Reception by members of the audience of the information presented during Professional Communication and Academic conferences in Virtual Worlds

This paper deals with the use of Virtual Worlds as a Conference Communication tool and audience members´ reception of the information presented during these Professional Communication meetings. Because of their ability to allow time and cost-effective participation of professionals or academics from many countries, Virtual worlds are often used as Social Professional Communication spaces for Academic or Professional Conferences [1]. Yet there is a lack of literature providing insight as to the way members of the audience receive these presentations. We captured data at a three day academic conference that took place in a virtual world and focused on the comparison between, on one hand, conference speeches and content of visual PowerPoint presentations used in the virtual world and on the other hand, the reception of this content by the audience, captured through their chat or group chat exchanges in parallel to the conference presentations. Our findings identify six phases describing what is really perceived and shared regarding the delivery of presentation content.