Places in spaces: common ground in virtual worlds

Abstract

Virtual worlds can allow conversational participants to achieve common ground in situations where the information volume and need for clarification is low. We argue in favor of this assertion through an examination of a semi-structured activity among hundreds of users held in a virtual world. Through the idea of 'implicit grounding', we argue that the affordances of contextualized space can allow users to achieve common ground in a low information volume, low clarification need activity. We use the success of the event to re-examine and extend Clark and Brennan's work on grounding in communication.