EPISODE 3 - GUO FREEMAN

“Anonymity vs. Familiarity: Self-Disclosure and Privacy in Social Virtual Reality”

EPISODE 3

Guo Freeman

Guo Freeman is currently an assistant professor of Human-Centered Computing in the School of Computing at Clemson University and additionally serves as director of the Clemson University Gaming and Mediated Experience Lab (CU GAME Lab).

Direct link to episode research paper

Direct link to the CU GAME Lab at Clemson University

Direct link to Guo's Google Scholar page

Direct link to Guo’s ResearchGate page

Direct link to Guo’s personal site

In this episode, Kristian speaks with Guo Freeman about the level of self-disclosure required to participate in social Virtual Reality experiences and to what extent self-disclosure differs between online VR social spaces and online non-VR social spaces. In this particular research, Guo and her team conducted an exploratory investigation to better understand what type of information users disclose, who they reveal information to, and the concerns participants had regarding self-disclosure in online VR social spaces.

RESEARCH PAPER EXTRACTS

“Examples of popular social VR platforms include AltspaceVR, VR Chat, Rec Room, Facebook Spaces (discontinued in 2019), High Fidelity VR, and so forth. They tend to afford diverse activities and a broad range of social atmospheres. However, they also introduce new challenges for self-disclosure and protecting people’s privacy online. For example, social VR affords the intentional or unintentional sharing of tremendous personal information including facial features (e.g., through avatar creation), behavioral patterns, and voices. The amount of information that users can share in a social VR system is much more than what they can through other sociotechnical systems such as SNSs or online games. This leads to higher risks for their privacy when engaging in social interactions and building interpersonal connections. Such systems also simulate more intimate physical contacts (e.g., hugs, holding hands, and dancing), which may lead to new questions of self-disclosure when interacting with others (e.g., new forms of harassment).”

“Our findings demonstrate both the nuances of self-disclosure that are specific to social VR and similarities to other technological platforms (e.g., virtual worlds, social media) and offline interactions. On the one hand, we saw strikingly similarities to social media and online forums where users are comfortable sharing positive and negative emotions and feelings. Additionally, users’ concerns about self disclosure in our findings are similar to those in other social mediums. Yet still, social VR and social media alike facilitate environments where users feel comfortable sharing of experiences. In our findings, there was no consensus on what type of information users shared, some choosing to disclose only personal information and others only disclosing emotion, this could be because of the vast diversity of users regarding age, gender, sexuality, and culture.”

“On the other hand, social VR introduces new ways of self-disclosure and unique challenges associated with them. One such new way is the mandatory self-disclosure embedded in the system design of social VR - to use the service, all users have to give up part of their personal information by default such as voice. Our participants noted that voice chat in social VR can reveal identifiable information of gender, age, and ability. While voice chat is not a new phenomenon, interactions in social VR highly depend on voice chat, which provides specific constraints for communication when other communication modalities are not available. Such mandatory disclosure may sometimes cause awkward situations, especially when the voice expectations are different from avatar appearance. In this sense, voice chat in social VR becomes a trade off - more efficient interpersonal interaction and communication but higher degree of self-disclosure and less privacy.”

Stay involved and join the conversation in the Journey’s Edge discord server.