Abstract In a controlled lab experiment, we compared how in-person and robot-mediated communicative settings affected attitudes towards communicators and discourse phenomena related to conversational negotiation. We used a mock interview within-participants experiment design where each participant (mock interviewee) experienced both types of communication with the same experimenter (mock interviewer). Despite communicating with the same person, participants found the in-person interviewer to be more likable, more capable, more intelligent, more polite, more in control, and less awkward than the same person using a telepresence robot. Behaviorally, we did not detect differences in participants’ productions of discourse phenomena (likes, you knows, ums, uhs), laughter, or gaze. We also tested the role of communicative expectations on attitudes towards communications. We primed participants to expect that they would be talking to a person via telepresence, a “disabled” robot-person combination using telepresence, or a person in person (between-participants). We did not find differences arising from people’s expectations of the communication.

Virtual marriage is a complex social activity in virtual worlds, yet it has received relatively little research attention. What happens when an important relationship such as marriage is transformed into gameplay? In this paper we present an empirical study of how players perceive, experience, and interpret their in-game marriages, especially with regard to representations of gender and sexuality, in an online game (Audition) where a ludological simulation of marriage is centrally embedded in gameplay. Findings reveal that marriage-as-ludic-rule-system and marriage-as-significant-sociocultural-institution provide a double set of gameplay/social/psychosexual resources that players collaboratively learn and perform, and that this negotiation is a source of pleasure, frustration, and meaning in the game. These findings can contribute to understanding the specificity and heterogeneity of players' gender representation in virtual worlds and inform the design of mixed reality games that simulate important life events for learning.

Online dating systems are the most common way people meet their marriage partners online. Nevertheless, online daters struggle to evaluate personality traits of potential partners using profile pages and private messaging in these systems. Meanwhile, Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs) have emerged as a popular way young people find romantic partners for relationships in the physical world. We conducted two interview studies -- one concerning evaluation behavior in online dating systems (n=41) and the other concerning collaborative activities in MOGs (n=35). Insights from these studies reveal the weaknesses in evaluation tools native to online dating and suggest that collaborative activities could potentially address evaluation challenges in online dating. The paper concludes with a discussion of a series of design concepts for online dating in order to improve users' abilities to evaluate their potential romantic partners for in-person meetings.

Abstract Wikipedia advocates a strict “neutral point of view” (NPOV) policy. However, although originally a U.S‐based, English‐language phenomenon, the online, user‐created encyclopedia now has versions in many languages. This study examines the extent to which content and perspectives vary across cultures by comparing articles about famous persons in the Polish and English editions of Wikipedia. The results of quantitative and qualitative content analyses reveal systematic differences related to the different cultures, histories, and values of Poland and the United States; at the same time, a U.S./English‐language advantage is evident throughout. In conclusion, the implications of these findings for the quality and objectivity of Wikipedia as a global repository of knowledge are discussed, and recommendations are advanced for Wikipedia end users and content developers.