Presence (telepresence) - Case Studies

Case Studies

Several studies provide insight into the concept of media influencing behavior.

• Cheryl Bracken and Lombard suggested that people, especially children, interact with computers socially. The researchers found, via their study, that children who received positive encouragement from a computer were more confident in their ability, were more motivated, recalled more of a story and recognized more features of a story than those children who received only neutral comments from their computer.

• Nan, Anghelcev, Myers, Sar, and Faber found that the inclusion of anthropomorphic agents that relied on artificial intelligence on a Web site had positive effect on people’s attitudes toward the site. The research of Bracken and Lombard and Nan et al. also speak to the concept of presence as transportation. The transportation in this case refers to the computer-generated identity. Users, through their interaction, have a sense that these fabricated personalities are really “there”.

• Communication has been a central pillar of presence since the term’s conception. Many applications of the Internet today largely depend on virtual presence since its conception. Rheingold and Turkle offered MUDs, or multi-user dungeons, as early examples of how communication developed a sense of presence on the Web prior to the graphics-heavy existence it has developed today. “MUDs... imaginary worlds in computer databases where people use words and programming languages to improvise melodramas, build worlds and all the objects in them, solve puzzles, invent amusements and tools, compete for prestige and power, gain wisdom, seek revenge, indulge greed and lust and violent impulses." While Rheingold focused on the environmental sense of presence that communication provided, Turkle focused on the individual sense of presence that communication provided. “MUDs are a new kind of virtual parlor game and a new form of community. In addition, text-based MUDs are a new form of collaboratively written literature. MUD players are MUD authors, the creators as well as consumers of media content. In this, participating in a MUD has much in common with script writing, performance art, street theater, improvisational theater – or even commedia dell’arte."

• Further blurring the lines of behavioral spheres, Gabriel Weimann wrote that media scholars have found that virtual experiences are very similar to real-life experiences, and people can confuse their own memories and have trouble remembering if those experiences were mediated or not.