Context and participation in virtual world Habbo Hotel

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a small case study that is part of a major research project on language, identity and social media. In this work we focus our attention on context and participation in Habbo Hotel, a virtual world for socialising aimed at teenagers. Through the analysis of a corpus of text-based interactions we explore some of the contextual features that condition the way participants enact social action through participation in prefabricated role-playing situations that simulate real-life scenarios.