Scientific article about the "Magic Ring" project

Title (in french): Le projet Magic Ring : expérimentation d’une méthode de recueil de données quali-quantitatives dans Second Life

Abstract: The virtual world of Second Life can be considered as an online experimentation laboratory that allows to design and test research methods. This article focuses on and the genesis of a tracking tool, the Magic Ring, developed for a research study on spatial practices of avatars in Second Life. The author explains the theoretical and methodological reasoning that led to the design of this tool that collects millions of very precise data for a large sample of subjects. These data are called "quali-quantitative data." Then, the author explains that the analysis of these data invite us to revisit the social theory of Gabriel Tarde, recently taken over by Bruno Latour (Latour et al., 2013), since some software can visualize and navigate among them. Finally he returns to some limitations encountered during the project Magic Ring.

Link: http://ticetsociete.revues.org/1561