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This paper aims to define and articulate the concept of digital protestainment, to address how technologies have enabled boundaries to become more permeable, and in which this permeability leads to the engendering of new cultures.

Two case studies, within Second Life and EVE Online, are examined to see how digital protestainment, through the lens of cultural borderlands, creates a hybridized culture. Recorded interviews and textual analysis of web sites are used to illustrate the concepts of play, work, and blended activities.

Within virtual environments the process of hybridization is not only increased in size, scope, form, and function. The borderlands process draws in cultural elements through a complex interchange between the online and the offline, in which hybridized cultural bits are carried out into other spaces.

The success of the cases does not represent all digital protest examples and so this study is limited in its ability to generalize to the population of virtual protests. This study limits the realm of digital protestainment to virtual worlds but the concept could be applied to any form of virtual community.

Companies that host these worlds will need to become aware not only of what their audience is but also how that audience will mobilize and the likely outcomes of their mobilization. Virtual worlds offer organizational leaders a new resource for training, support, and recruitment.

The theoretical concept of cultural borderlands is expanded to the digital environment and introduced as a potentially new and useful tool to internet researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the influences that computer‐mediated communication (CMC) has and could have on the maintenance of interpersonal relationships. In doing this, ethical dilemmas and implications that arise from the technical affordances offered to CMC participants are discussed. Relational maintenance is integral to people's everyday lives. Yet, the ethical issues involve in using CMC to support this have not been explicitly explored.

The concept of relational maintenance will be explored independently and as it relates to CMC and ethics. This paper will examine current literature and briefly discuss a pilot study relevant to these areas. The pilot study consisted of a survey distributed to undergraduate students in non‐platonic long distance and short distance relationships.

The exploration of prior literature and the findings of a pilot study support the notion that, with the increase of CMC use to maintain relationships follows the potential increase of unethical behavior in this medium. A number of ethical questions have risen that can be used to inform and direct future research.

This paper is original as it explores the concept of ethics from a relational maintenance perspective through electronic communication. It adds value by integrating these three areas and enhancing the understanding of this integration, while providing information of both theoretical and practical relevance.