Social Conventions in Collaborative Virtual Environments

In this paper we explore the question of whether collaborative virtual environments can be regarded as social systems. One criteria of social systems is the presence of social conventions which serve as a basis for common communication. We conducted empirical research in three different on-line environments in order to identify explicit and implicit social conventions. We found evidence that a number of social conventions exist and that the nature of their expression was different depending on the media and functionality available in the environment.