The lonely raccoon at the ball

Abstract

Designing for sociable systems requires, among other abilities, a sensitivity to the meanings, structures, and nuances of technology-mediated experiences that are simultaneously felt by users to be intimate and also social. Such a sensitivity is not easily acquired, and design researchers have recommended the use of social theories to guide designers' readings of technology-mediated social experiences. We use philosopher Michel Foucault's theory of identity (and social power, discourse, sexuality, creativity, and style) known as "the care of the self," as a scaffold with which to produce a sensitive interpretation of the intimacy (and expert social creative) practices of adult users of the virtual world Second Life (SL). This reading sheds light on several skilled and creative intimacy practices in SL. It also offers a philosophically grounded hermeneutic strategy for designers interested in analyzing intimate experiences.

Intersectional HCI

“…There are more than 10 experimental studies in the corpus that compared participants based on a binary male/female gender difference. Papers outside the a priori umbrella category that focus on gender a posteriori compare groups statistically by gender [67,80], detail gender's relationship to knowledge and social roles [8,45], talk about gender as it relates to sexual expression and experience [10,43], or discuss gender as it relates to sexual harassment and violence [1,5,84].…”

Interacting with Masculinities: A Scoping Review

“…In 14 cases (11%), definitional qualities were implied by association. A word frequency analysis of 468 terms from the sentences in which "masculinity/ies" was found highlights several commonalities: gender (11), feminine, (7), associated, home, male, men, physical, qualities, traditionally, work (4 each), binary, body, competitive, data, design, female, gaming, individuals, psych, strength, traits, violence (3 each), activities, agentic, aggressive, alternative, assertive, categories, characterize, clothing, consistent, different, domestic, dominant, emotions, express, form, guru, identifying, identity, implicit, labor, man, men's, minorities, models, people, power, pressure, sir, sport, technical, technology, traditional, trans, transmasculine, transmen, type, user, women working (2 each). This indicates that masculinities were positioned against femininities and women.…”

“…81 papers (64%) did not define or operationalize masculinity directly or indirectly. A word frequency analysis of 825 terms from the sentences in which "masculinity/ies" was found reveals: gender (26), feminine (19), men (18), women (14), male (11), fem, participants, technology (8 each), binary, female, two (7 each), choices, Hofstede (6 each), abuse, norms, people, sex, white (5 each), avatar, boys, communities, control, create, cultural, experiences, gendered, modern, perceived, play/games, traditional (4 each), culture, dimensions, dominant, environment, hegemonic, identity, majority, males, neutral, options, others, participant, pronouns, role, social, trans, work, young (3 each). While this largely matches the above, the work of Hofstede and cultural-level operationalizations of masculinity/ies are highlighted.…”

Disruptive innovation, the episteme and technology-enhanced learning in higher education

“…The failure of Second Life can also be viewed in relation to the episteme. Second Life is primarily about play -avatars are not subject to ageing, injury and death (Bardzell et al, 2014), and assessment-driven higher education systems are not recreational by design. The promise of the technology was not fulfilled in the practice of the technology.…”