Women Keep it Real: Avatar Gender Choice in League of Legends.

This article examines avatar gender choice within a competitive context in which avatar gender is not equivalent across functions. In data from the game League of Legends (n = 15,392) reflecting >5 million avatar gender choices, women were found to have stronger preferences for avatar gender consistency than men. Furthermore, women tended to choose female avatars at twice the available rate offered by the game, whereas men chose male avatars at a rate approximately the same as the proportion offered. These findings support the argument that women experience more pressure than men do to perform their gender identities overtly, even in competitive games where avatar choice is mostly functional and avatar gender is fixed within specific characters. A practical implication is that by offering a wider range of female avatar and character options, game designers could likely attract greater female audiences without a significant loss of male players.

R.I.P. Kutner: Parasocial Grief Following the Death of a Television Character.

In 2009, Lawrence Kutner, a character on television's House, M.D., unexpectedly committed suicide. A Facebook memorial group was created shortly thereafter in memory of the fictional character. A thematic analysis of fan postings on Kutner's Facebook memorial page revealed evidence of people experiencing parasocial grief as they displayed emotional expressions of grief, reminisced, and advocated for Kutner. Through thematic analysis, we discovered that elements of parasocial relationships, particularly parasocial breakups, were apparent as the members posted evidence of their grief over the loss of a television character. Moreover, this parasocial grief is likely to be disenfranchised, as the death of a television character is typically not recognized by others as a legitimate loss. This study also highlighted the role of social media as an outlet for grief as well as revealed confusion between fiction and reality resulting from social media.