Scoping the Virtual World. Identity Reshaping as an Epistemological Prerequisite for Research

Abstract

Becoming a part of virtual reality offers the opportunity of reconsidering one's own identity and, furthermore, of exploring the various identities of other individuals who are more or less familiar to us in the real world. Each virtual community is a creator and a promoter of its own cyberculture. Once inside this cultural environment, a social scientist has to engage in a phenomenological endeavor over the individual and social impact of the Internet, before tackling the actual fieldwork. Therefore, an additional instrument seems necessary: an 'a priori' intellectual lens capable of helping the social scientist anticipate and manage possible diversions that virtual environment could inflict on the collection and on the validity of data.