Designing empowering and critical identities in social ...groups.csail.mit.edu/icelab/sites/default/files/pdf/Harrell-CoDesign-2010.pdf · Designing empowering and critical identities

Designing empowering and critical identities in socialcomputing and gaming

D. Fox Harrell*

Comparative Media Studies Program, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, ComputerScience and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Cambridge, MA, USA

(Received 16 June 2010; final version received 27 September 2010)

This article presents theory and technology addressing the design of computingtechnologies for social computing and gaming: (1) to provide dynamic means ofidentity representation while avoiding stigmatising norms, and (2) to provide forcritical reflection on stigmatising identity infrastructures found in other systems.The theory and technologies developed with these aims are encapsulated underthe rubric of the Advanced Identity Representation (AIR) Project that initiated inthe Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab) directedby the author. This work has a basis in the cognitive science foundations ofcategorisation and metaphor-based bias, and study of social classificationinfrastructures from sociology of science. Using this theoretical framework, thisarticle provides a model to reveal a set of inadequacies of many current identityinfrastructures in social computing and gaming systems for supporting the needsof collective groups of people and individuals in marginalised categories. Asresults, several social networking systems and games developed in the ICE Lab toempower users in the creative goal of constructing computational identities and/or critiquing the phenomenon of stigma in these applications are presented.

Keywords: stigma; social identity; cognitive categorisation; social classification;empowerment; gaming; social networking

1. Introduction

Social computing and identity representation technologies such as social networkingsites, profiles/accounts in commercial retail sites, and many computer/video gamesallow users to interact with one another and to create virtual personae for themselvesin unprecedented ways. Cumulatively, self-representation in social computingsystems comprises a type of collective creativity. Indeed, a self-representationsbecome types of improvised digital prosthetic devices that enables virtual actionsthat may not be possible in the real world, yet are natural to virtual environments(immediately knowing when a friend logs in, asking a remotely located administratorfor help upon encountering a glitch). Users have deployed these digital identities in arange of astounding ways suited to their needs ranging from speakers at virtual

*Email: [email protected]

CoDesignVol. 6, No. 4, December 2010, 187–206

ISSN 1571-0882 print/ISSN 1745-3755 online! 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/15710882.2010.533183http://www.informaworld.com

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conferences to avatars in virtual performance art, much the same as people mightcreate physical prosthetic devices out of necessity to accomplish everyday tasks in thereal world. (Barros and Duarte 2009). Yet, it has become clear that many currenttechnologies are limited in how they enable creative exploration and understandingof identities other than one’s own – an early utopian dream regarding networkeddigital media. This article asks what it would take to design technologies that take upthat dream as a goal, along with sobering reflection upon the di!culties of thatchallenge. Indeed, part of the challenge is to look at ways that current computationalidentity technologies are disempowering and to di"erentiate between the goals of (1)open-ended ability to create distinct and nuanced self-representations (both visuallyand in terms of back-end information), and (2) the possibility that user-representations can have transformative conceptual impact on how users viewthemselves and the social identities of others.

In the real world, humans have the ability to creatively present ourselves influidly nuanced and dynamic ways, seamlessly varying gesture patterns, discoursestructures, posture, fashion, and more, often with an astounding sensitivity forcontext. We are also often quite aware of the perceived appropriateness of particularways to present one’s self in di"erent situations, as well as social avenues that may beclosed o" or accessed only with more di!culty due to externally defined socialprejudices and biases. The perceived negative di"erence between diverse individualsand socially defined, desirable and privileged norms is called stigma. Some forms ofstigma are necessary, inhibiting crime or behaviours that are universally seen associally detrimental, yet other forms of stigma comprise unfounded prejudices,biases, and inequities that underlie a great deal of social conflict. It is important toconsider how these forms of stigma and related disempowering phenomena exist insocial computing and gaming technologies. Furthermore, we can develop suchtechnologies to provide complementary forms of self-presentation that can beempowering and/or enhance critically awareness.

Elaborating insights o"ered in Harrell (2009), this article suggests several waysthat cognitive science and computing can contribute to both the empowerment ofindividuals and the understanding of disempowering social infrastructures,particularly regarding social networking and gaming. The Advanced IdentityRepresentation (AIR) Project seeks to enable more creative and empowering formsof social identity representation in computing applications. Toward this end, thisarticle introduces new theory, new technologies, and new design considerations. It isstructured as follows: presented first is a motivating discussion and summary ofmultiple ways in which current technologies are inadequate in the face of thecreativity with which humans present themselves outside of digital media. Thisaccount is then followed by a novel interdisciplinary theoretical framework, whichhas been developed under the rubric of the AIR Project (Harrell et al. 2009). Thisframework provides a basis for developing an approach to computational identityrelevant across various types of social computing systems. The analyses here arecentrally based on accounts of categorisation from cognitive science, and socialclassification infrastructures from sociology of science. Building upon theseaccounts, an overview of the phenomenon of stigmatised identity as raised insociology is provided that may be useful for orienting readers unacquainted with thisliterature.

Analyses are presented of one game developed in the ICE Lab calledChameleonia, and two social networking projects developed in the ICE Lab called

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DefineMe and IdentityShare (the latter is an MS student’s thesis project) asproviding new infrastructures to critique stigma and to provide more dynamicand empowering modes for users to represent themselves and form communities(Harrell et al. 2009). The implications of such systems for new design strategiesand considerations follows. Finally, a concluding section provides reflection onthe paper’s argument, describes a framework for evaluation, and highlights futurechallenges.

2. Problems with current technologies

Let us begin with an illustrative example. Consider that popular current gamessuch as the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and World of Warcraft computationallyimplement and amplify many disempowering existing social identity constructions.In Oblivion, females of some races are 10 points more intelligent than their malecounterparts, and individuals of the ostensibly French ‘race’ (Bretons) are 20points more intelligent than their ostensibly Norwegian (Nords) counterparts,regardless of gender (Blizzard 2005, Bethesda 2006). A starting point for the issuehere is that distinctions of ability are mapped on to categories that nearlyduplicate real-world stigmatising prejudice. More profoundly, these distinctionsare not only visual, semiotic ones; instead, they have instrumental e"ects ongameplay. Recalling social scientists and cultural theorists Geo"rey Bowker andSusan Leigh Star claims that ‘classification systems are integral to any workinginfrastructure’ and ‘systems of classification form a juncture of social organisa-tion, moral order, and layers of technical integration’ (Bowker and Star 1999), Iargue that stigma is built into the game’s infrastructure for character creation.The characters resemble members of real-world identity categories and thecharacter ability statistics echo real-world prejudices, yet the e"ects of the statisticare implemented through algorithmic means that regulate the player’s instru-mental goal of playing the game.

A broader argument can be made that extends across platforms, as I have arguedin Harrell (2010). Current infrastructures for computational identity representationare limited in significant ways. They enable users to present themselves throughsocial networking profiles, o"ering the information about themselves that they wantothers to know, although often forced to fit it into predetermined data structures andinterfaces. They create avatars to participate in communities in virtual environments,although the way they customise our identities is often accomplished just throughsliders and menu-driven options, not on what users actually do in theseenvironments. The following summarise some high-level insights regarding currentsocial computing and gaming systems.

2.1. Online social networking

Social networking systems exhibit characteristics such as:

. user categories are predefined (e.g. birth date, gender, or relationship status);

. social data structures are hierarchically organised (e.g. tiers such as forummoderators, registered participants, and guests);

. simplistic models of community membership are used (e.g. opt-in/opt-outfriendship or group a!liation models);

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. identity is only individually defined (e.g. creating a profile webpage with nofacility for input from others);

. there is no facility to mediate between communities (e.g. sites where groups canpost messages to members, but not to other related groups); and

. their uses are informational rather than imaginative (e.g. users update eachother about everyday life or network for professional reasons, but sites forsharing creative endeavours are more rare).

2.2. Gaming and virtual worlds

Computer and video games often exhibit the following characteristics:

. attributes are reduced to numerical statistics (e.g. values for hit points,intelligence, charisma, etc., in role-playing games);

. social categories are reduced to graphical models and skins plus numericalstatistics (e.g. avatars in most computer role-playing games and virtualworlds); and

. character changes and narrative progress in many popular genres of computerand video gaming are often driven primarily by: combat, spatial exploration,and object acquisition (e.g. in most massively multiplayer online role-playinggames and many action adventure games).

2.3. Implications of current problems

The lists are not meant to be exhaustive or mutually exclusive. Rather, they aremeant to illustrate the argument that stigmatising and socially constrictivephenomena can be implicitly hardcoded into social computing systems. Theproblem with these characteristics is that they o"er limited a"ordances fordesigners to model real-world social identity phenomena and limited a"ordancesfor users to express some of the nuances of real-world self-expression. Certainlymany of these characteristics serve useful purposes – e.g. player characters in role-playing games are structured to serve game mechanical needs – o"ering balancedand diverse play styles for completing quests. Yet, these needs are often conflatedwith real-world categories such as gender, race, class, profession, and more inways that force stigmatising value systems onto users as in the Oblivion examplesabove. The aim in remedying this situation is not to create neutral and objectiveidentity representation systems, or to allow for an endless number ofcustomisation options; rather, it is to enable creation of highly contextualisedand dynamic systems able to express specific, subjective social identity phenomenasuch as becoming a member of a community or adapting one’s self-presentationto the particular other users present. In order to address these and otherphenomena, engineers need to design infrastructures in a manner cognisant of thesocial phenomena that they intend to support or disallow. It is possible todevelop more dynamic, robust, and creative technologies to expand the expressivepotential of identity computing systems and to tailor them to particularcommunities of users, while avoiding the side e"ect of disempowering stigmatisedand marginalised groups and individuals. Addressing these problems can providegreater customisability, make for more salient experiences, and invent new formsof expression and identity.

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3. Theoretical framework

3.1. Shared technical underpinnings of computational identity

The approach to computational identity articulated here is relevant across multipleforms of digital media. Various computational identity applications such as socialnetworking sites, avatar creation systems for virtual worlds, and games areimplemented using a limited and often overlapping set of techniques. Figure 1describes, at a high level, the components that comprise the majority of widely usedcomputational identity technologies (Harrell 2008). Fundamental to implementingcomputational identity applications, the six components in Figure 1 that commonlyform the basis for avatar/character/profile construction can enable dynamic andcontingent models of social identity in digital environments as described in Gee(2003) and elaborated in Harrell (2010).

There are two aspects of each of these components: (1) the front-end exhibitedthrough graphics and their behaviours, and (2) the back-end implemented viaalgorithms and data structures. The boundary between data structure andinfrastructure is blurred, because the character statistics comprise a (partiallyinvisible) data underpinning for performed/enacted gameworld identities asregulated by procedural game mechanics, but also a platform for constructing avirtual self. For example, both a social networking page and a virtual worldcharacter screen both often contain subunits with flat text information such asdescriptions or lists of preferences. They both contain a self-representation such as aprofile picture or an avatar (the self’s proxy for interacting in the gameworld). Asdesign components, it is important to consider which aspects of socialising or gamingare encoded in each space both visually and procedurally, in light of real-worldconcerns for empowerment or critical awareness. Several important questions can beasked, including the following.

. Where is the computational identity focalised (e.g. is the nexus of interactioninvolving the character centred upon a graphical self-representation dependentupon algorithmically regulated a"ordances such as behavioural rules or

Figure 1. Shared technical underpinnings of computational identity applications.

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through relatively open-ended systems less amenable to procedural regulationsuch as flat text files)?

. Which components of the computational identity are instrumental (i.e.impacting the e"ective use of representation in its domain) versus those thatare cosmetic (i.e. expressions of user preference without functionalimplications)?

. What are the implications of instrumentally oriented decisions made inconstructing the computational identity, do they reinforce potentiallystigmatising norms (e.g. would choosing a female representation have anye"ect on abilities within a game)?

. What are the implications of cosmetically oriented decisions made inconstructing the computational identity, can they impact instrumentalfunctions negatively (e.g. would choosing a very large 3D representationresult in negative impact upon gameplay due to blocking the in-game cameraor other occlusion issues)?

Answering questions such as these are key to understanding how to create betterdesigns that address the social and cultural implications of identity infrastructuresand the representations built atop them. Understanding the reciprocities andoverlaps between the technical means by which users stage their identities acrossdigital media forms can enable more powerful customisability and cross-communitycommunication facility in social identity systems.

In the design and software engineering of such systems, the reliance of computerscientists on intuitive understandings of identity, rather than nuanced theories thatview identity as enacted, contextual, imaginative, and infrastructural, has resulted insoftware that at best ignores opportunities for empowerment, and at worst results inperpetuating longstanding social ills of discrimination and disenfranchisement. Wecan do better. By looking outside of the field of computing itself, there exists richinformation and identity construction strategies developed by individuals who havehad to navigate the shifts, convolutions, and problems of social identity and/or havededicated careers to studying them.

3.2. The AIR model of cognitively grounded computational identity

The AIR Project approach begins with the basic cognitive building blocks ofidentity (discussed in a subsection) upon which all social identity categories arebuilt. Cognitive scientists have proposed that human conceptual categories form‘idealised cognitive models’ (ICMs) upon which categories of objects in the worldare built (Lako" 1987). These ICMs are akin to what are known as ontologies indatabase research and artificial intelligence (AI) research. Yet, most usercategorisation is not done using AI knowledge representation techniques. Technicalinfrastructures implement and reify (often incorrect) stigmatising identityclassification models (Goguen 1997, Bowker and Star 1999). Cognitive sciencetheory is presented below to provide more robust models. These models canexplain how users project their identities into their computational surrogates/proxies (Gee 2003).

However, it can also be noted that social infrastructures of classification canserve to reify many di"erent models of identity, only some of which capture thedynamic, constructive, and performed or enacted models encountered in everyday

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experience. Furthermore, some classification infrastructures serve to reinforcesocial ills of discrimination and prejudice. The notion of allowing users to enacttheir own identities and membership within communities is an important one toallow for users to feel empowered in social computing systems and games.

Identity customisation and experiences of transformative identity in socialcomputing systems rely upon the ability for system authors to explicitly model thee"ects of social classification infrastructures, such as: viewing oneself di"erentlythan others do, performing actions usually attributed to a community outside ofone’s own, or changing identity based upon learning how to accomplish newtasks or to use new tools. Users may then project themselves into their dynamiccomputational selves: whether as avatars that change appearance depending uponthe skill level of the user as determined by data in a social networking profile, oras characters in a game that gain experience and change from communicatingwith diverse sets of other characters rather than common mechanisms of combatand acquiring more powerful weapons.

The AIR model (Figure 2) is useful for identifying where schisms existbetween a technical structure and a real-world idealised cognitive model asencoded in a classification data structure. A researcher can then construct newstructures, using techniques such as those suggested by the AIR Project systems,that more closely align these structures and models in order to construct thehybrid of computationally a"orded identities and real-world identities that JamesGee calls (2003) the ‘projected identity’, and as shown in the cognitively groundedAIR model (e.g. a player taking on the role of a priest in a computer role-playinggame and trying to be helpful and supportive to her or his friends). The key hereis that our understanding of both computational structures and the ways thatusers interpret them is based in imaginative cognitive processes such ascategorisation. The focus on categorisation and classification arises because thesephenomena are often reified in infrastructure and are thus amenable tocomputational modelling. Hence, we shall see that forms of stigma introducedby problematic categorisation and classification models can be addressedcomputationally.

Figure 2. The AIR model of cognitively grounded computational identity.

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3.3. Cognitive categorisation

The approach to identity here is influenced by the prototype theory of thepsychologist Eleanor Rosch, and especially work in categorisation by the cognitivescientist George Lako" (1987). Lako"’s work in this area over two decades ago iswell known and influential, yet it is a thread that has been underdeveloped withrespect to issues of social identity construction (an exciting exception being the workof the linguist Otto Santa Ana on conceptual metaphor-based bias (Santa Ana2002)). Furthermore, this theory has not been significantly applied to cases ofidentity representation in digital media.

Traditional theories or objectivist views of categorisation hold that categories aredefined by the common objective properties of their members. These traditional viewsare characterised by ideas such as that meaning is based on truth and reference(relationships between symbols and things in the world), di"erences between physicalobjects are defined by common essential properties, there is a single correct way ofunderstandingwhat is and is not true, and all people think byusing the same conceptualsystems.

The AIR Project draws on, in contrast to traditional and ‘folk’ theories ofcategorisation, more recent empirically based theory (Lako" 1987) which asserts thatcategorisation is a matter of both human experience and imagination. The cognitivescientist Lako" asserts that meaning is based upon human experience, consisting of:embodied perception of the world, experience of motor activity, and shared culturalknowledge; and that meaning is constructed by imagination, including: mappingconcepts to one another as in metaphor and metonymy, and dynamicallyconstructing mental imagery. This view of categorisation draws on the growingcorpus of research from psychology, computer science, neuroscience, anthropology,and more to reveal a convergence of evidence disputing the traditional theory.

Important for the purposes here, Lako" describes a metaphor- and metonymy-based account of how imaginative extensions of ‘prototype e"ects’ result in severalphenomena of social identity categorisation that have proven useful for the AIRProject (Lako" 1987):

. representatives (prototypes): ‘best example’ members of categories;

. stereotypes: normal, but often misleading, category expectations (e.g. genderstereotypical categories define normative expectations for language use);

. ideals: culturally valued categories even if not typically encountered (e.g. notethe di"erence between an ideal and stereotype – ideal husband: good provider,faithful, strong, respected, attractive; Stereotypical husband: bumbling, dull,beer-bellied);

. paragons: defining categories in terms of individual members who representeither an ideal or its opposite (e.g. ‘he is no Turing when it comes tocomputing’, ‘it’s the Taj Mahal of apartments!’); and

. salient examples: memorable examples used to understand/create categories(e.g. after experiencing an earthquake in California someone may never wish totravel there, even from a place with a higher incidence of natural disaster).

Since the AIR Project technology involves techniques to formalise and implementidealised cognitive models (such as Lako"’s) as computational data structures,identity phenomena such as described above become amenable to algorithmic

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manipulation and experimentation. The AIR Project entails computationallymodelling such phenomena that define normative expectations and stigma(stereotypes, ideals, salient examples, etc.) within computational identity applica-tions and enabling the possibility for critique and experimentation with identitymodels that enable users to move beyond disempowering expectations.

3.4. Sociology of classification infrastructures

The approach to computational identity infrastructure design in the AIR Project isinfluenced by accounts of classification systems from the sociology of science. InBowker and Star (1999), the case is made that classification systems are necessary forinformation exchange and communication. They assert that classifying systemsallow humans to regularise information from one context to another. Socialchallenges regarding classification systems arise from cases where tension existsbetween contexts. In such cases, communication between communities with di"erentclassification systems causes disempowering social ills such as prejudice, discrimina-tion, and their ‘often attendant violence’ (Bowker and Star 1999).

Toward accounting for the interaction between individuals’ social identities andclassification in di"erent communities, Bowker and Star call attention to the concepts ofmembership and naturalisation. Membership is the experience of encountering objectsand interactions native to particular communities and increasingly engaging innaturalised relationships with them. Naturalisation refers to deepening familiaritywith use and enactment involving such objects and interactions. The problem withenforced naturalisation is that it always creates problems of marginalisation. ‘Marginalpersons’ are those who either exist outside of communities or are less ‘prototypical’members of communities. Marginalisation can occur through exclusion or throughmultiple memberships in communities where an individual must switch frequentlybetween interaction and object use protocols within each community, oftenwith varyingdegrees of success. Typically, when discussing marginalisation it refers to exclusion ordi"erence from normative behaviours (stigma) and/or dominant, privileged, and/orhegemonic communities. The concept of category markedness indicates that, unlikenormative categories, marginal categories are linguistically demarcated. Identity torqueiswhere self-classificationof individuals di"ers fromhowbroader society classifies them.

Important tools for bridging between communities are ‘boundary objects’, definedby Bowker and Star as objects that ‘inhabit several communities and also satisfy theinformational requirements of each’. An example of a boundary object would be awebsite that serves both students and faculty members. For Bowker and Star,boundary objects act as a means of resolving tensions between communities withoutforcing one to adopt the other’s norms and practices. The shared architectures of someof the systems developed under theAIRProject implement what Bowker and Star term‘boundary infrastructures’. These are defined as ‘stable regimes managing multipleboundary objects, allowing the necessary information to be accessed by multiplecommunities’. While it is common to imagine that classification systems are objectiveentities, in subscribing to Lako"’s observations above regarding the traditional view ofclassification it becomes clear that such is not the case. Indeed, Bowker and Star (1999)assert that:

Classifications are made of standards, and these standards are developed through acomplex and di!cult process heavily influenced by social, political, economical factors.

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Classifications are not equal to standards, they are boundary objects among di"erentcommunities, or better, they are boundary infrastructures.

As opposed to computational identity applications that are based on standard, staticclassification systems, the dynamically configurable, imaginatively groundedidentities of the AIR Project are boundary objects that can customise userinformation and preferences for particular communities. The power of such modelslies in the possibilities they enable for cross-community communication, which is ofcourse necessary in order to challenge the discrimination that occurs at the margins,and lack of diversity inherent in the centre.

3.5. Sociology of stigma

Stigma often occurs in identities at the margins. An important perspective of identitycan be found in Erving Go"man’s Presentation of the self in everyday life (1959). Thiswork provides a basis for Go"man’s later work on how stigma is constructed throughsocial interaction and construction. Although his work was not empirical in the sensefavoured by much of contemporary sociology, his concepts have been widelyinfluential. In Go"man (1963), he grossly describes three types of stigma. These aredi"erences of: (1) the physical body, (2) individual character, or (3) ‘tribal’ classes of‘race, nation, and religion’. He describes each of these categories as deviance from‘those who do not depart negatively from the particular expectations at issue’, whomhe calls the ‘normals’. For Go"man, these hypothetical normals are definitional ofsocial norms, some of which may be achievable by a majority of individuals, yet manyof which are unavailable to individuals because they are due to unchangeablecharacteristics, such as skin tone. Yet, in practice, a society may hold norms that arelargely unattainable for any of its members. In fact, and provocatively, during histime period in the United States he asserted that (Go"man 1963):

in an important sense there is only one complete andunblushingmale inAmerica: a young,married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fullyemployed, of good complexion, weight and height, and a recent record in sports.

In short, almost everyone is stigmatised in some regards, and those who are not soonwill be with the passage of time.

He also crucially noted that even those stigmatised by social norms maysubscribe to these same norms, inducing self-hatred and other pathologies. Indeed,African American scholars as far back as W.E.B. Du Bois have noted thephenomenon of ‘double-consciousness’, in which African Americans are duallyaware of their own community and self-determined values that recognise their basichumanity, and the broader stigmatising social values (Du Bois 1903). This idea willbe taken up more rigorously below in the discussion of classification infrastructures.

This article postulates the idea that the experience of stigma largely rests in ourcognitive ability to map characteristics of the second type of stigma, that ofcharacter, moral value, will, belief, and passion (Go"man 1963) onto physicalcharacteristics and attendant categorisation into socially recognised races, nation-alities, and other so-called tribal classes (which may be described using theories ofconceptual metaphor and blending). Secondarily, these mappings are reinforcedand reified in social classification infrastructures, including computationalinfrastructures.

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4. AIR project systems

Below are a set of examples of recent systems developed as case study AIR Projectapplications to analyse social stigma and empower users navigating socialclassification structures and a"ordances for community formation. Although theproblem of designing technologies to dynamic and socially situated user representa-tions while avoiding stigmatising structures is quite broad, the approach heresuggests incremental advances predicated on understanding the imaginativecreativity that people in real life use to navigate marginal social categories and tocreate new infrastructures to enable in software the strategies that cognitive scientistsand social theorists have articulated in work on classification and categorisation. Theinitial AIR Project systems fall into two categories: (1) systems to enable criticalreflection on disempowering social identity phenomena such as torque andinadequate classifications structures based on identifications with discrete attributes(such as racial labelling on admissions forms), and (2) systems that empower users byproviding alternatives to such disempowering structures.

What is sought here is to understand infrastructurally how stigma persists incomputational self-representations. Many scholars underestimate the role of stigmaas it persists in social computing applications and games, after all users are notlimited to our real-world categories, etc. Yet, it makes a di"erence who uses it:people stigmatise virtual bodies and it also is disempowering to have to play using arepresentation explicit chosen to be di"erent than your real self in order to eliminatestigma.

4.1. Chameleonia: Shadowplay – a critical identity game

Chameleonia: Shadowplay (Figure 3) is a prototype critical identity politics game inwhich an avatar and its shadow (performed and socially constructed selves)dynamically transform, along with the cinematic presentation of the scene, based onplayer selected gestures and the current location.

This game is meant to suggest naturalisation phenomena such as articulated byBowker and Star. One of the major ways in which humans naturalise within

Figure 3. Screenshots of Chameleonia: Shadowplay.

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communities is by appropriately displaying contextually appropriate gestures. Acontinuously walking player character transforms dynamically in response to bothgesture and context (e.g. suburban, corporate, park, or urban scenes) while thecharacter’s shadow transforms di"erently in parallel. The player character representsthe dramatised self in this case, while the shadow represents the socially constructedself. The di"erence between the two illustrates the concept of torqued identity.

4.2. DefineMe: a critical identity construction social networking application

DefineMe, the first version of which is subtitled Chimera, implements aspects ofLako"’s metonymic idealised cognitive models for categorisation to allow users toco-construct their own and others’ avatars as boundary objects (Lako" 1987). Thepremise behind DefineMe is to allow users to define each others’ avatars using bothcommonplace and abstract metaphors. Users can append metadata to other peoples’profiles to drive dynamic generation of avatar images. The initial content domainconsists of animal metaphors that can be mixed-and-matched algorithmically.Animal types are potent entrenched metaphors for human personality (Turner 1996)(e.g. sneaky weasels or docile sheep); however, this animal metaphor-based version isonly an initial experiment. The model extends to more directly social categories suchas scenes, fashions, or movements.

The DefineMe database is designed to be lightweight, dynamic, and extensible,while implementing categorical relationships between members. When comparingprofiles, DefineMe is designed to match lexical items and logical relations directly. Inthe future it can be developed to compare the structures of profiles following insightsfrom the analogical structure-mapping engine (SME) developed by Forbus (2001)and Gentner (1983).

The DefineMe–Chimera application (Figure 4) reported on here focuses oncreating metaphorical projections as described above. The DefineMe database relieson tags to create additional descriptors for each category or member. For instance,one user could describe a friend as a ‘lion’ because she ‘is’ ‘strong’ (the tag). Anotheruser could add an additional tag, stating that she is a ‘lion’ because she ‘tends to be’‘carnivorous’. These tags can comprise vertical parent–child links (e.g. a ‘lion’ is-an

Figure 4. A screenshot of DefineMe–Chimera.

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‘animal’) or horizontal implicit links (e.g. in another user’s profile a ‘lion’ is an‘Ethiopian symbol’, yet the system may still create a category linked by the concept‘lion’). The initial content domain consists of animal types (constructing chimeras)because they are potent entrenched metaphors for human personality (Turner 1996);however, the model extends to more everyday social categories, such as scenes orfashions. The system implements identity torque when the avatars di"er from users’self-conceptions.

Following the work of Eleanor Rosch cited in Lako" (1987), the taggingsystem could also be used to define aspects of categories themselves. For instance,a ‘robin’ tag can be added to the category ‘birds’, to define the prototype of thatcategory. In this way, members can belong to multiple groups, but individualscan represent the prototypical members of groups. Furthermore, the system coulduse an individual as a prototype stand-in for a category. For instance, rather thanjust labelling a friend as a lion, one could state that your friend, Emily, is likeyour friend Bobby because she is brave. The system would then take allof Bobby’s attributes and apply them to Emily’s avatar, mixing animal typesfurther.

4.3. IdentityShare: a critical identity construction social networkingapplication

IdentityShare (Figure 5), a social networking site for ‘non-friends’, and DanielUpton’s MS thesis project in Digital Media with Dr. Carl DiSalvo as his co-chair, isalso developed under the umbrella of the AIR project (Harrell et al. 2009).

IdentityShare is implemented utilising the same database as in DefineMe. Thesystem allows for social networking by providing users with facilities to constructprofiles, follow and comment upon other users, and perform game-like tasks thatencourage users to consider exploring both like and di"erent profiles of others.IdentityShare o"ers a novel means of self-representation based upon open-endedcategories and tags. Standard profile models that typically include normativecategories such as name, age, gender, location, and race are replaced with acustomisable list that exists as a database, growing as more categories are added.Database consistency is maintained by giving users type-ahead functionality whenadding custom categories and by presenting existing categories in order from mostcommon to least common. Users can select which categories are most important tothem by indicating that they are primary using checkboxes.

By allowing for primary selection of categories, the system implements centralityphenomena from the cognitive linguistics theories of categorisation above, i.e. ‘theidea that some members of a category may be ‘‘better examples’’ of that categorythan others’, to a user’s profile (Lako" 1987). This means that a user’s profile, as acollection of categories that define a user, is no longer viewed as just a set of staticcharacteristics that are true about this user, but rather as a complex set ofcharacteristics where some may be ‘truer’ or more definitional to the user’s self-conception. To take this even further, a future implementation of IdentitySharecould o"er a ranking system for each category, thereby not only providing centrality,but a centrality gradience, ‘the idea that members (or sub-categories) which areclearly within the category boundaries may still be more or less central’ (Lako"1987). This o"ers a new dynamic to social network profiling that does not currentlyexist on the popular social networking sites.

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5. Design implications

Design of empowering social identity representation technologies does not meanproviding users with an infinite number of options for customisatation. Indeed, wehave seen that the close interrelationship between technical components, imaginativecognition, classification infrastructure, performed/enacted identity, and socio-cultural issues of power must be negotiated simultaneously within what I havecalled a socio-data ecology (Harrell 2010). More options are not enough; criticallyengaged options situated and deployed in the correct contexts are key.

Figure 5. Screenshots of the IdentityShare interface.

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Empowerment here is also not a matter of just introducing a di"erent set ofnorms and forcing those upon users. Rather, each system is seen as encoding its ownset of values and creating a dialogue between those values and users’ values. Theargument here is to be explicit about these values and producing technologies thatare extensible so as to customise in diverse contexts rather than arguing for universaloptions for identity representation.

At the same time, the critical stance taken here toward the role of visualcustomisation o!ces does not mean reducing the necessity of system designers toimplement platforms capable of representing diverse identities. Yet it does realisethat in systems geared toward self-representation we can expand accommodation byaddressing diverse epistemologies and not only appearances.

All of this suggests several broad strategies in designing empowering and criticalidentities in social computing, gaming, and related social-identity applications.

. Inventions: these are novel systems designed to enable ways of communicatingand playing that are as of yet unanticipated or that extend current systems inunique ways. IdentityShare would be a modest example of such a system – it isbased on imagining ways to meet non-friends and form impromptucommunities and developing technologies to meet this aim.

. Proactive interventions: these are systems intended to make specific criticalcommentary and to spark social and conceptual change in users. The processof creating such systems may entail assessing values built into pre-existingsimilar systems and building critically oriented values explicitly into newsystems. Chameleonia: Shadowplay, based on its engagement and implementa-tion of concepts such as double-consciousness and torque, is an early sketch ofsuch a system.

. Remedial interventions: these are systems that o"er more empowering,positively diversifying, and/or critically engaged identity representationoptions. DefineMe: Chimera, as it is built in Facebook, can be consideredsuch a system.

Moving beyond utopian views that celebrate computational identity technologies aseradicating the phenomena of stigma merely by allowing users to create 3D graphicalavatars, this article has looked at the ways that identity politics of race, gender,ethnicity, as well as more general issues of marginalisation, community exclusion, andnaı̈ve classification, persist in the use and implementation of current systems.

Computational identity representation technologies, including games, socialnetworking sites, and virtual worlds, allow both (1) uniquely computational modesof self-presentation (e.g. uploading personal information into a database that is laterpresented through an online profile or creating a 3D graphical avatar) and (2)extensions of real-world facilities to engage in discourse practices, self-dramatisation,and community creation that also exist o#ine (e.g. voice chatting or videoconferen-cing). In light of this duality, theAIRProject theories and technologies described aboveserve two goals, (1) critical reflection on, and (2) user empowerment over, stigma.

5.1. Creative critical reflection on stigma

Some of the works that ICE Lab has created are cultural products intended to aidusers in understanding social phenomena of stigma. These are subjective projects for

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users to interpret, in a sense creative artworks, rather than empirical experiments forconceptual change (although the latter is a future goal). In particular, projects suchas DefineMe and Chameleonia are intended to reveal the limitations of discrete/folkclassification infrastructures, the socially constructed nature of the self, andphenomena of torqued identity/double consciousness that arise in stigmatisedindividuals and communities. To assess more carefully how this critique functions,this subsection describes design considerations in implementing the two socialnetworking applications described above.

When social stakes are low, many people are inclined to reveal their adherence tostigmatising norms and to project those norms onto others. Indeed, in a project suchas DefineMe–Chimera the potential for using the system to ridicule and ostracise isquite apparent. Yet, these potentially disempowering uses are not seen as drawbacksof the systems. The system is considered to be a culturally situated criticalintervention, rather than a usability-oriented productive application. In bringing tolight more nuanced and imaginative stigma phenomena, such as potential ostracism,prejudicial exoticising of other people, or unflattering labelling, it also provides thepotential to disempower such phenomena through dialogic engagement. The systemcan be considered to be a provocative cultural intervention situated in anenvironment increasingly encroached upon by hegemonically enforced, oftencorporately determined, norms regarding of user identity. As such, a system likeDefineMe succeeds only to the degree that it engages users as an evocative tool toinspire critical thought, and is construed as adequate for capturing personalitiesusing archetypical avatars or conjure the sensation of experiencing the web throughanother’s eyes. Beyond this, however, the systems are prototypes that suggestdirections that could enhance the expressive and empowering potentials ofproductive, utilitarian, or commercial systems such as computer games and popularsocial networking sites with features such as self-definition of categories anddeployment of imaginative metaphor.

Despite the provocative and critical interventionist stance taken, the systems areengineered to mitigate against abuse, and certainly distress of users is not a goal.Looking at the two systems consecutively, mitigating factors designed into thesystems are as follows:

DefineMe: Chimera Design Factors

(1) Users are only allowed to tag their Facebook ‘friends’ who have added theapplication.

(2) Users can access a limited database of animal types.(3) Users must ‘opt-in’ to receive a generated avatar.(4) Users can ‘opt-out’ at any time.(5) Users’ database entries can be edited by moderators.(6) Users have access to only a limited format for tagging each other.(7) Users can delete entries on their profiles that others have created.

Together, these factors strongly help to avoid the system’s potential to be applied inan overly negative manner. It is a contract between friends to sign up for potentialcompliments, teasing, and both self and social insights. Ultimately, DefineMe–Chimera is intended to present users with a controlled experience of torqued identity.The fractured identity of a monstrous chimerical representation is, then, an accurate

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reflection of the limitations of applying modular and discrete classifications to a real-world biography.

5.2. Creative empowerment of users against stigma

Aside from the sort of critical reflection that artworks provide, there are practicalresults of the AIR Project technologies. These can be summarised as follows. (1)Insurgent metaphors are instantiated. Insurgent metaphors, as defined by Otto SantaAna in his work in critical discourse analysis, are conceptual metaphors explicitlydesigned to replace social metaphors that induce stigmatising bias (Santa Ana 2002).The AIR Project systems also allow for (2) dynamic construction of user categoriesbased on empirical results in how humans actually categorise in the world, withfeatures such as centrality gradience and prototype-based grouping as occur inDefineMe. AIR technologies also (3) provide new modes of community formation asin the involuntary communities that Upton’s IdentityShare enables. Finally, the AIRProject systems provide for (4) user-defined and user performance-based support foridentity/naturalisation. For example, the user’s self in IdentityShare is primarilypresented through database fields that users’ themselves determine and through theperformed action of surfing the internet.

As done with DefineMe–Chimera above, the following assesses more carefullyhow these empowering a"ordances function, the below elaborates discussion ofIdentityShare also first articulated in Harrell et al. (2009).

Regarding Identity Share, empowering design functions implemented include thefollowing.

Identity Share Design Functions

(1) Users can create their own self-classifications.(2) Users can select which classifications are important to them in defining

communities (that others do not have to explicitly opt in to).(3) Users can avoid or utilise normative categories such as gender or occupation.(4) Users can allow or disallow the system’s tracking of their web visitation paths

at will.(5) Users’ real-world identities are kept anonymous.(6) Users’ perceived a"ordances to communicate with one another are highly

restricted.(7) Users have full control to delete any of their data in the system.

These factors were developed over the course of iterative refinement of the projectbased on informal user feedback (mainly via open-ended interviews). The greatestchallenge with the system is to allow for user-generated categories while also pruningsparsely used and idiosyncratic database elements. A second challenge regardinganonymity and privacy is addressed by careful controls such as articulated above,and by providing quite clear and prominent information on the nature of the site.Quite contrary to being a site to allow people to ‘spy’ on others, it is an ‘opt-in’ siteoriented toward users with a desire to share their personal styles, definitions, andweb behaviours with one another. Finally, it is a system that is proposed as a balancebetween the limited and discrete, yet highly modular, data structures provided bycomputing and the continuous and transient, yet not computationally amenable,identity phenomena as experienced in the real world.

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6. Final remarks and future work

Tackling issues of stigma is admittedly an incredibly ambitious goal. Situating thisgoal as closely related to computing and cognitive science research is also risky asboth the issues and terminology are usually seen as the realms of the social sciencesand the humanities. Yet, these are some of the most fundamentally divisive issues insocieties across the globe. They are also woefully under-researched, even in human-centred computing fields such as computer-supported cooperative work or otheruser-centric areas of human–computer interaction. In addition, by invoking a broadinterdisciplinary theoretical framework centred upon seminal works necessarily thereis omission of many nuanced accounts of the social phenomenon of stigma.

Yet, given all of these challenges, this early work can still make a worthwhilecontribution to the area of research in cognition and creativity. The central argumenthas been that phenomenon of stigma is actually implemented via software, it is notonly a social concern has been carefully formulated with sociological motivationsgrounded in well-known results from cognitive science and provided a frameworkupon which more nuanced phenomena can be investigated. Lastly, future work willengage empirical research in sociology to develop e"ective strategies for changingattitudes regarding stigmas that are well known social ills, such as racism.

The author has proposed an evaluation framework for this research. Theframework is based in a venerablemethodology for qualitative research from sociologycalled ‘grounded theory techniques’ (Strauss 1987, Glaser 1992), augmented bycontemporary theory from cognitive linguistics called ‘critical discourse analysis’(Santa Ana 2002). Grounded theory techniques will be useful here because they revealqualitative patterns within data without a-priori hypothesising about outcomes. In theAIR Project, these patterns involve the nature of projected identities (Gee 2003) forsatisfying users’ in-application needs and imaginative self-determinations of identities.Because projected identities are the results of conceptual metaphor (i.e. projection ofthe ‘source’ space of self-conception onto the ‘target’ space of a computationalrepresentation) (Lako" and Johnson 1980, Grady et al. 1999), methods to elicit,discover, and characterise metaphors from user-generated discourse are necessary.Conceptual metaphor-based critical discourse analysis has been applied for thesepurposes and has even been used to elucidate metaphors for racism and bias within acorpus, as well as the types of inferences that thesemetaphors enable (SantaAna 2002).The steps would be performed on a corpus of data elicited from users about theirexperiences in games/social networks initially through concurrent and retrospectiveverbal protocols, open-ended interviews, questionnaires, and transcripts of onlineexperiences, so that the investigators can triangulate insights based on these multiplesources and schemas.

This e"ort has already been initiated. As preliminary pilot work, data fromanother study (Veeragoudar Harrell and Abrahamson 2008) (in which high schoolstudents deployed avatars in the virtual world Teen Second Life) has been analysedby the author and a collaborator. From this analysis, we found three distinctdimensions of students’ stances toward the construction and use of avatar-basedidentities (Veeragoudar Harrell and Harrell 2009). The three dimensions are namedbelow.

(1) Everyday vs. extraordinary graphical appearance: avatar appearance canrange from the everyday to the extraordinary or fantastic. Students tend

204 D.F. Harrell


toward preferring one or the other extreme, although a preference foranthropomorphic avatars was observed (likely due to the platform).

(2) Mirror (first person) vs. character (third person) ontological status: studentperception of avatars ranged from virtual representations of their real selvesto perceiving them as characters external to themselves operating, or to beoperated, within the virtual world.

(3) Instrumental/playful use: students’ uses of avatars ranged from theirinstrumental deployment as tools to accomplish tasks and proxies for themto act in the virtual environment to accomplish tasks construed ascomputational to deployment gamelike personae as a means for engagingin imaginative identity play.

A second round of pilot data has been collected. This consists of semi-structuredclinical interviews (Ginsburg 1997). The objective was to elicit users’ tacit knowledgeof requirements for identity applications and any potentially stigmatising orempowering a"ordances of the systems. The site of the study was a school forfemale refugees in Atlanta, Georgia. This provided a diverse population consisting ofnovice game users. The study assessed the creation of computational identityrepresentations across several software application cases. Three representative gamesand self-representation systems were selected: a web-based version of the NintendoMii Channel, The Sims, and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Participants completed aquestionnaire, constructed to avoid articulating the hypotheses of the study andbiasing participants. Collecting demographic data was accomplished separately fromsite records to avoid bias due to the well-documented issue of stereotype threat(Steele 1999). All interviews were recorded using digital video and all sessions werescreen-captured. These data will be used to iteratively refine, adapt, and generalisethe three dimensions above and to guide development of a subsequent study.

Finally, the argument put forward here is not a case of technologicaldeterminism. Building robust and sensitive new systems does not itself constituteempowerment. We have seen that the types of social computing and identityrepresentation systems described here exist within socio-data ecologies – whereintechnical infrastructure, specific data structures and algorithms, and specific code co-exist with embodied experiences, subjective interpretation, power relationships, andcultural values. This means that we must also avoid the temptation to discounttechnology design as social intervention and to place the onus all on the creativity ofend-users. Rather, as a theorist–practitioner–user, I consider myself a stakeholderand my own mode of intervention can encompass design and implementation.Furthermore, I would like to develop enabling ideas and systems for others. Onlywaiting for major software application producers to improve their systems ultimatelyconstitutes just another type of disempowerment. Not everyone is a softwaredesigner, but to achieve the dream that computational identity technologies canserve empowering ends we need support on all fronts including creative users oftechnology, technology designers and producers, and co-creators all along thespectrum in between.

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