Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide background, descriptions, and scholarly basis for exploring the journalism of Second Life, a massive online world. At present, there has been little scholarly attention paid to Second Life journalism, whether examining "virtual" publications that exclusively report Second Life, or traditional publications that have reported on Second Life from a completely external perspective. As a result, the literature on this topic is scattered and severely lacking. This review will synthesize existing knowledge and perspectives concerning Second Life journalism, describe unique conventions of the "virtual" reporting process, and provide profiles of three "virtual" Second Life news publications: The Second Life Herald, The Metaverse Messenger and SL-Newspaper.com. Ultimately, this review finds that it is worth questioning the correlations and divergences between "virtual" journalism - which evidently treats Second Life from the perspective of a separate social "place" - and preexisting, traditional journalism - which evidently treats Second Life from the perspective of its correlations to the material world.
Recommended Citation
York, Chance, ""The "Virtual" Beat: Journalistic Perspectives on Reporting Second Life, a Massive Online World"" (2009). MG 2009 Proceedings. 1.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/mg2009/1