Outsiders, Interlopers, and Employee-Identified Avatars

In this paper, we investigate the notions of belonging and community in 3D virtual worlds, and identify the ways in which “belonging” and “not belonging” are constructed and perceived, especially in relation to so-called employee avatars (i.e., avatars that are representative of those who appear in their capacity of corporate employees). We explore the dimension of stigma and discuss the utility of the separate categories of outsiders and interlopers for inhabitant characterization. Our motivation for doing so is to determine the degree to which corporate presence can be mediated through the specific mechanism of employee avatar appearance. Keywords--Avatar, Second Life, interloper effect, virtual reality experiences