Identity in a Virtual World

The concept of virtual worlds represents a frontier in social computing and provides interesting areas for exploration in a variety of disciplines. In modern documentation, the term virtual world has many definitions, due to least in part to its relative novelty and complexity. The notion of identity holds an extensively explored and colourful history in the social sciences. We live in an era in which technology has potential to blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy, or the real and the virtual.

Through their avatars and associated profiles, virtual world residents can establish their virtual identities, which can be moulded according to their desires and expectations. When an individual user decides to establish a virtual presence and with it inadvertently assumes a virtual identity, he or she has to make a variety of decisions throughout the process of avatar and profile creation. Similarly to real life identity development, virtual identity construction can described as a cyclical and continuously and iterative process, simultaneously influenced by a variety of individual and global community-based factors within certain environment-specific realities.

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Social networking technology is considered to have more potential to make foremost changes in the way businesses relate to customers. It plays an important role in the life of every individual. User identities and relationships are online as there are many dating sites online and, they have now be leveraged in number of ways by businesses as well. Today's everybody uses internet and all have developed an capability to switch from offline to online networks of friends with different obligation and strength depending on what part of their identity was shaped broadly on the internet, which ranges from those who rarely come online, or those who reject their physical identities entirely and can only 'be themselves' on the social websites.

It is interesting to threefold the parts of identity and analyze the level to which discourse plays a part in virtual identity shaping.

Social network has so many ads, as media has the concepts that are controversial in their respective fields, such as sociology, anthropology or philosophy. It is worth expecting that the extensive usage of 'social media' demands comprehensive look as of the conditions. At the same time, we need to consider that our every behaviour is shared to different media and worldwide and it is subject to commercial exploitation. Many social media users has built their virtual identity carefully and maintained it just like the real life. Though nowadays many recruiters also ask for the social media accounts o people to check to know them they in person and thus many decisions are taken on that basis. There are many identity problems also occurs through online communities and virtual worlds - which is almost always gendered as all the website asks for some general information - decidedly de-sexed. Yet gender isn't obviated by virtual identities.

Ethical issues in social media begin when a virtual identity is shaped and the user is able to create a picture of him-or herself as he or she would like to be, not what he or she really is. It becomes extreme when people in the real world cannot show themselves as they really are, while if they express their true opinions, they face penalties that are more likely to be found in dictatorial regimes. This is a complicated way of saying that users of virtual worlds who associate more closely with their avatars tend to have a more rewarding experience. Researchers at Stanford University have found that the more closely an avatar resembles the actual person, the more likely it is to psychologically inhabit the virtual body and assume its characteristics. Virtual worlds have found a strong and enthusiastic audience among people who live with autism spectrum disorders. They may also have limited attention spans and difficulty controlling their emotions. Studies further indicate that a kinetic response improves anthropomorphic realism, which might reveal insights into how people with limited mobility connect with their virtual selves. Beyond their individual use, social and collaborative learning has been highlighted as a particular area where virtual world environments can be exploited from the perspective of organizations and educational institutions alike.

The concept defined in this article, especially both concepts of subjects and of virtual persons, allow a better description and understanding of many identification, authentication and authorization schemes, by creating a generic model. The concept of virtual persons allows a unified handling of existing and/or non-existing subjects, even if the subjects are of different types. Perhaps "virtual games" will manage to self-regulate the issues that arise in them and any invasion from the "real world" may be rendered redundant. Till then, we will all follow he lives of our online characters....