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What does social life in VR feel like? In a life-world analytical field study in the social VR platform VRChat, Felix Krell examines the lived experience of long-term social VR users from a phenomenological perspective. He investigates hybridization processes in virtual emplacement and embodiment as well as perceptual intricacies that frame a matured, long-term Social VR experience. An in-depth sociological inquiry then covers how long-term users shape their everyday social interactions within this perceptual framework. Grounded on (auto-)ethnographical data as well as 32 ethnographic interviews, the text provides multidisciplinary insight of how a social life inside Virtual Reality is experienced and negotiated by those who are most privy to it.
About the author
Felix Krell (MA), born in 1994, works as a research fellow at the chair of Media and Communication Science at Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen. The media sociologist is a chair and co-founder of the Working Group "Sociology of Digital Games" within the Media and Communication Section of the German Sociology Association. His research focuses on internet culture and ethnographic inquiries into emergent communities and lifeworlds in new media environments.
Summary
What does social life in VR feel like? In a life-world analytical field study in the social VR platform VRChat, Felix Krell examines the lived experience of long-term social VR users from a phenomenological perspective. He investigates hybridization processes in virtual emplacement and embodiment as well as perceptual intricacies that frame a matured, long-term Social VR experience. An in-depth sociological inquiry then covers how long-term users shape their everyday social interactions within this perceptual framework. Grounded on (auto-)ethnographical data as well as 32 ethnographic interviews, the text provides multidisciplinary insight of how a social life inside Virtual Reality is experienced and negotiated by those who are most privy to it.
