Sociologie numérique, anthropologie du Web : Étudier les rapports sociaux et les comportements dans les univers virtuels

Les univers virtuels sont sous les projecteurs du monde de l’éducation, du commerce et du marketing, de la politique, et aussi au niveau de la recherche en science sociales comme la sociologie, la criminologie, la psychologie sociale, etc. L’équipe du Virtual Human Interaction Lab [en] de Stanford s’intéresse à l’étude des comportements dans les univers virtuels. Ils font des expérimentations avec un systèmes d’identification de suspects virtuels et d’entrainement physique.

Voici la vidéo de présentation :

Il est possible de calquer les visages sur les avatars 3D dans l’univers virtuel, modifier leur apparence physique (cheveux, poids, etc.), les mettre dans l’environnement où le crime à eu lieu, pour maximiser la chance de reconnaître le coupable. Autre expérimentation, ils testent la possibilité de reproduire des comportements vu dans les environnements virtuelle dans le monde réel. Ainsi, ils ont découvert que le fait de se voir faire de l’exercice dans un environnement virtuel augmente l’intérêt de le faire dans la vrai vie.

Voici une présentation de quelques-uns de leur projets :

• The Proteus Effect
  Cyberspace grants us great control over our self-representations. At the click of a button, we can alter our gender, age, attractiveness, and skin tone. But as we choose our avatars online, do our avatars change us in turn? In a series of studies, we’ve explored how putting people in avatars of different attractiveness or height change how they behave in a virtual environment.

• Transformed Social Interaction
  In collaboration with the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior [en], we are interested in the experience of social presence as well as task performance within collaborative virtual environments. We are utilizing virtual reality simulations in which people interact in real-time within a collaborative virtual environment.

  

• Avatar Identity
  What are the implications of having an avatar, that is, a digital model that represents you in virtual reality? We are studying the ties that individuals have to an avatar. Specifically, how much does an avatar need to resemble (both visually and behaviorally) its respective owner in order for person-specific influences to take effect? Using a variety of affective, behavioral, and cognitive measures we are exploring the phenomenon of virtual self, and examining the implications of avatar representation.

• Learning in Immersive VR
  In collaboration with Berkeley’s CITRUS lab [en] we are exploring how immersive virtual reality extends the benefits of video learning, allowing the user to enter the same world as the teacher. First, immersive settings allow users to see in full three dimensions, greatly increasing detail, presence (i.e., learners feel psychologically as if they are in the digital learning environment, as opposed to the physical space) and social presence (i.e., they feel as if the digital reconstruction of the instructor is a real person). Second, as opposed to stationary video, immersive virtual settings allow users to control how they view the environment by allowing them to change aspects such as camera position and orientation, even allowing a disconnect between their own representation and their point of view in real-time. Third, video settings only allow users to watch the instructor; immersive virtual reality allows the user to interact with the instructor and the environment, as well as to perform novel functions such as sharing body space with the instructor during learning. In the first experiment completed using this paradigm, we demonstrated, via subjective self-report of the learners as well as more objective measures involving expert coder ratings of learners performing the tai chi moves later on in physical space, that people learned more in the immersive virtual reality system than in the 2D video system.

• Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games
  Every day, millions of users interact with each other in online virtual environments through avatars. Nowhere else but in these environments do we see such pervasive social interaction, relationship formation, and collaboration between avatars. If we are interested in avatars, collaborative virtual environments, and virtual reality, these Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games have a lot to tell us. Recent findings are presented online.

• Diversity simulation
  Using immersive virtual reality, it is possible for someone to literally experience the world as another person. In other words, someone can become a passenger to someone else in an immersive simulation that is designed to demonstrate what it is like to walk a mile in the shoes of another. We are using these simulations to explore relationships of gender, status, and race, and testing the "extended contact" hypothesis, namely that wearing the face of another in a simulation designed to highlight diversity issues can increase awareness.

Au fond , ils cherchent à trouver ce qui est vraiment important dans cette ère digitale et numérique des environnements virtuels, où nous avons des identités virtuelles (avatar) et des nouveaux comportements.

Fascinant ce qui nous attend, n’est ce pas ?