ABSTRACT
The development process behind this book began as a special issue for the journal Learning, Media, & Technology half a decade ago. Aleks Krotoski and Jeremy Hunsinger were both PhD students at the time, in two different countries, both using Linden Labs’ Second Life as a field of study. However, the pair quickly realised that they approached it in very different ways and with very different objectives: Aleks was tracking the flows of social influence through its online friendship networks, while Jeremy was investigating the politics of knowledge of the internet. Despite the differences in their lines of enquiry, through occasional encounters in person and online, they discovered several unanticipated crossovers between their work that stretched beyond the environment in which they set their academic activity. They realised that this digital community — and similar others — offered different things to different scholars, but there were commonalities they observed across both the learning and research fields that would be useful for people also exploring these spaces for fieldwork. Combining their common interests, they decided to bring together the growing body of practitioners who were flocking to this and other online environments in virtual and meatspace forums.
