Creating Public Media in Second Life: Virtual Bali

We're excited to present the second in a series of field reports produced by the Center for Social Media as part of the Future of Public Media project, funded by the Ford Foundation. These reports examine innovative media projects designed to foster public knowledge and action.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life are proliferating online, attracting millions of users and creating new spaces for creative public media experiments. Innovative non-profits have begun to establish a presence in these alternate worlds, hoping to build community and engage visitors in much more personal and visceral ways than websites, blogs, and discussion boards allow.

The staff of OneWorld UK used the 2007 U.N. Climate Change Conference as a springboard for an ambitious experiment with Second Life. Dubbed "Virtual Bali," OneWorld held interviews with participants at the conference in Second Life, which drew avatars from around the world, prompting discussions and continued meetings on OneClimate island that continue today. The project tied in with another experiment—a targeted social network calld OneClimate.net, which serves as a platform for both conversation and media distribution related to climate change issues.

OneWorld's Second Life event gave activists from around the world access to participants at the U.N. conference that they otherwise would not have had. Yet concerns remain about the "digital divide" that may limit access to such benefits of the virtual world. Second Life requires a fast computer, high-speed internet connection, and an investment of time to learn its rather clunky interface. Observers suggest that such obstacles are likely to disappear in the near future.

And just like in the real world, events in Second Life need significant buzz to attract visitors. Non-profits still need to work hard to publicize events and create activities that get people talking and bloggers blogging to encourage visitors to come to their virtual island. OneWorld and others are faced with the challenge of building exciting activities and scheduling enticing events to draw people to their site in order to kickstart the kinds of conversations and community building that organizers envision.

Each experiment creates new pathways for future media makers. With their Virtual Bali project, OneWorld organizers are hoping their efforts will show other non-profits that the virtual world can be an effective tool to draw in new global publics and connect existing ones.

Read the report>>