Second Life PhD thesis of Dr Aleks Krotoski
Social Influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web
The PhD thesis, under a Creative Commons licence, of Dr Aleks Krotoski is available through her website; there’s some interesting wordles on there as well. Go here:
http://alekskrotoski.com/post/academic-dissertation—social-influence-in-second-life-social-n
(Shortened URL) http://is.gd/75yo9
(It was thanks to Aleks showing me around Second Life several years ago that I had the ‘Aha!’ moment, so without her there may not have been a Virtual World Watch and accompanying snapshots.)
Aleks is a media and Internet journalist for The Guardian, and a presenter on what many regard as the best TV programme on video games to date (BITS). She twitters, and is also the presenter of The Virtual Revolution, the forthcoming BBC series about the Web:
Thanks John, for the linkage and for the kind words. And kinda thanks for dredging up my past….
The Virtual Revolution link is http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution, where there are tens of hours of raw interviews (for download, to mash up, to do whatever with) with web folks like Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jimmy Wales, Stewart Brand, Mitch Kapoor (funder for Second Life), Sherry Turkle and many many more. Heck, most of the people I reference in the thesis are there 
Aleks