thinking aloud
So I was trying to prepare a set of points for le COM125 presentation tomorrow, and I decided I would just write down my thoughts about my subject and see where it went, then summarise it. So here's the stuff I came up with while thinking about WHY people use online communities. Maybe one day I'll make it formal and organise it :P for now you can enjoy the ramble and the ladidah.
Function of Community
Community is a vital part of the social interaction of any individual. Humans have a natural affinity for community - beyond the close relationships between family and intimdate friends, we have a need to commune with the global community, with society at large, to connect with what we feel is a varied sample of humankind. Family and friends provide support in our personal lives, and interaction with them is invaluable, but we use community, society to discuss, debate, share information, have casual conversation, and otherwise express ourselves publicly. These casual interactions serve the function of stimulating our minds and creating cohesiveness in society - they create a loose web of relationships that hold a society together.
However, we seem to be seeing a breakdown in the traditional forms of community. As raised in the Fernback & Thompson paper, traditional forms of community seem to be disappearing. The paper suggests that this is due to our gradual shift from an industrial society to a post-industrial one. According to Cooke, community is functionally and geographically bounded based on the social division of labour. In other words our notion of community has been reshaped by our experience as an industrial society. Cooke proposes that industralism managed to change our perceptions of community to one that is not really viable in today's post-industrial society. Accordingly, our collective conceptualisation of community is undergoing changes to adapt to our developing society.
Online communities play a large part in this modern vision of community. The internet is unarguably an influential and sizable part of our lives, especially in relatively more developed countries. It's becoming an overwhelmingly popular communication medium, and more and more people are gathering on the internet and forming communities. Can online communities be rich enough to significantly supplement our offline communal interactions? And why do people use online communities, sometimes to the extent of preferring them over offline interaction?
Internet communities can yield a rich harvest of information, which can be very helpful to the discerning user. Communities online congregate based on similarity of interests, not shared locations or heritage, like offline ones. For the purpose of information sharing, interest-based communities are then an amalgate of people who are relatively knowledgeable about one subject. This group might have relatively heterogenous characteristics aside from their shared interest in that particular subject. This creates a rich and varied source of information. As cited in the Wellman and Gulia paper, in one large organisation, people were better able to solve problems when they received suggestions online from people with a wide range of social characteristics than when they received suggestions from a larger number of socially-similar people.
People also use internet communities for social purposes. There are many advantages to social interaction on the internet. For example, the internet overcomes geographical distance, linking everyone with access to the needed technology together, regardless of physical or social distances. But it could also be argued that it simply creates a new kind of boundary: that of access to technology.
Regardless, internet interaction also lacks a few elements from offline interaction that could promote a greater range of social options. For example, on the internet many social cues are hidden, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, lifestyle and socioeconomic status. This can encourage contact between individuals based on similar interests and shared values, which might be hindered offline by preconceived notions about the abovementioned social cues.
We know that internet communities are usually formed around people with similar interests or goals. This alone encourages conversation. But can a casual, interest-based relationship develop into close personal emotional connections? From anecdotal evidence the answer seems to be yes. We know of people who get married to people they meet online, or develop close intimate relationships. More commonly, there exists on the internet many close-knit communities whose members were initially drawn together by common interests, but became involved in each others' personal lives too. This happens most often when the community is an informal one, where members are friendly and interested in each other as individuals, not just for the information each has.
Alarmists raise the issue of the internet replacing "real-life" communication. This view underestimates the validity of online communication and community. Despite the limited bandwidth of online interaction, online communities complement offline interaction. People use the internet to organise meetings, talk to people they know offline, and other things that are closely integrated with their offline actions. The internet is a medium of communication, much like the telephone, with its own norms and etiquette, true, but the focus is still on the individuals using it to communicate, not on the medium. Internet communities provide a platform for people to meet others, get to know them, and then decide if they want to take the relationship to a broader realm.
Function of Community
Community is a vital part of the social interaction of any individual. Humans have a natural affinity for community - beyond the close relationships between family and intimdate friends, we have a need to commune with the global community, with society at large, to connect with what we feel is a varied sample of humankind. Family and friends provide support in our personal lives, and interaction with them is invaluable, but we use community, society to discuss, debate, share information, have casual conversation, and otherwise express ourselves publicly. These casual interactions serve the function of stimulating our minds and creating cohesiveness in society - they create a loose web of relationships that hold a society together.
However, we seem to be seeing a breakdown in the traditional forms of community. As raised in the Fernback & Thompson paper, traditional forms of community seem to be disappearing. The paper suggests that this is due to our gradual shift from an industrial society to a post-industrial one. According to Cooke, community is functionally and geographically bounded based on the social division of labour. In other words our notion of community has been reshaped by our experience as an industrial society. Cooke proposes that industralism managed to change our perceptions of community to one that is not really viable in today's post-industrial society. Accordingly, our collective conceptualisation of community is undergoing changes to adapt to our developing society.
Online communities play a large part in this modern vision of community. The internet is unarguably an influential and sizable part of our lives, especially in relatively more developed countries. It's becoming an overwhelmingly popular communication medium, and more and more people are gathering on the internet and forming communities. Can online communities be rich enough to significantly supplement our offline communal interactions? And why do people use online communities, sometimes to the extent of preferring them over offline interaction?
Internet communities can yield a rich harvest of information, which can be very helpful to the discerning user. Communities online congregate based on similarity of interests, not shared locations or heritage, like offline ones. For the purpose of information sharing, interest-based communities are then an amalgate of people who are relatively knowledgeable about one subject. This group might have relatively heterogenous characteristics aside from their shared interest in that particular subject. This creates a rich and varied source of information. As cited in the Wellman and Gulia paper, in one large organisation, people were better able to solve problems when they received suggestions online from people with a wide range of social characteristics than when they received suggestions from a larger number of socially-similar people.
People also use internet communities for social purposes. There are many advantages to social interaction on the internet. For example, the internet overcomes geographical distance, linking everyone with access to the needed technology together, regardless of physical or social distances. But it could also be argued that it simply creates a new kind of boundary: that of access to technology.
Regardless, internet interaction also lacks a few elements from offline interaction that could promote a greater range of social options. For example, on the internet many social cues are hidden, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, lifestyle and socioeconomic status. This can encourage contact between individuals based on similar interests and shared values, which might be hindered offline by preconceived notions about the abovementioned social cues.
We know that internet communities are usually formed around people with similar interests or goals. This alone encourages conversation. But can a casual, interest-based relationship develop into close personal emotional connections? From anecdotal evidence the answer seems to be yes. We know of people who get married to people they meet online, or develop close intimate relationships. More commonly, there exists on the internet many close-knit communities whose members were initially drawn together by common interests, but became involved in each others' personal lives too. This happens most often when the community is an informal one, where members are friendly and interested in each other as individuals, not just for the information each has.
Alarmists raise the issue of the internet replacing "real-life" communication. This view underestimates the validity of online communication and community. Despite the limited bandwidth of online interaction, online communities complement offline interaction. People use the internet to organise meetings, talk to people they know offline, and other things that are closely integrated with their offline actions. The internet is a medium of communication, much like the telephone, with its own norms and etiquette, true, but the focus is still on the individuals using it to communicate, not on the medium. Internet communities provide a platform for people to meet others, get to know them, and then decide if they want to take the relationship to a broader realm.
posted by xian @ 3:29 PM
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