Interview Analyzation Continued...

Going through the entire classes mini-interviews very much helped me get a grasp of what Second Life is to the thousands of people who use it everyday. From my own personal interviews, I found that the people I spoke to thought of Second Life as a place they could be someone else, or more accurately a networking tool. People talked about their many friends from all over the world, or the friends they made in real life after meeting them on Second Life. However, the people I spoke with were all new to Second Life. Upon reading the other answers from the class, I had a lot more information to analyze.

There were a variety of different responses, which of course can be attributed to the thousands of differences and variety of contexts. Each interviewer is different, each interviewee, place, time, manner in which interview was conducted, etc. The list of differences can be endless, so one must factor that in when analyzing.

Despite all of this, however, a lot of the responses were surprisingly similar. Many avatars discussed how Second Life was a different world for them, a place to be someone they're not in real life. Others discussed it as a nice networking tool. Many people took it literally and called a "chatroom with graphics" or something to that effect. I found these by reading the various interviews, and marking a number next to a brand new definition or idea, and then repeating that number when another response was the same to the original correlating number.

With such a plethora and variety of data, it was definitely a lot harder to go through and analyze, only because of its tendancy to be tedious. However, with so much information, and the number of consistant responses being from such a variety of users, I found the data to be much more conclusive and accurate than from my personal five interviews. So my conclusion seems to be "the more data, the better!"

Interview Practice

So I began my interview practice by talking to different people around campus areas - the library, campus center, the gym. I spoke with three men, two women. Here are their responses to the question - define Ithaca.

#1 Male, 1.5 years, Campus Center - A god-forsaken land settled by aging hippies and rediscovered by pretentious youth and psuedo Ivy-leaguers.
#2 Male, 4 years, Library - A city that's more like a close-knit community, connected through artistically minded individuals and old hippies.
#3 Female, 4 years, Campus Center - It would not exist without its immense student population.
#4 Male, 4 years, Library - Every kind of weird person you've ever met, or one of their obscure family members, either lives here or has been here.
#5 Female, 2 years, Gym - One time I saw a man carrying a vacuum down through the Commons at 2:30am. That's pretty much Ithaca.

A surprising majority of the responses were negative or a bit critical - also comical, to a degree. All cited the dominance of hippies, Ithaca's diverse and quirky community, and the majority of students living in this area.

The responses did not seem to have any correlations due to age, years living here, or gender.

Meanwhile, in Second Life, I inquired at the Hanja Welcome Center, where I got some interesting response about what they thought about the Second Life world.

#1, woman with pink dress, 11/7/2007, Hanja Welcome Center - its a wonderful networking tool that i'm still getting used to.
#2, man with suit and wings, 11/9/2007, Hanja Welcome Center - Jeff i dont know what to say to you
#3, little teddy bear, 11/1/2007, Hanja Welcome Center - I think sl is intresting becasue i get to meet people from around the world. i have a friend whos in finland!
#4 woman shaped with facial hair, 2/21/2007, Hanja Welcome Center - I've met three SLers in rl as a result of meeting them in here
#5, man in sharp suit, 11/8/2007, Hanja Welcome Center - you can go to many different worldssssssss. my keyboard is sticking

A lot of the conversation is incomprehensible. Many people did not really respond to the question - just talked about different aspects of Second Life that they enjoyed - with one being completely difficult and not giving me a response. Because I was unable to distinguish the gender of many people, I had to take their avatars for face value only. The majority of the people I spoke to were new to Second Life, five having only become members since November, all of them less than a year on Second Life. All had positive things to say about Second Life.