Dmitri Williams
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3620865 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Dmitri Williams |
| PRENOMES | Dmitri |
| SOBRENOME | Williams |
| ASSINATURA | WILLIAMS D |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7995-4429 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 47 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 501 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 47 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2003 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
Sticking to Your Guns
While gender and race are known to influence self-presentation in digital environments, how critical socio-political identities such as political ideology, military experience, and national identity shape in-game behaviors remains underexplored. Building upon Social Identity Theory (SIT), this study examines how these identities predict national identification through the selection of country-based vehicle. By integrating unobtrusive behavioral l…
Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation in a Social Multiplayer Online Game
This study investigates networked social influence in Sky: Children of the Light , a social multiplayer online game. Drawing on survey responses ( n = 9,254) and in-game data from over 660,000 players, we use an innovative graph-based machine learning approach to quantify how individuals influence others’ playtime, and regression analyses to test predictors from the COM-B model. Results show that Capability enhances influence, although excessive …
Sympathy for the Devil
Disruptive behaviors in online gaming communities are a growing concern, affecting player experience, retention, and well-being. While previous research has primarily focused on the victims’ experiences, this study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying the attitudinal and behavioral responses to both encountering disruptive behaviors and being flagged for such behaviors, as well as the effects on retention. The study retrieved longitud…
Striking While the Iron Is Hot
This study integrates the perspectives of issue niche theory and issue ownership theory to examine how variations in issue salience affect the resources available to political organizations affiliated with different parties. Analyzing a database with millions of donors’ political donation records, our time series analysis reveals a nuanced interplay: When some issues associated with Democrats assume the spotlight, there is a discernible increase …
The virtual census 2.0
This study revisits the original four research questions of Williams et al.’s “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games” to investigate if mainstream videogame representations have changed over time. In addition, this study expands on the original by including a fifth question examining the intersection of representations within videogames. Using a sample of the top 100 best-selling boxed videogames of 2017 from …
Intergroup contact, contact heterogeneity, and cross-group friendship
Video games serve as virtual spaces where members from different social groups encounter each other and interact. This study (N = 3,612) tests intergroup contact theory in the context of a global prosocial mobile game, leveraging unobtrusive in-game behavioral data alongside survey measures. Findings indicate that a higher proportion of interaction with foreign players is related to lower levels of future contact intentions. However, interacting …
Playing Through the Pandemic
Amidst the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, video games were used heavily, presumably to help cope with negative moods and social isolation. This study sought to understand the implications of such play on well-being within a particular sample. Drawing on uses and gratifications and self-determination theories, the study adopted a longitudinal perspective incorporating data from one game, both before and during the pandemic. Data included bo…
With great power comes great accountability
Can players’ network-level parameters predict gaming perpetration, victimization, and their overlap? Extending the Structural Hole Theory and the Shadow of the Future Effect, this study examines the potential advantages and accountability conferred by key network metrics (i.e., ego network size, brokerage, and closure) and their behavioral implications. Using longitudinal co-play network and complaint data from 55,760 players in an online multipl…
Quantifying Networked Influence
Although previous studies have recognized the widespread presence of disinformation networks, we know little about the extent to which such networks affect the ability of disinformation spreaders to disseminate falsehoods. In this study, we conceptualize disinformation networks as a form of coordinated strategic communication and apply an innovative algorithm to quantify the networked influence of disinformation spreaders. We found that coordinat…
Playing with history in World of Tanks
This study focuses on United States-based players of World of Tanks, a historical battle arena game that features many playable tanks based on their actual historical origins, mostly from the World War II and postwar eras. Through a partnership with the game’s developer Wargaming.net, we conducted interviews with 20 players of World of Tanks who indicated that they are interested in history generally or military history specifically. Our findings…
The value of time together
Purpose The study aims to determine the outcomes of mentorship in an online game system, as well as the characteristics of good mentors. Design/methodology/approach A combination of anonymized survey measures and in-game behavioral measures were used to power longitudinal analysis over an 11-month period in which protégés and non-mentored new players could be compared for their performance, social connections and retention. Findings Successful pe…
The art of being together
How do we make the virtual world a better place? Social discrimination in online gaming, sense of community, and well-being
Social Value
Measuring influence of one person on another has applications in advertising and marketing and across the sciences. Most approaches involve inferring influence based on speech and social media. In contrast, this paper takes existing spending data and attributes influence on to the spenders and those likely to have caused their spending. The resulting metric, Social Value, is expressed in units of behavior over time. While a person’s total influen…
The larger, the fitter, the better
Purpose Team social capital (TSC) has been attracting increasing research attention aiming to explore team effectiveness through within- and cross-team resource conduits. This study bridges two disconnected theories – TSC and evolutionary theory – to examine gaming clans and analyzes mechanisms of the clans' TSC building from an evolutionary perspective. Design/methodology/approach This research draws longitudinal data from a sample of gaming tea…
Las mujeres sostienen (más de) la mitad del cielo
Este estudio combina datos encuestas y comportamientais para examinar las conexiones entre las motivaciones sociorrelacionales, los comportamientos de socialización y el capital social del juego. Las personas que participaron fueron jugadores estadounidenses (N = 1.027; 65 % mujeres) del un juego de fantasía popular entre las jugadoras. En consonancia con la teoría de los roles de género, las jugadoras participaron en mayores comportamientos de s…
Let’s Bail
Connecting in-game performance, need satisfaction, and psychological well-being
The need satisfaction and psychological benefits derived from gameplay are generally understudied for older video game players. This study connects the Self-Determination Theory, Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development, and Socioemotional Selectivity Theory to understand players’ in-game behaviors and their corresponding need satisfaction from a developmental perspective. Survey data from 1213 randomly sampled World of Tanks players were com…
Viral vitriol
Are you ready for artificial Mozart and Skrillex? An experiment testing expectancy violation theory and AI music
This study employs an experiment to test assessments of music composed by artificial intelligence. We examined the influence of (a) met or unmet expectations about artificial intelligence (AI)-composed music, (b) whether the music is better or worse than expected, and (c) the genre of the evaluation of music using a 2 (expectancy violation vs confirmation) × 2 (positive vs negative evaluation) × 2 (electronic dance music vs classical) design. The…
A snap of your true self
This study examined how self-presentation on social media influences the way people view themselves. It also examined whether that varies with sites using two temporal features: posts which have a short life (ephemeral) and those which live indefinitely (permanent). Drawing on both the notion of public commitment and self-symbolizing, our experiment provided a critical test of two rival theory-driven hypotheses—one suggesting a greater internaliz…
Men Do Not Rule the World of Tanks
The present research addresses the stereotype that women and girls lack the ability to succeed compared to men and boys in video games. Previous lab-based research has found that playing spatial-action video games potentially reduces the gender gap in spatial-thinking skills, while previous field studies of less spatially oriented online games have found that the perceived gender-performance gap actually results from the amount of previous gamepl…
Gamers Who Protest
Commercial games are rarely studied for their links to civic behavior. Yet small-group games online can affect the social networks that spill into civic life (and vice versa). This study examined players of the world's most popular personal computer game, League of Legends. Such games are theorized as mirrors that reflect civic tendencies and help some players to retain social resources. Using models of civic voluntarism, the attitudes and behavi…
Stand by Your Man
Although video gaming is becoming a more widespread activity beyond its historically core demographic of young males, participation in competitive gaming remains largely male dominated. Addressing this issue, this research examines the experience of female players in one of the world's most popular games, League of Legends. Two studies-one qualitative (with 15 participants) and the other quantitative (with 16,821 participants)-confirm that althou…
Why We Distort in Self-Report
Using Cognitive Dissonance and Balance Theory, this study investigates factors that predict how and why MMO players inaccurately report their game playing time. It was hypothesized that players belonging to categories other than the stereotypical game player (e.g. younger, less educated, male) would be likely to underreport playing time. It was also hypothesized that those players who held less positive attitudes toward the game would be more lik…
On and Off the 'Net
Scholars investigating the relationship between the Internet and social capital have been stymied by a series of obstacles, some due to theoretical frameworks handed down unchanged from television research, and some due to the lack of an appropriate yardstick. For example, the social interactions that occur through television are prima facie different from those that occur online. Given this basic functional difference, we cannot approach social …
The virtual census
A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. This innovation enabled the results to be analyzed in proportion to the games that were actually played by the public, and thus allowed the first stateme…
Who plays, how much, and why? Debunking the stereotypical gamer profile
Online games have exploded in popularity, but for many researchers access to players has been difficult. The study reported here is the first to collect a combination of survey and behavioral data with the cooperation of a major virtual world operator. In the current study, 7,000 players of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) EverQuest 2 were surveyed about their offline characteristics, their motivations and their physical and mental hea…
Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name
Go to a section in the article: This article examines the form and function of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in terms of social engagement. Combining conclusions from media effects research informed by the communication effects literature with those from ethnographic research informed by a sociocultural perspective on cognition and learning, we present a shared theoretical framework for understanding (a) the extent to which such virtu…
From Tree House to Barracks
A representative sample of players of a popular massively multiplayer online game (World of Warcraft) was interviewed to map out the social dynamics of guilds. An initial survey and network mapping of players and guilds helped form a baseline. Next, the resulting interview transcripts were reviewed to explore player behaviors, attitudes, and opinions; the meanings they make; the social capital they derive; and the networks they form and to develo…
Can You Hear Me Now? The Impact of Voice in an Online Gaming Community
This paper reports the results of a controlled field experiment in which voice communication was introduced into an existing online community (online gaming guilds within the popular game ''World of Warcraft''), comparing a mix of voice and text with text only. Quantitative results suggest increases in liking and trust due to the addition of voice, as well as insulation from unexpected negative impacts of text-only play. The findings are discusse…
Internet Fantasy Violence
Research on violent video games suggests that play leads to aggressive behavior. A longitudinal study of an online violent video game with a control group tested for changes in aggressive cognitions and behaviors. The findings did not support the assertion that a violent game will cause substantial increases in real-world aggression. The findings are presented and discussed, along with their implications for research and policy. Keywords: Video G…
A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games
Virtual Brokerage and Closure
This study proposes a structural approach to examining online bridging and bonding social capital in a large virtual world. It tests the effects of individual players’ network brokerage and closure on their task performance and trust of other players. Bridging social capital is operationalized as brokerage, the extent to which one is tied to disconnected others, and bonding social capital as closure, the extent to which one is embedded in a dense…
The Mapping Principle, and a Research Framework for Virtual Worlds
Journal Article The Mapping Principle, and a Research Framework for Virtual Worlds Get access Dmitri Williams Dmitri Williams 1Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 20, Issue 4, November 2010, Pages 451–470, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01371.x Published: 01 October 2010
A snap of your true self
This study examined how self-presentation on social media influences the way people view themselves. It also examined whether that varies with sites using two temporal features: posts which have a short life (ephemeral) and those which live indefinitely (permanent). Drawing on both the notion of public commitment and self-symbolizing, our experiment provided a critical test of two rival theory-driven hypotheses—one suggesting a greater internaliz…
Stand by Your Man
Although video gaming is becoming a more widespread activity beyond its historically core demographic of young males, participation in competitive gaming remains largely male dominated. Addressing this issue, this research examines the experience of female players in one of the world's most popular games, League of Legends. Two studies-one qualitative (with 15 participants) and the other quantitative (with 16,821 participants)-confirm that althou…
Schmoozing and Smiting
This study examines how trust is related to online social institutions, self-disclosure, mode of communication, and message privacy in a popular MMOG, Everquest II. The findings, based on survey and behavioral data from over 3,500 players, illustrate how MMOGs may support trust development. Trust was higher within closer social circles: trust was highest in teammates, followed by other players across the game, followed by others online. Self-disc…
Why We Distort in Self-Report
Using Cognitive Dissonance and Balance Theory, this study investigates factors that predict how and why MMO players inaccurately report their game playing time. It was hypothesized that players belonging to categories other than the stereotypical game player (e.g. younger, less educated, male) would be likely to underreport playing time. It was also hypothesized that those players who held less positive attitudes toward the game would be more lik…
Behind the Avatar
A two-part quantitative and qualitative study of role players within a virtual game world examined their prevalence, practices, and identity formation. Drawing on unobtrusive behavioral data captured by the game, combined with a large survey and traditional ethnographic methods, the study found that role players both negotiate identity and use their time online as a moratorium for their offline lives. Descriptive results showed that role players …
As real as real? Macroeconomic behavior in a large-scale virtual world
This article proposes an empirical test of whether aggregate economic behavior maps from the real to the virtual. Transaction data from a large commercial virtual world — the first such data set provided to outside researchers — is used to calculate metrics for production, consumption and money supply based on real-world definitions. Movements in these metrics over time were examined for consistency with common theories of macroeconomic change. T…
Why Game Studies Now? Gamers Don't Bowl Alone
Researchers are encouraged to study the social uses and effects of gaming before stereotypes form and guide both their own and the public's thinking. The rise of online games comes at a particular historical moment for social reasons as well as technological ones and prompts a wide array of questions. The transition of public life from common spaces to private ones is exemplified in the move of game play from arcades to homes. As our real-world c…
Are you ready for artificial Mozart and Skrillex? An experiment testing expectancy violation theory and AI music
This study employs an experiment to test assessments of music composed by artificial intelligence. We examined the influence of (a) met or unmet expectations about artificial intelligence (AI)-composed music, (b) whether the music is better or worse than expected, and (c) the genre of the evaluation of music using a 2 (expectancy violation vs confirmation) × 2 (positive vs negative evaluation) × 2 (electronic dance music vs classical) design. The…
The Virtual Worlds Exploratorium
The Virtual Worlds Exploratorium is a multidisciplinary project dedicated to the study of communication-related behaviors using data from massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). In a partnership with a corporation that hosts an MMO, a 20-person team of scholars is engaged in the study of behavior within a game and also game activities that parallel those in “real life” (e.g., economic activity, social networking, group processes). A key aspect…
Las mujeres sostienen (más de) la mitad del cielo
Este estudio combina datos encuestas y comportamientais para examinar las conexiones entre las motivaciones sociorrelacionales, los comportamientos de socialización y el capital social del juego. Las personas que participaron fueron jugadores estadounidenses (N = 1.027; 65 % mujeres) del un juego de fantasía popular entre las jugadoras. En consonancia con la teoría de los roles de género, las jugadoras participaron en mayores comportamientos de s…
The larger, the fitter, the better
Purpose Team social capital (TSC) has been attracting increasing research attention aiming to explore team effectiveness through within- and cross-team resource conduits. This study bridges two disconnected theories – TSC and evolutionary theory – to examine gaming clans and analyzes mechanisms of the clans' TSC building from an evolutionary perspective. Design/methodology/approach This research draws longitudinal data from a sample of gaming tea…
With great power comes great accountability
Can players’ network-level parameters predict gaming perpetration, victimization, and their overlap? Extending the Structural Hole Theory and the Shadow of the Future Effect, this study examines the potential advantages and accountability conferred by key network metrics (i.e., ego network size, brokerage, and closure) and their behavioral implications. Using longitudinal co-play network and complaint data from 55,760 players in an online multipl…
Gamers Who Protest
Commercial games are rarely studied for their links to civic behavior. Yet small-group games online can affect the social networks that spill into civic life (and vice versa). This study examined players of the world's most popular personal computer game, League of Legends. Such games are theorized as mirrors that reflect civic tendencies and help some players to retain social resources. Using models of civic voluntarism, the attitudes and behavi…
The Video Game Lightning Rod
New media technologies have long tapped into social hopes and anxieties, and the turmoil that follows their appearance offers a window into the social tensions of the time. Clashing sets of utopian and dystopian visions have typically resulted in an ambivalent portrayal of such technologies. Video games prove to be no exception. Through a content analysis of media frames in the USA's three leading news magazines, the reception and presentation of…
The Impact of Political Advertising on Knowledge, Internet Information Seeking, and Candidate Preference
Previous research has suggested that exposure to political advertising is generally informative and may even reduce information gaps between the most and least aware in society, but does not produce large shifts in candidate preference. Drawing on extant models of opinion change, we predicted that the informational benefits of political ads would vary by level of awareness, such that the most aware would experience the largest gains, especially w…
Internet Fantasy Violence
Research on violent video games suggests that play leads to aggressive behavior. A longitudinal study of an online violent video game with a control group tested for changes in aggressive cognitions and behaviors. The findings did not support the assertion that a violent game will cause substantial increases in real-world aggression. The findings are presented and discussed, along with their implications for research and policy. Keywords: Video G…
Virtual Cultivation
The first longitudinal, controlled experiment of a video game explored the presence of cultivation effects due to play. Over the course of 1 month, participants in an online game changed their perceptions of real-world dangers. However, these dangers only corresponded to events and situations found in the game world, not other real-world crimes. This targeted finding is at odds with the broader spreading activation postulated by some cultivation …
On and Off the 'Net
Scholars investigating the relationship between the Internet and social capital have been stymied by a series of obstacles, some due to theoretical frameworks handed down unchanged from television research, and some due to the lack of an appropriate yardstick. For example, the social interactions that occur through television are prima facie different from those that occur online. Given this basic functional difference, we cannot approach social …
Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name
Go to a section in the article: This article examines the form and function of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in terms of social engagement. Combining conclusions from media effects research informed by the communication effects literature with those from ethnographic research informed by a sociocultural perspective on cognition and learning, we present a shared theoretical framework for understanding (a) the extent to which such virtu…
From Tree House to Barracks
A representative sample of players of a popular massively multiplayer online game (World of Warcraft) was interviewed to map out the social dynamics of guilds. An initial survey and network mapping of players and guilds helped form a baseline. Next, the resulting interview transcripts were reviewed to explore player behaviors, attitudes, and opinions; the meanings they make; the social capital they derive; and the networks they form and to develo…
Why Game Studies Now? Gamers Don't Bowl Alone
Researchers are encouraged to study the social uses and effects of gaming before stereotypes form and guide both their own and the public's thinking. The rise of online games comes at a particular historical moment for social reasons as well as technological ones and prompts a wide array of questions. The transition of public life from common spaces to private ones is exemplified in the move of game play from arcades to homes. As our real-world c…
Can You Hear Me Now? The Impact of Voice in an Online Gaming Community
This paper reports the results of a controlled field experiment in which voice communication was introduced into an existing online community (online gaming guilds within the popular game ''World of Warcraft''), comparing a mix of voice and text with text only. Quantitative results suggest increases in liking and trust due to the addition of voice, as well as insulation from unexpected negative impacts of text-only play. The findings are discusse…
Analysis of Social Networks and Group Dynamics from Electronic Communication
Who plays, how much, and why? Debunking the stereotypical gamer profile
Online games have exploded in popularity, but for many researchers access to players has been difficult. The study reported here is the first to collect a combination of survey and behavioral data with the cooperation of a major virtual world operator. In the current study, 7,000 players of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) EverQuest 2 were surveyed about their offline characteristics, their motivations and their physical and mental hea…
Problematic Internet use and psychosocial well-being among MMO players
Looking for Gender
Several hypotheses regarding the importance of gender and relationships were tested by combining a large survey dataset with unobtrusive behavioral data from 1 year of play. Consistent with expectations, males played for achievement-oriented reasons and were more aggressive, especially within romantic relationships where both partners played. Female players in such relationships had higher general happiness than their male counterparts. Contrary …
As real as real? Macroeconomic behavior in a large-scale virtual world
This article proposes an empirical test of whether aggregate economic behavior maps from the real to the virtual. Transaction data from a large commercial virtual world — the first such data set provided to outside researchers — is used to calculate metrics for production, consumption and money supply based on real-world definitions. Movements in these metrics over time were examined for consistency with common theories of macroeconomic change. T…
The virtual census
A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. This innovation enabled the results to be analyzed in proportion to the games that were actually played by the public, and thus allowed the first stateme…
A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games
Schmoozing and Smiting
This study examines how trust is related to online social institutions, self-disclosure, mode of communication, and message privacy in a popular MMOG, Everquest II. The findings, based on survey and behavioral data from over 3,500 players, illustrate how MMOGs may support trust development. Trust was higher within closer social circles: trust was highest in teammates, followed by other players across the game, followed by others online. Self-disc…
The Mapping Principle, and a Research Framework for Virtual Worlds
Journal Article The Mapping Principle, and a Research Framework for Virtual Worlds Get access Dmitri Williams Dmitri Williams 1Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 20, Issue 4, November 2010, Pages 451–470, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01371.x Published: 01 October 2010
Focused on the prize
This study is the first large–scale multi–method attempt to empirically examine the characteristics leading to development of expertise in EverQuest II, a popular massively multi–player online role–playing game (MMOs). Benefiting from the unprecedented opportunity of obtaining game log data matched with survey data, the project investigated the relationship between player motivations and in–game behavior, personality characteristics, and demograp…
The Virtual Worlds Exploratorium
The Virtual Worlds Exploratorium is a multidisciplinary project dedicated to the study of communication-related behaviors using data from massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). In a partnership with a corporation that hosts an MMO, a 20-person team of scholars is engaged in the study of behavior within a game and also game activities that parallel those in “real life” (e.g., economic activity, social networking, group processes). A key aspect…
Behind the Avatar
A two-part quantitative and qualitative study of role players within a virtual game world examined their prevalence, practices, and identity formation. Drawing on unobtrusive behavioral data captured by the game, combined with a large survey and traditional ethnographic methods, the study found that role players both negotiate identity and use their time online as a moratorium for their offline lives. Descriptive results showed that role players …
Virtual Brokerage and Closure
This study proposes a structural approach to examining online bridging and bonding social capital in a large virtual world. It tests the effects of individual players’ network brokerage and closure on their task performance and trust of other players. Bridging social capital is operationalized as brokerage, the extent to which one is tied to disconnected others, and bonding social capital as closure, the extent to which one is embedded in a dense…
Why We Distort in Self-Report
Using Cognitive Dissonance and Balance Theory, this study investigates factors that predict how and why MMO players inaccurately report their game playing time. It was hypothesized that players belonging to categories other than the stereotypical game player (e.g. younger, less educated, male) would be likely to underreport playing time. It was also hypothesized that those players who held less positive attitudes toward the game would be more lik…
Stand by Your Man
Although video gaming is becoming a more widespread activity beyond its historically core demographic of young males, participation in competitive gaming remains largely male dominated. Addressing this issue, this research examines the experience of female players in one of the world's most popular games, League of Legends. Two studies-one qualitative (with 15 participants) and the other quantitative (with 16,821 participants)-confirm that althou…
Gamers Who Protest
Commercial games are rarely studied for their links to civic behavior. Yet small-group games online can affect the social networks that spill into civic life (and vice versa). This study examined players of the world's most popular personal computer game, League of Legends. Such games are theorized as mirrors that reflect civic tendencies and help some players to retain social resources. Using models of civic voluntarism, the attitudes and behavi…
Psychology (38 obras) · Social Psychology (33 obras) · Computer Science (32 obras) · Digital Games and Media (31 obras) · Sociology (27 obras) · Impact of Technology on Adolescents (19 obras) · Social Psychology (19 obras) · Political science (14 obras) · Multimedia (11 obras) · Video game (10 obras)