Exploring the role of racial and ethnic socialization in virtual reality (VR) narratives

Race and ethnicity impact a number of experiences in the physical world, most of which are seldom modeled in virtual worlds. Even when race and ethnicity are taken into account for the design and implementation of characters and avatars, they are often only thought of as graphical customizations (e.g., skin color). This approach to the virtual representation of race and ethnicity lacks the depth necessary to meaningfully engage players from a wide range of identity backgrounds in transformational virtual storytelling experiences. Towards the goal of improving approaches to virtual race and ethnicity representation, this thesis proposes a new computational model of racial and ethnic socialization (RES) for the design and implementation of interactive VR narrative games. The key contributions of this thesis include the development of interactive VR narrative game called Passage Home VR and the results and analysis of a user study evaluating this videogame system.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Olson, Danielle Marie.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• D. Fox Harrell.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121658

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/121658