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ITP
24,1 Do avatars dream of electronic
picket lines?
The blurring of work and play in virtual
26 environments
Received 22 February 2010 Bridget Blodgett and Andrea Tapia
Revised 10 November 2010 Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Accepted 18 November 2010

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to define and articulate the concept of digital protestainment, to address
how technologies have enabled boundaries to become more permeable, and in which this permeability
leads to the engendering of new cultures.
Design/methodology/approach – Two case studies, within Second Life and EVE Online, are
examined to see how digital protestainment, through the lens of cultural borderlands, creates a
hybridized culture. Recorded interviews and textual analysis of web sites are used to illustrate the
concepts of play, work, and blended activities.
Findings – Within virtual environments the process of hybridization is not only increased in size, scope,
form, and function. The borderlands process draws in cultural elements through a complex interchange
between the online and the offline, in which hybridized cultural bits are carried out into other spaces.
Research limitations/implications – The success of the cases does not represent all digital
protest examples and so this study is limited in its ability to generalize to the population of virtual
protests. This study limits the realm of digital protestainment to virtual worlds but the concept could
be applied to any form of virtual community.
Practical implications – Companies that host these worlds will need to become aware not only of
what their audience is but also how that audience will mobilize and the likely outcomes of their
mobilization. Virtual worlds offer organizational leaders a new resource for training, support, and
recruitment.
Originality/value – The theoretical concept of cultural borderlands is expanded to the digital
environment and introduced as a potentially new and useful tool to internet researchers.
Keywords Virtual work, Virtual worlds, Strikes, Group behaviour, Entertainment, Computer games
Paper type Case study

1. Introduction
In this paper we present a case for digital protestainment. Protestainment is the
blurring of boundaries between protest and entertainment (Taylor et al., 2004; Oliver
and Maney, 2000). Digital protestainment is the blurring of protest and entertainment,
which occurs when a group engages in protest in a virtual environment. We are
interested in the settings in which technologies have enabled boundaries between
protest, entertainment, work, and play to become more permeable and in which this
permeability leads to the engendering of new, hybrid cultures.
In this paper, we present two case studies of virtual protest, a labor strike against
Information Technology & People IBM, which occurred in Second Life and a protest in EVE Online against its owners,
Vol. 24 No. 1, 2011
pp. 26-45 CCP. In both cases, we see elements of work-like behaviors and play-like behaviors
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited occurring side by side. In addition, we see the offline world drawn into the virtual
0959-3845
DOI 10.1108/09593841111109404 world and the virtual environment having repercussions in the offline. We see elements
of protest interwoven with entertainment and creativity. This paper makes that Do avatars
argument that using virtual worlds as sites for protestenable digital protestainment, as dream?
well as, new forms of interaction and organization.

Research in virtual worlds

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to
inhabit and interact via avatars, personal three-dimensional representations of a body. 27
It is through these avatars that the players speak and interact with one another and the
larger environment. The world being simulated appears similar to the real world, with
rules such as topography, locomotion, and communication. These virtual worlds are
active and available 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
Virtual worlds provide a complex but limited view of human behavior and
interaction that can be examined to find the underlying structure (Boellstorff, 2008).
Relationships in virtual worlds often mimic those that are found in the offline one
(Smith, 2004, Ducheneaut and Moore, 2004). Many events in the offline world have been
translated into their digital equivalents so that all the denizens of the digital realm can
experience them. For example, the virtual plagues that erupted in World of Warcraft
and Whoville that allowed the Center for Disease Control to examine the flow of plague
through a population and human reactions to the outbreak.
More importantly for the information sciences, virtual worlds have made new kinds
of research possible. Virtual worlds allow for societal level research with no harm to
humans, large numbers of experiments and participants, and make longitudinal and
panel studies possible. Virtual Worlds mimic a scientific environment where the
researcher can construct a facility comparable to a real-world laboratory and recruit
research subjects. Virtual worlds present possibilities for gathering social data both
because it provides non-intrusive methods and it naturally generates a vast trove of
data about social and economic interactions. Virtual worlds provide environments and
tools that facilitate creating online laboratories to automatically recruit potentially
thousands of research subjects at minimal cost.

Protest and ICT usage

Even before it became popular, many activists had moved part of their political life
online. Sigrid Baringhorst has examined the ability of grassroots political actors, as
well as, the actions of well funded political regimes to use the internet and associated
communication technologies as a tool to garner collective support (McCaughey and
Ayers, 2003; Baringhorst, 2009). She and other authors find that groups can make
effective use of these technologies but limit the true power of discussion and
communication (Baringhorst, 2009; Bennett, 2004).
Others have found that the internet enables the expansion of protest and
information in repressive areas where technology has bypassed foundational
industrial infrastructure (Saeed et al., 2008; Lusoli and Ward, 2005). As Neumayer
and Raffl (2008) found, the very groups that can benefit the most from changes being
pushed using the internet and ICTs can also be the groups most likely to fall within the
digital divide, left voiceless despite apparent technological availability.
Many authors have tried to theorize why these protest groups are drawn to the
internet. Kreimer (2001) succinctly summarizes these viewpoints by placing the new
medium of the internet into a continuum of strategies used by protestors throughout
ITP American history. Other authors have focused on the fact that internet based protest
24,1 and mobilizations often employ the same theories as their offline counterparts but with
only limited results due to limited implementation (Brunsting and Postmes, 2002;
Russell, 2005; Wall, 2007).
The view of the use of intent as a simple continuation of current protest theory is felt
to be too narrow. Theory must be revised or rewritten before real understanding about
28 protest and the internet can move forward (Clarks and Thermado, 2005). These authors
believe that politically active web sites help to create “transnational action,
leaderlessness, profusion of concerns, tactical schisms, and digital/language divides”
(Clarks and Thermado, 2005). This is a large break with most social movement theories
that have traditionally relied on the organization around charismatic leaders, formal
organizations, and state level interactions (McCarthy and Zald, 1977; Tarrow, 1998).
Other authors point out that these breaks in traditional social theory have arisen
because the motivators for mobilization have also changed due to the globalized nature
of the internet or altered the defining characteristics of traditional protest dimensions
(Langman, 2005; Schussman and Earl, 2004; Peckham, 1998).

2. Theoretical and cultural borderlands

The essential argument of this paper is that, within technologically-enabled virtual
environments, the cultural elements of work/play and protest/entertainment blend. In
order to fully understand this process, we draw from theories of cultural borderlands
originating within the field of Anthropology. Foley (1995, p. 25) defined a cultural
borderland as a “space” created when two or more cultures occupy the same territory.
Clifford (1997) refers to this as the cultural border zone, a “place of hybrid experiences”.
Rosaldo (1989, p. 119) described the cultural borderland as the conjunction of two
cultures, a space in which culturally distinct groups actively blend cultures.
The cultural borderland is often characterized as having three distinct cultural
zones. There are two “pure” or traditional zones and a borderland area in between. This
implies that within the borderlands area a cultural metamorphosis takes places in
which individuals create plural and multicultural identities and practices. The concept
of cultural borderlands has most often been applied to those who live between physical,
national cultures like Chicanos in the USA living between mainstream Mexican and
American cultures (Saenz, 1997).
This notion of territory-fixed culture has been challenged and individuals are seen
as the carriers, movers, consumers, and inventors of a culture. Mattingly (2006, p. 495)
describes this as a space of encounter rather than enclosure, a space of “noisy,
pluralistic, contested, ever-changing public sphere rather than a substance, common
property or shared commitment to a way of life”. This is a constructionist, rather than
essentialist, view of culture and has implications for the creation of culture within
virtual settings. Within the constructionist viewpoint, the role of context is elevated to
center stage. Instead of basing the intersections of cultures around a fixed geographic
point, the context that the individuals of a culture or cultures operate within becomes
the grounds over which these cultural battles are fought and new hybrids develop.
With the development of social movements theory and ICT usage, the context of
virtual worlds expands our understanding of what it means to be a cultural borderland.
Individuals within virtual worlds come from many different countries and bring aspects
of their home cultures to the virtual world. In addition, given that several cultures tend to
dominate online activities, the individuals logging in to a virtual world may also be Do avatars
bringing the dominant culture of a particular online area to the virtual world. Within the dream?
individuals, these two forms of culture are already made into a hybrid through their
blending within the cultural borderlands of other technologies. Added to this is the
unique society that virtual worlds develop, adding another layer to the hybridization.
Virtual worlds are not only the cultural borderlands where the multiple cultural contexts
of one individual are played out, but are also the borderlands where the interactions of all 29
these individual hybridized cultures come together to interact. It can be claimed that
society within virtual worlds is entirely hybridized, drawing on elements from multiple
cultures but changing their meaning by altering the context.

3. Methods
This study employs comparative case studies since they excel at placing a problem of
interest within its contextual setting. The complex and social nature of cases make it
difficult to separate a problem from the context in which it occurred (Yin, 2003). It is by
looking at a problem contextually that the richness can best be understood (Yin, 2003).
While there are many potential cases for this type of research, these two were
selected for several reasons. These protests were selected because they occurred in
well-known virtual worlds whose populations are large enough to develop an
independent in-world society. The differences in the context between these two cases
allow them to represent a potentially broader sample of actions. For example, Second
Life is open-ended and more realistic while EVE Online is a science fiction game with
specific goals and activities. In addition, the Second Life protest was focused on a
problem that occurred in the offline world while in EVE Online the protest was focused
entirely upon events that happened in the digital realm. In addition, the organization of
the protesters, the groups that the protesters drew support from, their desired
outcomes, and their impact upon the virtual world itself differed from one another.
Other cases may have been selected for this study based upon how well they
complement or contrast with the existing cases, however, it is unlikely they would
differ as greatly and therefore would provide less useful points for comparison. One
limitation of the selected cases lies in the success of both protests. Since both protests
achieved many of their major goals, there is no comparison about how the organization
of a protest could affect its outcome. Other cases were considered but they would only
provide significant data on this single point of comparison and may bias the overall
sample if they significantly overlap with one of the existing cases.
This study used many sources for this research including: news web sites, forums,
web logs and journals, and general web sites which were saved as html files for later
review and coding. The basic measure for the files gathered is the page. Using the term
page balances weighting across the different document sources and types. A single news
headline would be counted as 1 page. If the event were to be covered on two separate
days by the same web site it would then count as two pages. However, if a forum thread
has 30 pages of discussion each one will count separately. Counting all the information
out of a single source as a page is possible but it downplays the wealth of data that could
be gathered from a single site that has many long detailed topics covered in it. The
documents were drawn from 82 web pages, 34 from EVE Online and 48 from Second
Life. The text-based pages were collected from an initial web search based on terms
related to each case protest. The terms used for the initial selection of pages included
“EVE Online corruption, EVE Online scandal, Second Life IBM strike/protest/union” as
ITP well as permutations of each of these in order to find sources with different viewpoints or
24,1 biases. Once pages had been found they were searched for additional keywords that
could yield alternative potential search terms. From these saved pages a list of known
participants was collected. This list was then parsed for available contact information.
Five interviews have been conducted during the first round of data collection.
Several interviewees were selected through the careful parsing of the saved html pages
30 for identification and contact information. At the conclusion of each interview, the
participant was asked to identify other individuals who may be willing to speak with
the researchers or whose information may be valuable to the research in a method
called snowball sampling (Heckathorn, 1997; Salganik and Heckathorn, 2004). Protest
organizers were the first stakeholders targeted for interview that sought to develop an
understanding of the organizational factors considered in virtual world protests. Given
the nature of these protests, a small group of individuals were able to organize very
large protest actions. While protest organization occurs at many levels, interviews
were focused on organizers who developed the high level goals and outlined the actions
of the entire group. The organizers, as a group, had to address many aspects of virtual
world protest that are theoretically key for the success of the research. They also had
the broadest social networks within each case, which allowed for an excellent
introduction to the social networks of the protests. Within this research, this group of
interviewees compromise only one of potentially many groups of stakeholders within
each protest. Additional stakeholder groups, such as the mass media or the company
owners, are addressed through the collected pages discussed previously. In later
rounds of data collection, additional stakeholder groups will be interviewed in order to
create a well-rounded data sample. Each interview was conducted using a
semi-structured format that has its basis in an interview guide focusing on the
important organizational and social factors of a social movement (Patton, 2002).
However, additional topics beyond the scope of the interview guide were also pursued
during interviews if they were interesting or potentially fruitful (Berg, 1989). These
interviews will be used to supplement or provide further quotations where appropriate.
This study used a mix of coding approaches combining deductive and inductive
coding, often called analytic induction. Preliminary codes were developed from the
research questions and theoretically derived interview guide. These codes were used
deductively in the first round of analysis. This form of coding is very useful when
semi-structured interviews are used since the first round of interviews are based on
theoretically derived questions and assumptions (Hicks, 1994). Afterwards, an open and
selective coding was carried out on each interview and saved page, resulting in a set of
themes and categories that emerged from the data, similar to the methods used when
employing grounded theory. This is an inductive approach to coding that allows patterns
within the data set to come forward so that they may be compared not only across the data
gathered but also to the theoretically derived codes. This coding occurs in an iterative
process that is meant to capitalize on the ability to compare the data as thay are collected
(Seidel, 1998). Given the socio-technical nature of the cases in this study not all elements
that are important to a virtual world protest will be captured in existing theoretical
literature. At the same time it would be easy to overwhelm research participants or
overestimate the importance of purely inductive codes since it becomes difficult to separate
important aspects to a protest when it is embedded within a unique culture. In order to
combat these difficulties, a combination of both approaches to data analysis is required.
4. Case introduction Do avatars
We chose two cases to highlight the blending of work and play, offline and online, and dream?
social protest and entertainment. Both cases draw in elements of these
dichotomies—but in different ways. Second Life is an open platform that focuses on
creating business partnerships. EVE Online is marketed as a science fiction online
role-playing game but often is said to appeal to those who like to enact the fantasy of
work, cutthroat corporations and industrial spying. 31

Case 1: labor strike in Second Life

During the summer of 2007, IBM and Rappresentanza Sindacale Unitaria (RSU) were in
union contract negotiations. RSU asked for a “small salary increase” of 60 Euros per
year, along with “health and pension investments, informative rights, etc”. IBM
responded by offering a six Euros increase and canceling the workers’ “productive
results benefit”, a yearly bonus of 1,000 Euros. RSU decided to stage the first virtual
strike, with the help of Union Network International Global Union (UNI Global Union).
In August and September, UNI Global Union asked the Second Life community, as
well as other union workers, to join in the strike (see Plate 1). On their web site they
offered a comprehensive tutorial which covered the basics of Second Life. The
instructions also informed people about obtaining and equipping a custom “Strike Kit”
created for the occasion. In addition to these text instructions, UNI Global Union ran
training courses inside Second Life.
The protest took place on September 27, 2007 from 4 a.m. – 4 p.m. EST. Protest
staffers counted 1,853 participants from over 30 different countries. The protest
spanned 7 IBM locations within Second Life, primarily IBM Italia and the IBM
Business Center. During the strike, IBM’s workers did their jobs unperturbed,
providing information to Second Life residents. When asked about the strike, staffers
simply replied, “No comment”. or said nothing at all. At one point during the day, parts
of IBM’s Business Center had to be shut down to lock out protesting avatars.
On October 24, UNI Global Union reported that Andrea Pontremoli, CEO of IBM
Italy had resigned with no specific reasons given. On November 5, after threat of an
offline strike, UNI Global Union reported that a new contract between RSU and IBM
Italy had been signed, reinstating the 1,000 euro bonus for three years. IBM also agreed

Plate 1.
Example of Second Life
protester
ITP to make payments into a national health insurance fund and to continue negotiations
24,1 regarding industrial and business strategies in Italy and the improvement of internal
communication policies.

Case 2: corruption in EVE Online

EVE Online is a science fiction based massively multi-user online role-playing game
32 (MMORPG) that focuses heavily on economic development and militaristic rivalry
between player organizations for the control of important sections of space. Players can
have a number of different roles within the game, from deep space miners to merchants
(see Plate 2).
During 2007, allegations of corruption were revealed to the EVE public. A series of
posts from a far-reaching spy network shared secret information about player
organizations within the game. In early 2007, the network had intercepted private
messages sent between the leaders of one extremely powerful player organization,
Band of Brothers (BoB). These messages indicated one player was not only an
important member of the player organization but that he was also employed by CCP,
the company that develops EVE Online. The spies’ information seemed to suggest that
at least one person in BoB was aware of this player’s status as an employee of CCP,
which is a direct violation of CCP’s player contract. The second part of the spies’ report
revealed even more. They outlined the story of another member of the player
organization. The spies detailed that this player had not only broken the game’s use
contract by sharing account information with others but was also a developer who had
used his status to get rare in-game items for his friends.
This post set off a firestorm across the EVE community. Many people called into
question the validity of the claims, as well as the ethics involved in obtaining the
information. In February of 2007, a CCP developer posted an announcement with an
official acknowledgement of the situation, stating that CCP would investigate the
allegations. Several of the corrupt developers were forced to publicly acknowledge
their actions, had their avatars and the ill gained items deleted. In addition, the bad

Plate 2.
View from within
EVE Online
publicity and continual ill will of the community caused the player organization, Band Do avatars
of Brothers, to disband almost a year later in mid-2008. dream?
Cross case comparison
The view of work and play are very different within each environment. For many,
Second Life may be a part of their current job and contracts, or it could be a place they
go to as their second career, creating and selling digital goods in their free time. For 33
others, it is a place to socially interact and escape real world pressures. EVE Online is
marketed as a game but can be described as a second job where players spend large
amounts of time completing repetitive tasks for little to no reward.
Both terms draw from real world understanding of the nature of work and play. This
third realm, the real world, adds another level of understanding, which players draw
from when trying to describe how they participate within a virtual community or protest.
Work and play are considered separate and opposing forces in the offline world. While
enjoyment of one’s job is considered a good trait, it is not often the same as having fun at
one’s job. Similarly, many individuals seek to spend their free time in activities that have
as little to do with their work functions as possible. Since virtual worlds are classified as
video games, they are grouped with playtime activities and not often associated with
work. However, the unique nature of culture within virtual worlds makes it much harder
to clearly define work and play as oppositional forces, unlike in the real world.
As Table I shows, these two cases may be compared at several different layers
(motivation, environment, culture, goals, targets, and outcomes) in how work and play
exist and interact.
Within the two cases of protest, the boundaries between work and play are both
crystallized and blurred. Within Second Life, there was a clearer focus on the
work-based business practices of IBM as a motivation for and outcome of the protest
but this focus was achieved using a fun setting, which incorporated play-like elements.
For EVE Online, the motivations and outcomes could be more clearly defined as
play-based but the company and players faced real world consequences including the
loss of jobs, friends, and avatars they spent a great deal of time developing. However,

Second Life EVE Online

Motivation Breakdown of offline union negotiation Favoritism and nepotism within the game
Environment Professional union pickets incorporating Setting is fictional and fantastic
fun, unique in-world elements
Culture Focus on work grievances but with an Social structure mimics corporate
undercurrent of camaraderie organization. Overall method of playing
very work-like
Goals Achieve a fair contract between union and Level the playing field to create a fairer
IBM as well as introduce new union game experience for all
platforms
Targets Offline company Player organization and offline company
Table I.
Outcomes Some immediate impacts upon IBM Mainly in-game although serious real Work and play within
productivity but longer impacts on the world implications for developers who Second Life and EVE
business of IBM were cheating Online
ITP neither case remains clear, as the actions and goals of the protest exaggerate the
24,1 boundaries of the real and create a bonding, fraternal atmosphere in the case of Second
Life and the dedication and ferocity in EVE Online.

5. Data
In this section we present data from our two cases. We present three sub-sections for
34 each case:
(1) work;
(2) play; and
(3) blended.

We provide some supporting evidence for each subsection and use as many rich,
qualitative quotes as space allows.

Work: labor strike in Second Life

The entire process of creating a protest in a virtual world draws upon organizations,
norms, and business plans from the offline world. This strike was organized and
enacted by offline union organizations and many of the participants were motivated to
participate through offline social networks. As one organizer discusses, word of the
original idea of a virtual protest was spread through union communication networks:
We used UNI’s communication channels that we’ve built over the years with communicators
forums. All of the mailing list that we have form people subscribing online or through our
address book. We relied on people forwarding messages regarding the strike onto others
(Interview 1).
These networks were then utilized, along with Second Life, to help organize and plan
the protest among geographically dispersed groups. The nature of the virtual worlds
allowed these individuals to come together into a planning committee and leverage
their experience and knowledge to develop a work plan.
Many of the organizers drew on their experiences as union members. There were
committees established to examine legal precedence, not only within Second Life but
also among the different participating countries. In many cases, these meetings were
held in private locations within Second Life so that they could reduce potential spying.
As another organizer states:
Also, what we were trying to do is keep it as secret as possible to the date of the protest for
IBM so we used different spaces in Second Life that were protected so we could only invite a
certain number of people to come in these areas where we couldn’t be seen or heard to
guarantee the fact that our meetings to plan the date would be secret to IBM workers
(Interview 2).
Within this environment, mission critical information must be handled carefully so
that protests retain their impact. The setting for these meetings helped to meet this
goal by allowing individuals to attend in a semi-anonymous form, as well as, easily
create a environment where security precautions were possible.
There were members of each committee who checked the identity of the attending
members, not only protecting against spying, but also as a method of record keeping.
One interviewee who handled this job found it difficult:
 It’s a really odd feeling and it’s kind of awkward having to ask people really personal Do avatars
questions so you can try to hopefully identify them and sometimes it was really quite hard to
actually find out that I was being maybe too familiar or too inquisitive with people that are dream?
way high up in the ranks of trade unions (Interview 2).
For an individual who is handling a job much like ones they may perform in their
offline capabilities, addressing others in an informal and somewhat anonymous setting
made the etiquette of the offline workplace come into conflict with the requirements of 35
operating in the virtual environment.
There was an understanding that this strike presented something new to the world
of organized labor. The strike was used as a testing ground to “demonstrate to our
unions that we can start a new battlefield operation”. Organizers understood that the
changing nature of business meant that unions had to find new avenues of engaging
their employees. As one web site explains, there is a great value in expanding on the
role of virtual worlds in union operations:
This has the effect of breaking down isolated employees working for multinational
corporations and strengthens international communication between unions and the IBM
workforce worldwide (www.amipp.org.uk/phorum5/read.php?8,3314).
Using a virtual world as a testing ground for new business practices allows unions and
other involved organizations to create new experts in a technology as well as test the
limits of that technology to see how well it could be adapted to their purposes.

Play: labor strike in Second Life

There was a playful element to the strike that arose from the culture of Second Life
itself. The protest took on an atmosphere of part picket, part party. The arrival of
non-union support spread the message of the protesters while also entertaining many
of the attendees:
There is this SL performer artist that does all of these duplication of elements that just invade
the entire space. So at one point she just projected millions of this super Mario boss figurine
so we couldn’t see anymore where we were or what we were doing (Interview 2).
This particular participant leveraged in-game abilities to create a unique and artistic
interpretation of the disruption tactics used by the protesters. A new interpretation
became possible in a virtual world as items can be duplicated quickly creating a similar
affect in a more entertaining fashion.
In addition, the nature of the players’ characters within Second Life remained
ambiguous. One organizer points out the confusion that adding a second identity to
communications between distant organizers can cause. An avatar doesn’t always have
to appear human:
IBM has a widely reported presence on Second Life which is now set to face, at the very least,
a picket line of characters that come straight out of the darker recesses of wild imaginings
(www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/ibm_italy_strike/).
Given the nature of many virtual worlds in allowing users to appear in any number of
forms, the visual appearance of other players often leads to encounters where details
about the person are difficult to ascertain from a glance at their avatar.
These very features of entertainment that arise can often lead to the protest being
dismissed or not taken seriously. As one organizer stated:
ITP The novelty is too much. [My company] don’t like this kind of initiative so I was fired out
(Interview 3).
24,1
The traditional union organization could not place a value upon a system that was so
divergent from their methods and values. The union groups involved in this protest
were well-established organizations that did not align with the relaxed and game-like
nature of this protest.
36 Second Life encouraged protesters to adopt a welcoming attitude to individuals who
approach the picket or strike areas. In some cases, this included courteous directions to
confused users or counter-protesters:
I don’t remember seeing that many of them [counter protestors]. That would have banners
above their head or holding something that would say “I had a peanut for lunch” kind of
thing. And we would just kindly approach them and say “you’re not holding the right sign.
Would you like one of mine?” (Interview 2).
The more relaxed and welcoming nature of the strike within Second Life was a result of
the medium used for the strike. Besides an environment of openness, the organizers
acknowledge that they had little control over the spaces in which they were protesting.
The fact that the organizers could not remove or silence counter-protesters forced a
more open approach to deal with them when they arrived.

Blended: labor strike in Second Life

Both work and play were combined to create a new form of interaction that could be
defined as a standalone area. The incorporation of modern technologies and their
openness and communicative ability allowed for the creation of a new form of union
organizing. As one key figure stated:
So the first example shows us the number of people involved, the numbers of countries, the
number of discussions started from that experience can demonstrate from our unions that we
can start a new battlefield operation (Interview 3).
Friendly communication encouraged by the play aspects of the virtual world combined
with their use as tools for organization and dissemination to create new union
structures that could make use of this hybridization.
In particular, this technology appealed to younger individuals who had been
disenfranchised by traditional European unions. Many unions took advantage to move
forward after the first protest and create a support base within the Second Life (SL)
environment that would allow them to continue the image and trend that they had
started:
One interesting thing is that after the first virtual strike in SL. We created the first virtual
union office in SL. So that we can in this way contact all the young union workers that are
entering SL and they can find just like a real union office to meet a real worker representative
(Interview 1).
For these users there is an inherent appeal in using technology that they engage within
their free time to approach work. It removes many of the strictures that modern
workplaces put on employee communication and socialization by giving them a third
space that is work approved. This removes barriers of location, social practice, and
time from the occasion, creating a more approachable union.
 Utilizing this form allowed the protest organizers to spread information about the Do avatars
protest in a way that is culturally relevant. The protesters chose to make use of dream?
technologies like YouTube to create videos about the Second Life protest that not only
speak about the good of union action but create a common narrative. As the end of the
video asks:
Are you thinking it was only a funny game? 20 days after the virtual strike, the IBM ITALY
CEO resigned and the works council signed the union agreement. YES IT WAS A 37
BEAUTIFUFL DAY (www.youtube.com/user/rsuibmvime#p/u/4/dja5rlSGo0s).
This video highlights the unique new form of hybridized work and play that virtual
worlds have helped to facilitate. The organizers recognize that the protest was a lot of
fun, with its “bad boys” and “good girls”, but that important work can also be
accomplished while having this fun.

Work: protest in EVE Online

There are two connections between EVE Online and work. The first connection is
through the impact that scandals have on the lives of CCP employees. Individuals lost
their job because of actions that happened within a game. The second way is through
the creation of work or work-like systems within the game.
The first way that work and the game world overlap is through security used by the
individuals. One recurring theme throughout this protest is the availability of detailed,
private information about individuals due to a lack of good security. As one participant
states:
Most people are really dumb with security and they reuse passwords so the password they
use for e-mail they will reuse everywhere else. If they set a password on your forum they will
reuse that password everywhere else (Interview 4) * *
Owing to this fact, the developers’ personal information became directly tied to how
they handled security for their private accounts. Gaining information, such as a
common password would allow the spies access to the developer’s private game
information and possibly to company information that they may abuse.
Participating in games, like EVE Online, has been described as like having a second
job (Williams et al., 2008; Yee, 2003).These games involve a great deal of routine player
communication and repetition of monotonous tasks. Within EVE Online this is further
heightened through the complex player created organizations that gather in-game
information. Well-placed individuals can create a work-like organization that refines
the raw data collected by the spies into usable information:
That’s the thing playing inside the game takes me too much time so I’m still involved in the
game spying on corporations, creating scandals, exposing cheaters and corruption between
developers and players but I don’t play in the game anymore (Interview 4).
As this player states, logging into the game takes too much time, they spend all of their
time “playing” the game through the organization and delegation of duties, much like a
manager delegates regular tasks to employees. These individuals handle menial jobs
like writing summaries of information, pattern recognition, and basic reconnaissance.
This is done for rewards similar to an offline job: recognition of their talents, increased
trust, advancement, increasing fortunes, power, etc. Through the completion of these
ITP routine jobs it becomes possible to move up in the player-created organization and
24,1 advance an in-game character using the benefits of a new position.
This level of dedication to advancement in a game-like setting can have some
interesting implications for work. Blending the two previous points together is what
happens when the creation of such a work-like system targets company employees.
Players can use all types of information they have gathered through these player
38 organizations against their opposition when they discuss claims about fairness:
What this means is that the people responsible for these infractions (which basically amounts
to outright cheating if the rumors are to be believed) are very high up in CCP’s infrastructure.
The people who have enough access to the game to actually achieve an impact on this scale
and level are not some newly hired twenty year old geek junior GM or customer support rep
or something. Or even a higher-level programmer for that matter (www.eveonline.com/
ingameboard.asp?a ¼ topic&threadID ¼ 471868).
Based on the transgressions data that the player organizations had gathered, protest
organizers were able to determine the security level of certain game developers within
CCP. As this shows, the dedicated work of many players uncovered potentially
dangerous information. As the lack of security and dedicated work-like player
organizations interact, there is the potential for more extreme consequences to the
actions of “workers” in a game. The actual hierarchy of CCP was altered and a
player-based organization was created to act as an oversight committee.

Play: protest in EVE Online

While the content of the protest in EVE Online is bound to the social context of the
game, the idea of a scandal captured the interest of many individuals. Within the game,
this scandal moved from a fight between two different player organizations to a topic
of choice for the entire community. Outside of the players of EVE Online, the larger
gaming and technology communities were alerted to the protest through news sources.
The level of dedication that players develop through their interaction with the game
shapes their actions within and outside of the game world. This is highlighted by the
degree of anger within the community over in-game actions. For example, the CEO of
CCP threatened to resign if certain players were allowed back into the game. This can
shape their actions in other ways, such as extending their interpretations of the game’s
story to the solution:
Political troubles. Accusations, counter-accusations, allegations, the works. Very messy.
Their solution? Introduce democracy to the game world. The game’s community will now
vote for its own anti-corruption police (http://kotaku.com/267069/ccp-bring-democracy-to-
eve-online).
This quote recontextualizes the actions taken by CCP outside of the game world to be
in line with the game’s storyline. Such types of “very messy” troubles or descriptions
can often be found in the in-game chatter that occurs between players talking about
their own organizations.
However, this seriousness also lends itself to the systematic undermining of such
patterns of thought. Several players within the game admit that they derive their
enjoyment by purposefully targeting other players to make them unhappy. This
“griefing” behavior, any action meant only to annoy another player, is an attempt to
undermine the overtly serious attitude that many players take. As one web site quotes:
 EVE prides itself on having the most cutthroat and back-stabbing players in any MMO. Is Do avatars
anyone really gonna trust 8-9 people you don’t personally know to do anything [about] EVE?
(www.gongumenn.com/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id ¼ 32&thread_id ¼ 346). dream?
This type of play can be seen as a way of subverting cultural understandings while
also pulling individuals further into the game. The individuals targeted by the
backlash began around the clock damage control to handle the leaked information.
39
Blurred: protest in EVE Online
EVE Online effectively changed what it meant to work and to play. Both work and play
are closely tied to the story and culture of the game world. It becomes possible to turn the
playing of a game into a form of work, while the repercussions of playing the game can
stretch back to real jobs. The nature of the virtual world allowed this inversion to take
place. The perception that this is “just a game” makes it more likely that individuals will
be much riskier in their actions and push the boundaries of the socially acceptable.
The protest in EVE Online combined work and play together, making the act of
playing the game an actual form of work. Within this scandal, playing of the game
became not just a series of actions but a strategic assault that focused on routine data
gathering and processing to create an organized response to the scandal:
And they will say ok now you should post about this topic. And then they will post in every
thread about the thing they want to protest about. Not only post in EVE Online forum but
also post in every MMO related forum (Interview 4).
This organization shows how the players approached engaging with the game through
a systematic and work-like process of repetitive tasks that remove the process of
playing the game from the context.
The work-like attitude that players use to approach EVE Online further highlights
how the act of playing has merged with the act of working. Complex player
organizations arise to meet the demands of the in-game community for information and
entertainment. These organizations gather, process, and distribute data in a variety of
ways but in this instance they purposefully targeted how to do so:
We even calculated when we were going to do the release so there would be a maximum
impact. And also presented in a way, so I wasn’t so good at writing them [the posts] so I
courted help from [an outside group] (Interview 5).
The nature of EVE Online, when combined with the ease of finding information on the
internet, has helped to create the rise of such organizations. The existing setting of
making player organizations fight against one another for limited resources creates an
interesting story background that players can take as far as they want, shaping the
playing of the game as they go.

6. Discussion: digital protestainment

In both of the cases, there are clear elements of work and play that shape and are
shaped by the actions of protesters. Work remains the unrewarding, repetitive, or
systemized approach to reaching goals. It includes a hierarchal system of rewards that
benefits individuals at the top while pushing the majority of responsibilities onto the
individuals at the bottom. Play encompassed the fun, rewarding, engaging, and free
form activities that individuals participate in during their free time. A new form of
ITP interaction emerges that meets the requirements of the work process while still
24,1 engaging its participants. In particular, the elements of play and work interact with
protest in a virtual setting to create a new type of protest, one that strategically meets
its goals while also engaging participants in the fun of organizing and participating. In
both cases, the protests were not only meant to achieve some particular goal in either
the on- or off-line, but also, acted as entertainment for the protesters as they got to
40 explore a new environment, chat with friends, and participate in rewarding action.
Digital protestainment aids in the blending of work and play, protest and
entertainment within each case. Each of these ideas can be considered as opposing
forces pulling on the actions of the protesters in order to shape the eventual outcome.
The digital nature of the protests in these cases causes the acting forces to change,
balancing them in new ways that cause them to lie between the traditional boundaries
of the serious/work aspects of protest, and the frivolous/play aspects of entertainment
in virtual environments (Figure 1).
Theoretically, virtual environments can be considered a cultural borderland
between the overarching cultural categories of the serious and of the frivolous. Within
these larger categories, cultures of work, social protest, and offline responsibilities
blend with play, entertainment and online social interaction. The virtual environment
allows for cultural elements from the various “camps” to be pulled together into an
individually constructed hybrid. Virtual environments empower both the individual
and the group to select from disparate and heterogeneous cultural bits, combining and
re-combining them into new shapes that fit the needs of the experience. Virtual worlds
and digital protestainment highlight the fluid nature of a constructivist view of cultural
borderlands. Culture is constructed and re-constructed, as individuals interact and
encounter other individuals, groups and experiences. In the past, this cultural
construction was limited by the boundaries of the physical world, how fast and how
widely any one individual could travel or disseminate cultural bits. With the advent of
electronic communication this exposure to cultural bits has dramatically increased in
speed and scope due to the removal of limitations that the offline world imposes. The

Figure 1.
Tensions between work
and play within
protestainment
nature of society in virtual worlds means that the existing hybridized culture within Do avatars
the world rewards groups that make use of the ability of cultural borderlands to shape dream?
and re-shape culture and cultural expectations.
Virtual environments have taken this process several steps further. In virtual
environments, not only do individuals with different cultural backgrounds readily
come to interact with one another, thus exposing each other to potentially new cultural
elements, but the ability to create new cultural elements altogether, is made possible. In 41
virtual environments individuals are no longer limited by the physical, the possible, or
the practical. Avatars in virtual environments can play with identity, physics, time and
setting, among others. Individuals can incorporate foreign cultural concepts into their
own hybrid identities and spread them through the society in this way. The fact that
virtual worlds are wholly created universes unto themselves, encourages the creation
of unique cultures or societies that only exist within that world. These societies blend
concepts from the many different offline cultures that the players belong to with the
unique in-world culture, creating a dynamic and developing social environment.
Socio-technical artifacts are unique platforms for interaction since it becomes
impossible to separate the social from the technical, the context cannot be picked apart
or separated into its individual elements since our understanding of the whole is reliant
upon the operation each piece. As Blodgett and Tapia (2010) acknowledge, these
in-world cultures are often unique when compared to their offline equivalents and first
time users can experience culture shock.
Cultural borderlands have always been of interest to scholars because of the process
of creation and hybridization that occur within. We assert that within virtual
environments this process is not only increased in size and scope, but also in terms of
form and function. While size and scope have played their parts in the creation of
digital protestainment, they are not where the story ends. In the two cases presented
here, the setting of a virtual protest, the actors brought in cultural elements from the
workplace, from videogames and fantasy, from traditional offline organizations such
as labor unions and marketing cartels, and blended it together into a carnival-like
spectacle that drew participants and bystanders alike. We also assert that this
borderlands process is not only a “drawing in” of cultural elements, but also a complex
interchange between the online and the offline in which newly created or hybridized
cultural bits formed within the digital-cultural borderlands are sent or carried out in to
other worlds and spaces. Both online and offline communities understanding of play,
work, and virtual worlds was fundamentally altered after the hybridized impact of
protest. For players, protesting within a virtual environment firmed their
understanding of cultural borderlands. Avatars recognize the blurred boundaries of
work and play within the virtual world and will respond with embarrassment when the
topic is raised. They know that the interview is operating in an area outside of the
virtual world’s cultural borderland. To break that boundary, by discussing events that
happen within the borderland, feels awkward since interviewees are not immersed in
the mindset and culture of the environment. Although players are the minds behind
avatars, the avatar’s actions feel as if they were occurring within another world. The
avatar’s act of protesting is assigned to the cultural borderland of the virtual world,
seen as separate but overlapping with the real world person.
The nature of virtual worlds turns actions that are meant to be an escape from work
into a different form of the very thing they are attempting to avoid. This can often lead
ITP to players considering the game a “second job” that they perform after they get home.
24,1 Within EVE Online, players come home to take on the tasks of tedious data collection,
analysis, and rewriting. The spy organizations base themselves on a pyramid structure
that places a few players at the top, having access to all the organization’s information
and resources, while many players make up the bottom. These players are expected to
make use of the little they have to provide value to those above them. This system
42 creates a type of work that many players engage in to try and advance their characters.
For these players their playtime has become work-like.
At the same time, the applicability of virtual worlds within the workforce
encourages the acceptance of virtual worlds for work-based tasks and tests. It is all but
impossible to exclude the culture and society of a virtual world from these interactions.
Because of this, there is a certain level of socialization and non-work interaction that
will result. IBM allows employees to engage with Second Life during their time at work
and actively encourages employees to make use of this environment for meetings and
other collaborative work. Within this case study, this policy made it easier for the
organization of a protest since many of the employees within the company were able to
access and protest against IBM while they were at work. As mentioned previously,
engaging in this protest was seen as both purposeful and entertaining, allowing people
to socialize, appreciate art, and meet others in Second Life. Within a work setting like
this work becomes more lively and entertaining since the environment expands the
social possibilities. The encroachment of an unavoidable social scene when using
virtual worlds for work creates a bubble of playtime.
One outcome of this collusion of work and play is the blurring between protest and
entertainment. The traditional concept that strikes are often dismal, grey, and dreary is
contrasted to a more entertaining form of protest that offers, not only the chance for
change, building of social networks, and solidarity of the traditional strike, but also
offers a more engaging form of interaction such as funny avatars, unique and engaging
environments, and new forms of interaction. It has been shown that achieving this
combination has helped engagement of younger generations in union activities.
Protesters within EVE Online took the issue to many other gaming and technology
sites to spread the word of what was happening within their community. Since many
individuals within these sites were at least familiar with the concepts of virtual worlds
they avidly followed all the details of the scandal, some even joining the worlds in
order to participate. The protesters used this additional scrutiny to their advantage,
highlighting the discrepancy within CCP and pressuring the company to follow
through with changes. Groups in both cases used the entertainment factor to attract
attention to their causes and to push for change. Entertainment could be as important
an influence within protest in virtual worlds as the media is in offline ones, shaping the
ability of protesters to attract attention and achieve their goals.

7. Conclusions and implications for future research

Digital protestainment is fundamentally different from similar actions in the offline
world. The fact that virtual protests occurred in a socio-technical artifact cannot be
ignored. The social structure and actions of citizens of a virtual world cannot be
separated from the technological development of that world. Unlike the offline world,
this imposes limitations and changes to what is possible within these artifacts and
forces their users to improvise and develop new methods for interaction that have no
offline equivalents. While the actions of the digital world may appear to be a simple Do avatars
continuation of existing protest functions or activities, the blending of the social and dream?
technical creates a break in our ability to apply existing social theories. For example,
while many unions have incorporated some form of art or humor in their protests, they
do not engage in the protest in an environment meant to be for play, a labor protest
against IBM in a theme park would not make much sense. It is because of the
hybridized nature of digital protestainment that the feature of fun and entertainment 43
become blended with work and protest in a virtual world. Because of this the term
digital protestainment can be applied to many cases outside of virtual worlds where
the artifact under examination acts as a socio-technical object, including web sites such
as Facebook and Youtube, or forums like 4chan. Since digital protestainment breaks
with the conceptualization of technology in many existing social movements theory,
where it is seen as a simple tool or communication device much like letter writing or
billboards, the existing theories regarding social movements are inadequate for
explaining the rise of protest in virtual environments.
There are several limitations to the study detailed in this paper. The first is in the
selection of cases for analysis. Both cases detailed here were successful protests that
achieved many of the organizers’ main goals. For a more theoretically complete
understanding of how the outcome of how virtual protests are impacted by their
organization, the addition of cases dealing with failed or unsuccessful protests must be
included. Second, while the two cases within this paper are representative of the many
different types of virtual worlds and virtual protests that exist they do not exhaust all
possible permutations of both. In particular, virtual worlds are not a homogeneous
group, sharing all the same populations, characteristics, or interactions. As such this
study is limited in its ability to describe or generalize to the population of virtual
worlds and virtual protests. Instead, this study attempts to generalize to the theory of
cultural borderlands and expand our understanding of how the translation of social
processes to the socio-technical artifact of virtual worlds changes our understanding of
those processes. This study is not meant to build a complete theoretical understanding
of this change but to introduce the topic to the academic community and support the
future development of such a theoretical undertaking. In addition, this study limits the
realm of digital protestainment to virtual worlds. Digital protestainment as a concept
could be applied to any form of virtual community that has developed around the web.
As virtual worlds continue to grow in popularity, this type of collective action will
also become more common. In particular, as the diversity of the audience for virtual
worlds increases, there will likely be more collective action against the worlds and their
inherent political nature. People and their avatars, who may believe that they are
engaged in play, may be drawn into protests and new forms of mobilization. Leaders of
offline organizations may turn to virtual worlds to recruit new followers, indoctrinate
and train adherents, support their organization operationally and financially, and stage
protests, demonstrations and, perhaps, attacks. Companies that host these worlds will
need to become aware not only of what their audience is but also how that audience
will mobilize and the likely outcomes of their mobilization. The makers and enforcers
of law will need to develop new understandings as virtual world technologies enable
behavior that may be labeled as deviant, anti-social and criminal both within virtual
worlds and those that cross the virtual threshold. It is essential that we scholars build
on the decades of solid research exploring mobilization and protest action in an offline
ITP setting and note the changes and implications of moving those behaviors into a virtual
24,1 setting. It is equally important that scholars of virtual world protests draw upon
qualitative and interpretive tools in their research so that the social sciences gain an
understanding of the basic processes of generating meaning in virtual settings.

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Corresponding author
Bridget Blodgett can be contacted at: bmw170@psu.edu

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