The agenda-setting challenges for virtual worlds: a discussion paper

The past couple of years have seen virtual worlds start to get on government agendas worldwide. From a policy perspective, agenda-setting is a widely researched area and it’s very pertinent to virtual environments. To that extent, I’ve written a discussion paper that analyses the challenges to date in ensuring virtual worlds do end up as a policy priority for governments.

It’s an expanded version of a piece written in recent months as part of my MBA studies – it has not been published elsewhere and nor will it be.

Who’s the paper for?

If you’re someone interested in the policy aspects of virtual worlds, you may find this paper useful. If you’re an experienced policy analyst you’re going to find the paper very broad, but otherwise it’s a good overview of the challenges and progress to date.

Sample

The introduction to the paper is replicated immediately below to give you a taste of the language and approach:

Virtual worlds have grown in popularity to an extent that they pose a range of policy challenges at both an organisational and governmental level. This discussion will examine the inherent challenges in agenda-setting for those attempting to establish governance structures in virtual worlds, and the growing interrelationship between events in the virtual and real worlds and the related policy conundrums they pose. The work by Kingdon (1984) will be used as the framework for describing the interplay between political factors, policy formulation and any previous approaches to problem resolution. Examples of current policy debates in regards to virtual worlds will be explored within that framework, to illustrate the level of government involvement with this policy arena to date and why there has been a relative lack of response from government in the Australian context.

What does it cost?

The cost of this discussion paper is up to you. When you click on the ‘Add to Cart’ button below, it will show the suggested cost of $9.95 (Australian), all of which goes to our charity of choice, Kiva. If you cannot afford that price, you can manually adjust the cost to whatever amount you want, including zero – we’ll let your conscience determine that 😉

Feedback

Please don’t hesitate to provide any feedback on the paper. By their nature, policy debates are far from black and white affairs and this one is no different. I’d also like to thank Ren Reynolds for responding to a query on the analytical framework prior to writing the paper.

Click below to purchase the paper:

—

Or – here’s the direct link for the download service we use.