MTA ..." wapini says "He never returned?" Bedouin says "Did he ever return?" Randall nods nods at wapini and Bedouin - No, he never returned Bedouin says "And his fate is still unlearned...?" Randall says "He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston" Celeste has never heard this song. Randall says "Kingston Trio" Michael says "it's about a guy who was on the T when they raised the fare 5 cents and he didn't have the money to pay on the way out." Michael says "so he got stuck...." Malacar heard the Tangled Up in Blue cover. Celeste says "reminds me of the DC metro" Michael says "The song I think was written for a political campaign." Randall says "vote for George O'Brien - get poor Charley off the MTA" Malacar says "O'Brien lost..." Randall says "of course - he had the better song" Conducting ethnography on the InterNet presents a whole new series of challenges and problems for the anthropologist. In addition to questions of how DragonMudders use the InterNet as a Goffmanesque "backstage" to practice attributes which they want to incorporate into their lives away from the InterNet, and how they use textual descriptions to create the illusion of "space" in a non-geographic community, one of the areas that most fascinates me is how gendered roles are complicated in a variety of ways. In spite of the diverse cultures from which people log on, the InterNet seems to operate, for the most part, on Western perceptions of "proper" behavior. I've been on DragonMud for four years, in a variety of roles - as a participant, as an observer, as a "core" character, and as several anonymous "peripheral" characters, both male- and female-presenting. In what has become an anthropological cliche', when I first started the "village chief" took me under his wing and taught me the rules of the then still-unformed community. I conduct interviews both on-line and face-to-face, with the explicit permission of DragonMud's administrators. The first thing a player does when logging on for the first time is "create" themselves. Their character's description and their gender (or lack of gender) is solely the product of their choice and imagination. Because there is no definitive way to verify who, exactly, is at the keyboard (though the administrators can make some good guesses) the player's presentation of "self" is necessarily somewhat ambiguous. The implicit ability to be "anonymous" provides players with the opportunity to experiment with genders and roles. Players who choose to run opposite-gendered characters do so for a multitude of reasons, but some initial generalizations can be made. Commonly, real-life males will run a female character to "see what it's like". Real-life females will run a male character because they've had previous negative experiences on other areas of the InterNet when they've run female-presenting characters. I find it interesting that the illusion can rarely be maintained for long; "gender-bending" players give themselves away through forgetting which gender they're presenting and by missing subtle (and occasionally, remarkably un-subtle) social cues. After multiple observations, it's fairly easy to detect "gender-bending" - for instance, any character's description that mentions "nipples" is almost assuredly an undergraduate male running a female character. (One question I have yet to explore is, is this how late adolescent males think females act? Or how they wish females would act?) On the other hand, a player's real-life gender has considerably less import in matters of status and hierarchy on the InterNet. Although there are more real-life males than females in DragonMud's "core" group, fully half of DragonMud's active administrators are female. Moreover, rules of interaction, where high-status persons tend to guide a group's dynamics (whether or not they have the expertise or information necessary to give that guidance) is complicated by the fact that everyone is typing at the same time - so whoever "speaks" first is determined solely by who finishes typing their comment and hits the key first. In the snippet of conversation excerpted above, for instance, the reader might assume that Bedouin, Randall, Michael, and Malacar are males and that wapini and Celeste are female - and be partially correct. But the reader has no way of knowing which of these "core" characters is a (female) senior administrator, which are junior administrators, and which are unranked players. To a great extent, the DragonMud community democratizes and blurs perceptions of status boundaries. A player's professional title, grade-point average, physical appearance, age, or gender have minimal impact on perceptions of status on DragonMud. Rather, friendliness, wit, creativity, the ability to communicate via text, and a willingness to share information are valued characteristics. _________________________________________________________________ jclodius@students.wisc.edu _________________________________________________________________ Back to Jen's page _________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ftp://ftp.game.org/pub/mud FTP.GAME.ORG http://www.game.org/ftpsite/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This document came from FTP.GAME.ORG, the ultimate source for MUD resources. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------