The question of what of our culture comes with us when we go online has been examined in depth by researchers for more than a decade now. For many, online identity has been considered something to be studied almost as a naturally occuring phenomena, to be understood but never manipulated. My research looks for a more active understanding of identity online, as possibly something which may be affected or even controlled by community and interface designers. In order to understand online identity from this viewpoint better, a deeper understanding of cultural identity online is needed, and that is where my research is now. My research Is heavily influenced by constructionist philosophies of learning. In addition to traditional ethnographic methods for observing online communities, Amy Bruckman and I have created a participatory collaborative learning experience to help us understand these phenomena at the same time as online community users across the Internet. In this software, which we call The Turing Game, a panel of users all pretend to be a member of some group, such as a specific gender. Some of the users, who are that gender, are trying to communicate that to their audience. Others are trying to masquerade as being members of that group. An audience of users tries to discover who the true members are, by asking questions and analyzing the panel members' answers. Currently, we are undergoing formative evaluation and user studies in preparation for an Internet-wide premier in the next few months.
The Turing Game presents a window into the world of cultural identity online. Major identity shaping events such as tokenization, authentication and deception occur naturally and observably during the course of each game. As The Turing Game is released on the Internet, we will be studying the logs of users' games for such events, as well as looking more generally about what cultural variables are manipulable in such a game. We also plan to qualitatively interview participants, hopefully gaining richer and deeper insights than quantitative methods can provide. In addition, pre and post game testing of participants can help us to monitor outcome variables for the games themselves, which we hope might have cultural as well as technocultural merits. Finally, we plan to use more formalized games together with specialized curricula as educational technology, to teach more about culture and promote cultural understanding by leveraging off of the power of networked communications.