The Good, Bad, and Ugly in Social Virtual Reality: The Alternative Global Village for Identity Negotiations in VRChat

Social virtual reality (VR) platforms have unleashed new possibilities to reimagine Marshall McLuhan’s classic idea of the “global village” in the digital era. We situated our inquiry in the case of identity negotiation between Chinese mainlanders and diasporas in VRChat, a popular social VR platform. Through a 2-year-long digital ethnography and interviews, this study revealed how Chinese mainlanders and those living abroad have confronted, separated, and integrated each other in identity negotiations. The results highlight the good, bad, and ugly sides of social VR as a novel convergence of VR, Massively-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing Games, and social media, particularly how the immersive experience of VR embodiment, avatars, and real-time voice chat may rejuvenate intercultural communication. These findings also illuminate a possible alternative global village enabled by social VR that not only has inherited certain violence from intercultural conflicts but also pioneering new paths to restore constructive communication.