Weekly Response - Dan

I am finding the concept of conducting ethnographic research on an online community or in an online game to be extremely interesting.  7 years ago I was very into World of Warcraft and I think going back and looking at how people conceptualize themselves within the game would be very enlightening for me.  Boellstorff talks about another author that studied the mods that became popular within World of Warcraft and given the extensive private server and mod communities that exist (and are free to play) I think that I might want to look more closely at some of those communities.  I am worried, however, that I will not find a convincing way to link any findings or observations that I gather back to the physical world.  

     In a different vein, I enjoyed reading more about some of the issues around internet research in academia.  Particularly, I wanted to find more about how privacy is protected within these virtual worlds and how willing people are to share private details or to what extent their actual lives influence a given user's behavior in game.  In the Stanford Law Journal article, they talk a little about the contrast between European-style data protection laws and, presumably, American-style (although not explicitly mentioned).  Perhaps the fact that many of the biggest internet companies have originated in the US has made Europe less trusting with the data that they generate?  There is a debate in the EU about mandating that Google create a “Right to be Forgotten” system that would allow individuals the ability to remove things from a google search that they did not want to be on the internet.  We have to consent to our data being basically public on these networks, but nobody bothers to read the agreements on this.  I think that if it was in companies best interests to keep our data private, they would make a better effort to educate their users about privacy.  However, these sites must make money somehow and they leverage the only thing they have: users’ data.