Designing identity in VTuber Era

International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

This study investigated the worldview of a group of Malaysian higher education students, identified as SL1M residents, in the virtual world of Second Life over a period of more than two years, from 2012 to the present. Examining the representation of the participants' senses, thoughts, and actions via their avatars, the purpose of this study is to investigate the worldview elements that contribute to the behavior modeling from the virtual world that result in the development of the so-called ePersonality. Within an ethnographic framework, the study utilized Kozinet's model of Netnography to characterize the online communities and groups in the virtual world, where people are represented by avatars. Six active, closely knit, and devoted members of the SL1M group were selected based on two a priori criteria and interviewed online via the Second Life platform to capture data. Coding was necessary for an insightful analysis of the transcribed interview. The researcher utilized two distinct categorization procedures. First, the researcher coded each interview separately using seven columned templates, and then the data were coded using Atlas.ti to search for themes and sub-themes that were not captured by manual coding. This study's findings revealed that elements such as fantasized character, attractive appearance, personal intention, development of false identity, and dual personality, among others, contributed to the development of their ePersonality by modeling their virtual world behavior. The study highlights the need for additional research to ascertain the effect of virtual platforms on the development of alternative personalities among Malaysian college students.

Psychology in Russia. State of the art, 2009

The blogs as the platform for a virtual personality construction are considered in the article on the assumption of the positions of Lev S. Vygotsky's cultural-historical approach. Internet journalism practices are considered as the example for the processes of virtual "I" formation. The authors affirm that the appearance of consecutive and stable "I-representation" in Internet is the necessary condition for a change in dynamics of social nets development from motives which are out of Internet in physical space towards situation when a virtual personality is enough full-fledged to be a motive for new social interactions creation not leaving Internet. As a result a virtual personality turns into a net-creating factor and Internet loses its unoriginality in relation to physical space. Using Lev Vygotsky's "internal speech" concept, the article suggests to consider this interaction as a dairy discourse -"A dialog of internal voices", which turns a virtual personality from the product of self representation into the product of social interaction. The authors affirm that the ability to construct a virtual personality is the integral part for personality formation in the new information society and propose to regard journalism practices as one of the methods of effective self representation in Internet.

The ongoing processes of the virtual world engage our understanding of being in ways that have yet to be entirely comprehended. Grasping virtual milieu in the context of present-day media necessitates understanding how the digital platform inspires one to re-imagine oneself and others around him and get involved in everyday life in such ways otherwise deemed impossible. Is it irrelevant to discuss the virtual world when global warming is increasing at an alarming rate? When a considerable number of people are without food and access to basic amenities? When millions suffer in one way or the other? The answer is no. It is very much essential to understand the technology and how it operates in all other spheres concerning every individual. Undoubtedly, technology brings with it the problems as well as the solutions. We as a civilization of virtual/real world have to decide what we do with it. The point here is not to discard one mode or the other but to understand the way it all works and influences our lives. The paper, in particular, shall analyze the areas that deal with the communication and identity vis-à-vis the current status of the digital world.

First Dialogical Self Conference, 2000

This paper refers to the recent theoretical advances on the dialogical construction of self, applied into a particular interactive educational 3D virtual world. The aim of this study is to analyze how identities are built and maintained in this type of not-immersive cyberspace, where the 3D interactive environment is completely generated by the computer, planned, and built by a community of learners and practice (Brown & Campione, 1990; Wenger, 1995). During the online connections, users are personified by an "Avatar 1 " and through it they can walk, fly, look around the virtual world, build and manipulate the 3D objects, perform virtual actions, and chat with other users. The assignment given to the community is to construct an educational world, called "Euroland". A selected sample of excerpts from the textual chats generated while visual interactions are taking place is analyzed, supported by related screen-photos, using the ethnographic method (Geertz, 1973; Duranti, 1992). The analysis shows how identities are built in such environment through social interaction and dialogical processes. It is concluded that cyber identities seem to be highly congruent to the development of the recent psychology that considers identities as multiple in their conceptualizations (Gergen, 1991; Glass, 1993), "voiced", and "positioned" (Hermans, 1996). INTRODUCTION The particular cyberspace studied in this paper is an educational 3D, desktop, and Internet based virtual environment populated and built by students, teachers, and researcher. The virtual environment has been developed within a corss-national project (Italian and Dutch), founded by the European community, monitored by the University of Nijmegen (NL), and supported by the University of Rome (IT). Main goal of the project is to set up a community of learners and practice (Brown & Campione, 1990; Wenger, 1995) able to construct cultural 3D objects through mediated communication and active knowledge building. In order to achieve this goal, several communication tools were made available, both text and visual based, synchronous and asynchronous, all embedded into a virtual environment created with the Active Worlds 2 (AW) (http://www.activeworlds.com) technology (Ligorio & Trimpe, in preparation). AW is a desktop 1 The word Avatar comes from the Indian culture and means "reincarnation". The reference is in particular to a God called Visnú that was able to reincarnate himself through several and different faces. In the Internet the word Avatar is used to describe the "object" representing the user and it can be a two or three-dimensional photo, design, picture or animation.

IMOVICCON Conference Proceeding, 2021

The rapidly evolving motion capture technology has made it possible to solve online identity problems with the medium of moving character design known as Virtual YouTuber. Spontaneous reaction in Livestream media can make fictional character feels real through a virtual avatar. As such, anthropomorphism representation can be used and Anya Melfissa is a Virtual Youtuber whose moe anthropomorphism of Indonesia Keris. However, the visual identity of Indonesia Kris is hard to find by most people and the problem is interesting to study using the theory of semiotics, anthropomorphism, and kris visual identity. The method used to analyze Anya Melfissa’s character design will use visual text analysis to identify its visual elements such as icon, index, and symbol. The results of the analysis show that Anya Melfissa’s character design has a kris visual identity which is at the level of thirdness in Peirce’s semiotics theory. The conclusion obtained from the kris representation in Anya Melfis...

Individuals on the web are therefore subject to permanent mutual observation and grading. Social network sites involve a set of cybernetic practices, such as assessment, evaluation, supervision, coaching, monitoring, feedback systems, matching or efficiency/effectiveness measuring. Control, regulation and governance of the self have always formed a key approach in educational practice. With the rise of cybernetic processes of symbolic control and the bottom-up methods of evaluative feedbacks, complex, non-linear processes are becoming central, which combine the contingency, openness and interconnectedness of web 2.0 media culture into powerful communities and variable systems. Against this backdrop, the ‘lifelong learning’ of individuals and organisations, people and governments, enterprises and administrations, represents a kind of continuous feedback itself. Accordingly, a new kind of dynamic of informatisation of self-practices begins to emerge against the backdrop of global distribution of web-based applications and of administrative institutions strategically opening up towards systems of open knowledge. Not unlike scientific evaluation, everyday evaluation presupposes the option of changing and controlling the behaviour of the subjects involved. Response systems and feedback loops suggest that the subjects be shaped to a certain extent in order to become socially effective. Their technological scheme aims to assert knowledge on the level of everyday practices. Response systems will turn ‘general everyday perception’ into ‘structural monitoring’ used to systematically observe, score, judge and successfully change a certain kind of behaviour. Feedback systems can substantially help activate practices of evaluative self-observation. However, manifold codes of observatory knowledge based on ‘objectifying’ and ‘neutralising’ knowledge technologies cannot belie the fact that every kind of knowledge has inherent social and normative concepts and is fundamentally dependent on political and economic contexts. In the following, we will discuss three central processes of evaluation and self-evaluation on the online video platform YouTube in connection with the following social technologies of networking: (1) The discussion of moving images on YouTube will centre about what performative role the initiators of video uploads play. Social network sites, currently booming on the web, have produced a new regime of subjectification, with proactive self-optimisers as the ruling characters. They are expected to master the art of smart self-governance and to hold their ground even when facing the forces of flexibilisation. They have to prove their permanent state of mobilisation by their digital showcase portfolio (in our exemplary case, the YouTube channel for make-up tutorials), which they are expected to update regularly and maintain open for feedback. Against this background, what status do collective framing processes on online portals have when it comes to production of meaning, negotiation and distribution of moving images? (2) The tendency to resignify and reiterate existing content (mash-up, remix) points to an aspect of the performative closely connected to collective and collaborative framing processes. Again, performative practice is mainly shown as something that creates an excess, which can no longer be attributed to any intersubjectively controllable field of discourse. In that sense, the productive power of the performative presents itself not simply by creating something but by dealing with what we have not created ourselves. Looked at that way, the performance can be understood as an excess of meaning that not only implements a new performative framing but in retrospect modifies existing content. (3) Performative processes on the internet are the result of technological enablement. Specifically, it is computer-assisted information and communication technologies that regulate the modes, the validity and the distribution of content generated by users. As a consequence, web media and the technologically completed actions therein are essential parts of the production of meaning and significance and need to be included in the methodology of examining performative processes. This issue, in addition to having a heuristic meaning within the theoretical discursive practice, opens up critical questions beyond the dichotomy of technological determinism vs. technological euphoria – questions concerning the scope of action of performative enablement in technological environments.

Alsic, 2017

Identity Construction in Social Media "I'm the first video Voicethread-it's pretty sweet, I'm pumped": Gender and Self-Expression on an Interactive Multimodal Platform "Chuis la première video Voicethread-C'est trop génial, chuis ravi" : Genre et auto-expression sur une plate-forme multimodale interactive

The main objective of this research is to analyze the content of YouTuber's videos that have the greatest impact on adolescents and their relationship with the construction of identity. The YouTube platform is one of the most commonly used by Spanish teenagers and around 70% of young people between 14 and 17 years of age prefer this network. YouTubers are perceived by young people as their equals, approachable people who share similar traits to their own, which facilitates rapid identification. A qualitative analysis of the content of 22 videos on the YouTube platform was carried out using the Atlas.ti program. The analysis led to several emerging codes related to the construction of adolescent personal identity. Most of the messages relating to personal identity were aimed at transmitting the self-impression of the YouTuber and the relationship of that self-impression with his gender identity, sexual orientation, and vocational identity. Also, family and peers appeared in the videos, especially as providers of social support. Teen followers include messages to support YouTubers, express their identification with the messages and use comment spaces to describe their own experiences, expressing the same concerns in the configuration of their identity. It is necessary to take into account this new space of interrelation to understand the development of young people's identity. Resumen El objetivo general de esta investigación consiste en analizar el contenido de los vídeos de los youtubers de mayor impacto entre los adolescentes y su relación con la construcción de la identidad. La plataforma YouTube es una de las más utilizadas por los adolescentes españoles, ya que alrededor del 70% de los jóvenes entre 14 y 17 años prefieren esta red. Los youtubers son percibidos por los jóvenes como sus iguales, personas cercanas que comparten rasgos similares a los suyos, lo que facilita la rápida identificación con ellos. Se ha realizado un análisis cualitativo del contenido de 22 vídeos de la plataforma YouTube mediante el programa Atlas.ti. El análisis ha dado lugar a varios códigos emergentes relacionados con la construcción de la identidad personal en la adolescencia. La mayoría de los mensajes sobre la identidad personal estaban orientados a transmitir la autodefinición que hace el youtuber sobre sí mismo y la relación de esa autoimagen con su identidad de género, orientación sexual e identidad vocacional. Además, la familia y los iguales aparecen en los vídeos, especialmente como proveedores de apoyo social. Los seguidores adolescentes incluyen mensajes de apoyo al youtuber, manifiestan su identificación con los mensajes y utilizan los espacios de comentarios para exponer sus experiencias personales, expresando las mismas inquietudes en la configuración de su identidad. Es necesario tener en cuenta este nuevo espacio de interrelación en la com-prensión del desarrollo identitario de los jóvenes.

Przestrzenie Teorii, 2016

In this article I aim to present a critical approach to the issue of identity and the transformation of this term, which is a result of the dynamic spread of digital culture in recent years. One of the most emblematic pieces of evidence of the changes that have occurred in our consciousness under the influence of the development of information technology is the emergence of the notion of virtual identity, which has become the subject of many scientific studies, as well as an element of common language. From a broader perspective, that identity is an element of our existence, which is gaining more and more importance in everyday life and in the space of virtual reality.

2012

Investigating audiovisual presentations of the self A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the department of Communication and Psychology at the Faculty of Humanities at Aalborg University.