Abstract

This work presents a research study designed to analyse the development of power relations in a virtual world, known as Habbo Hotel, aimed at the child and teenage market. What motivated this work was the desire to under­stand how this company wielded its power through the different agents responsible for taking decisions on the behaviour of the users within this virtual world. Simultaneously, this research went deeply into the type of lessons learnt by users as to citizenship springing from the behaviour rules imposed by the company owning this space. In order to understand what young people were learning about the wielding of power, and the prototype model citizen within the virtual world, we analyse the systems of rules that govern what users can or cannot do, and we proceed to analyse the contents of spaces in which users will talk about the reasons why the company had expelled them from Habbo Hotel. The findings of this work reveal that the application of rules on the part of the company results in the experience inside this virtual world not always being fun, democratic, creative, participative or completely satisfying. This thus questions some of the main arguments proposed by different writers on these new forms of communication.

Abstract

Until now, the paradigm of Human-Computer Interaction has focused on the interaction with two-dimensional interfaces showing the strong dichotomy between the real and the digital. The advent of virtual worlds are opening up new possibilities to develop spaces that can be more appropriate in certain circumstances to show users specific type of information, create physical places or objects which faithfully represent the real world, geolocate or interact with them beyond the limitations of twodimensional images and the written word. Finally, the arrival of the augmented reality aims to go beyond the simulation of a three-dimensional environment on a flat surface such as a monitor showing the three-dimensional virtual objects and take all the digital advantages resulting from this for improve the learning and knowledge human.