Margaret J. Vaynman and J. Tuomas Harviainen
This paper presents a model for organizational ethnographers that wish to find new methodological approaches for the study of swingers and other marginalized groups that deal with…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents a model for organizational ethnographers that wish to find new methodological approaches for the study of swingers and other marginalized groups that deal with potential social stigma and form communities around the lifestyles of swingers and other groups.
Design/methodology/approach
An ethnographic, qualitative study was conducted by (first author) in Spain and France using the methods of participant observation and in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted in Spanish, Russian, English and French with 40 members of the studied scenes.
Findings
The authors claim that through wise participation, using ethnographer's positionality, communicating with the ethics review board throughout the project and skillful writing about this group, the authors can create a foundation for future ethnographies inside this subculture.
Originality/value
Very few ethnographers reported on being in the field as participants, even as novice swingers, and how the positionality of ethnographers and the embodied ethnography can contribute to understanding swinger settings. Even fewer ethnographers addressed the contradictory sides of permission from their ethics board to study swinger settings and the implications of this for data collection.
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J. Tuomas Harviainen and Amon Rapp
The purpose of this paper is to expand the research of games as information systems. It illustrates how significant parts of massively multiplayer online role-playing function…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to expand the research of games as information systems. It illustrates how significant parts of massively multiplayer online role-playing function like information retrieval from a library database system.
Design/methodology/approach
By combining ideas from earlier contributions on the topics of game environments as information systems, the paper explores how gameplay connects to information retrieval, restricted content access, and information system structure. The paper then proceeds to examine this idea through an ethnographic study conducted in World of Warcraft during 2012-2016.
Findings
By discussing how multiplayer digital game play is a form of information retrieval, the paper shows that players enjoy the well-restricted access to information that is a constitutive element of gameplay. Examining controlled access, procedural literacies and emphatic keywords, the paper finds that content relevances and system use may be influenced by hedonic concerns rather than task efficiency.
Originality/value
The study of retrieval issues related to gaming enriches our knowledge on inferences in retrieval. It shows that people may prefer that their access to information be limited, in order to make system use more interesting.
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J. Tuomas Harviainen, Miikka J. Lehtonen and Sören Kock
This article aims to examine instances of timeliness and temporality in information sharing conducted by members of the Finnish game design community. By doing so, it provides new…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to examine instances of timeliness and temporality in information sharing conducted by members of the Finnish game design community. By doing so, it provides new knowledge into the ways in which organizational information practices may take place on an individual and interpersonal level, and the ways in which timeliness impact information sharing.
Design/methodology/approach
The article is based on three sets of interviews, gathered in 2012–2014, 2017–2018 and 2018–2020.
Findings
The authors identify six themes of information sharing and show that time is strongly tied to the ways in which people in the Finnish game development industry share information outside of their own companies.
Originality/value
This type of information sharing has not been previously researched. This study brings forth new knowledge on how timeliness influence information sharing within creative industries.
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J. Tuomas Harviainen and Juho Hamari
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways in which information acts as a commodity in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and how players pay for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways in which information acts as a commodity in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and how players pay for items and services with information practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Through meta-theoretical analysis of the game environment as a set of information systems, one of retrieval and one social, the paper shows how players’ information practices influence their access to game content, organizational status and relationship to real-money trade.
Findings
By showing how information trading functions in MMORPGs, the paper displays the importance of information access for play, the efficiency of real money trade and the significance of information practice -based services as a relatively regular form of payment in virtual worlds. Players furthermore shown to contribute to the information economy of the game with the way in which they decide not to share some information, so as to prevent others from a loss of game content value due to spoilers.
Originality/value
The subject, despite the popularity of online games, has been severely understudied within library and information science. The paper contributes to that line of research, by showing how games function as information systems, and by explaining how they, as environments and contexts, influence and are influenced by information practices.
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J. Tuomas Harviainen, Richard D. Gough and Olle Sköld
Purpose – To examine the connection between social media and games, and to analyze information phenomena relating to them.Design/methodology/approach – A survey of existing…
Abstract
Purpose – To examine the connection between social media and games, and to analyze information phenomena relating to them.
Design/methodology/approach – A survey of existing research is combined with results from two studies.
Findings – Players use game-related social media as an expansion of play and as a substitute of it, while avoiding information overload in the form of finding out so much that it damages the play experience.
Research limitations/implications – The number of potential game-related social media sources is so high that this chapter mostly presents just the early steps toward researching them further.
Practical implications – The chapter reveals the tight connection that has been formed between games and social media, showing that to properly research one, a look at also the other is necessary.
Originality/value – The chapter presents initial guidelines on where to start in researching game-related social media, an area that has so far seen very little research from both game studies and information scholars.
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The purpose of this paper is to present findings on the way in which self-identified sadomasochist apply their information literacy skills, and to analyse those applications in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present findings on the way in which self-identified sadomasochist apply their information literacy skills, and to analyse those applications in the context of existing research on information literacies (IL).
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on the author’s two decades of ethnographic work within a national-level sadomasochist community, supplemented by interviews with 30 practitioners and an extensive literature survey.
Findings
Sadomasochists avoid the social stigma associated with their activities by developing highly refined ILs. Central among these is the ability to learn from other practitioners by reading and interpreting their actions as “texts.” They furthermore stockpile potentially useful information for later use. Their ILs not only make sadomasochists more skilled in their practices, but also provide them with safety.
Originality/value
By examining its subject community, the paper develops the ideas of embodied information literacy, currently strongly associated with workplace learning, to the hobby and lifestyle sectors, as it deals with a particularly corporeal set of ILs. This radical example allows scholars to conduct research on the ILs other communities of practice, in which the activities may be less obviously corporeal, but the literacies just as based on embodied interpretation and the reading of others’ activities as texts.
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In this chapter, I utilize insights from symbolic interaction to analyze the identity work processes of larp subculture participants to construct and perform their in-game…
Abstract
In this chapter, I utilize insights from symbolic interaction to analyze the identity work processes of larp subculture participants to construct and perform their in-game identities. I extend the research on larp subcultures in two ways. First, I place larping within the larger context of leisure subcultures and society by arguing that larping is representative of changes in leisure and subcultures in postmodern society. Second, I draw upon ethnographic data collected among the New England Role-playing Organization (NERO) to analyze larpers character identity performances. RPG and Larp researchers have developed several theories about the relationship between larp participants and their character performances. While these concepts provide a helpful framework for understanding the participant-character relationship, they undertheorize the in-game constructed performance of identity. Using symbolic interaction theory, I analyze the identity work processes larpers use to construct and perform their larp identities extending our understanding of the similarities between everyday identity and larpers' character identity performances.
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Marit Kristine Ådland is a Ph.D. student at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science. Her research interests and activity is within knowledge organization…
Abstract
Marit Kristine Ådland is a Ph.D. student at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science. Her research interests and activity is within knowledge organization, information behavior, information retrieval, and information architecture. Her current research explores users’ tags and tagging behavior in the field of cancer information. She teaches classification and indexing to students training in librarianship.
Gunilla Widén and Kim Holmberg
The purpose of this book is to collect current research representing different aspects of social information with emphasis on the new innovations supporting contemporary…
Abstract
The purpose of this book is to collect current research representing different aspects of social information with emphasis on the new innovations supporting contemporary information behavior. To begin with, we need to define what we mean by social information in general and in the area of information science in particular. It is interesting to notice that social information is a concept used and researched in many different disciplines. Besides information science, the concept of social information has been studied in biology, psychology, and sociology among other disciplines.