Gaming our way to democracy

Just when we thought new media might help revive democracy by mixing blogs, forums, online polls and the like in with more traditional meetings, broadcasting and print we find the territory has shifted again. We should be looking at online gaming and virtual worlds, because that's where tomorrow's citizens are spending their time.

That anyway was the pitch tonight from Jo Twist, former BBC technology reporter and now heading up the think tank IPPR's Digital and Media Society programme. She was contributing to a New Stateman event 'Politics and New Media: where next?'.
Jo gave us a stack of statistics from BBC research showing that enormous numbers of young people and under 30s are spending lots of time interacting with other young people online. That's where they build their social networks and create content. As one said: "games put you in control".
Among Jo's favourites are Democracy Island and Second Life. Democracy Island is a New York Law School project. From the site, Democracy Island is a:

Virtual world environment to offer government entities and interest groups an on-line space for conducting citizen consultation. In short, this project will use the metaphor of the “county fair,” a familiar civic event in the life of a community. This will be a place – like a meeting tent, a town hall or even a shopping mall – where groups can congregate online. The aim of this project is to design a space where interested parties, such as trade associations, activist groups and scientific experts, will be able to set up virtual booths for presentation of information and deliberation as well as advocacy.

Second Life explains:

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by nearly 100,000 people from around the globe.
From the moment you enter the World you’ll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you’ve explored a bit, perhaps you’ll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
You’ll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow residents. Because residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other residents.
The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world currency, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online currency exchanges.

Jo's point, as I understood it, is not simply that we have to move democracy online because that's where lots of people are. It is that games and virtual environments provide a model of the real world - its roles, events, procedures, ownerships - but much speeded up. I think I heard her say that the 'real world' processes of deliberation are just too slow.
I'm an enthusiast for games as ways of people playing through complex situations, and my experience of doing that with colleague Drew Mackie is that it really does help create a shared framework, good conversations, an understanding of power relationships and much more. However, I'm not an online gamer (yet), and I'm not sure whether online experience in virtual worlds translates into real world behaviours. We may have a chance to find out, through the IPPR programmes, because it sounds as if Jo is going to push for some work in this field. I'm away to Second Life to sign in. Jo says she has blue skin and red shoes there, so should be easy to find...
Jo reported for BBC online last year how gaming communities organised help and donations for Hurricane Katrina relief
Previously: It's been the year of the digital citizen, says BBC

Comments

[Kevin]

And (I believe) you can learn how to improve relations with your neighbours - http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2005/06/the_future_of_n.html.
I daresay there is already research confirming that many people who game online already know one another and meet face-to-face?
k

[Scott K]

There is some evidence, which Jo alluded to, that gamers back-up their online communities with real life meets etc..

There's also, and I think this is where this gets interesting, a body of work that talks about how people represent themselves online in these communities, and how this differs from how they represent themselves in real life.

Lots of research has gone on into how people represent themselves in face-to-face deliberations (whether at planning meetings or discussions of the future of cloning, say, where, eg they may try to posture themselves to be the expert) and there's some work going on into online deliberations. And I think I'm right in saying that people often feel more open online than face-to-face or by phone, because of the different meeting dynamics.

Where I think Jo's point gets exciting is if we could combine some sort of representative deliberation in comfortable digital environments and apply them to tricky issues that affect young people.

[Paul Evans]

Technical programmers bring a new approach to complexity that allows them to critique non-techical processes very well. There's no reason why gamers can't do the same (speaking as a non-gamer, I might add...)

You said:

"Where I think Jo's point gets exciting is if we could combine some sort of representative deliberation in comfortable digital environments and apply them to tricky issues that affect young people."

I think this is absolutely right. Where new solutions can be about adding to the sum of human knowledge and providing new evidence, they are bound to be worth exploring.

I was particularly interested in the way this discussion was focussed on deliberation, and not the usual sterile ground of how like-minded individuals can be networked and can use new communications tools to campaign.