2021/04/11 by Divine Maloney, Maloney, Divine, Guo Freeman +3 · 5 citations
Computer Science · Psychology · #Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion #Digital Mental Health Interventions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2104.05030
The boom of commercial social virtual reality (VR) platforms in recent years\nhas signaled the growth and wide-spread adoption of consumer VR. Social VR\nplatforms draw aspects from traditional 2D virtual worlds where users engage in\nvarious immersive experiences, interactive activities, and choices in\navatar-based representation. However, social VR also demonstrates specific\nnuances that extend traditional 2D virtual worlds and other online social\nspaces, such as full/partial body tracked avatars, experiencing mundane\neveryday activities in a new way (e.g., sleeping), and an immersive means to\nexplore new and complex identities. The growing popularity has signaled\ninterest and investment from top technology companies who each have their own\nsocial VR platforms. Thus far, social VR has become an emerging research space,\nmainly focusing on design strategies, communication and interaction modalities,\nnuanced activities, self-presentation, harassment, privacy, and\nself-disclosure. These recent works suggest that many questions still remain in\nsocial VR scholarship regarding how to ethically conduct research on these\nsites and which research areas require additional attention. Therefore, in this\npaper, we provide an overview of modern Social VR, critically review current\nscholarship in the area, raise ethical considerations for conducting research\non these sites, and highlight unexplored areas.\n