Online Journal of Art and Design, volume 2, issue 2, 2014
ABSTRACT
The online social platforms known as virtual worlds present their users various
affordances for avatar based co-presence, social interaction and provide tools for
collaborative content creation, including objects, textures and animations. The users of
these worlds navigate their avatars as personal mediators in 3D virtual space to
collaborate and co-design the digital content. These co-designers are also the residents
of these worlds, as they socialize by building inworld friendships. This article presents a
social semiotic analysis of the three-dimensional virtual places and artifacts in the virtual
world known as Second Life by the collaborative efforts of its so-called residents. The
social semiotic perspective is used to develop a multimodal analytical framework and to
analyze the co-creation of meaning potentials by various social actors who use the
available semiotic resources as mediational means. The findings show that co-design and
co-creation practices do not only depend on various actors and their mediated
interactions, but also on a variety of tools, practices and resources that digital media
platforms provide. Moreover, the multimodal analysis of these places demonstrates how
the audio-visual characteristics of designing in multi-user virtual environments generate
experiential, interpersonal and textual meaning potentials.
Keywords: co-design, virtual worlds, multi-user virtual environments, digital media,
multimodality, social semiotics
