This week we were asked:
How do you use technology to help build or sustain community bonds?
I use technology for communication, knowledge and pleasure. I enjoy social networking on Facebook with my friends, family and peers. I enjoy researching to improve my knowledge and I also enjoy playing computer games - solitary and networked.
Facebook is the place I go to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Maybe some would call me addicted, others can probably relate. I use Facebook for connecting with my student peers, sharing information, personal photos and funny images/jokes with my friends and for playing games which require 'friends' to progress through the levels. Where the uni discussion board has a more formal and academic feel, Facebook Groups have a more relaxed environment where I can communicate more candidly.
My Twitter community, however, is very different. I use Twitter for my business. My Instagram community is different again - as I only share photos which I know will be enjoyed and appreciated by that community. And finally my work community is different again - where me and my colleagues communicate and share information over Google chat/mail/calendar/drive whilst we are working from home. So I am part of several online communities which all serve different functions.
I love technology and consider myself tech savvy, however every day I learn something new because it is rapidly and constantly changing. That's what excites me most about technology - it's speed, it's uncertainty and it's future!
Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities
We were asked to summarise they key struggles and debates in Wellman and Gulia's argument and suggest what is it about Web2.0 and its emergence in the 21st century that has made many of these debates increasingly redundant?
I found a few points which were outdated along with some which are still relevant today:
- The quote by Mark Slouka about people going online to escape the problems associated in real life is still true to this day. I know that is the case for myself and most of my friends. So I feel this particular quote is not outdated
- The continual references to newsgroups, email and IRC chat are outdated. These days social networks are prevalent and the most preferred method of online communication, along with mobile phone calls and text messages
- The quote by Furlong about SeniorNet providing a place for a survey participant to go to for laughs and support when unable to sleep at night is still apparent in today's society. When I'm unable to sleep or feeling down I log into Facebook and instantly find a friend to converse with
- Stoll wrote in 1995 "Emotional support, companionship, information, making arrangements, and providing a sense of belonging are all non-material social resources that are often possible to provide from the conform of one's computer" - this is still relevant today.
- Pitkow and Kehoe claimed in 1995 that a survey of web users found most Internet users were male. According to a Pew Report in 2005: "...by 2000 and continuing on to today, the user population has been evenly divided between men and women".
Other interesting quotes from this reader:
- Sociologists have discovered that neighbourhood and kinship ties are only a portion of people's overall community networks, but could also exist as social networks of kin, friends and workmates who do not necessarily live in the same neighbourhoods
- Net members are distinctive in providing information, support, companionship and a sense of belonging to persons they hardly know off-line or who are total strangers and that net users usually trust strangers
- It is easier for net users to withdraw from problematic situations when they are online - all you have to do is exit the window - than it is to withdraw from face to face interactions
- People will prefer [email] contact to face-to-face contact because they can better control their communication and presentation of self, and they do not have to spend time at that moment dealing with the other person's response
- Without social and physical cues, people can meet and get to know each other on the net and then decide whether to take the relationship into a broader realm.
Personal Mediated Communication and the Concept of Community in Theory and Practice
When this paper was written in 2004 mobile phones outnumbered TV sets and Internet usage had become a major activity for millions around the globe. There were several definitions of 'community' within this 65 page paper, however this is my favourite:
Poplin (1979) finds there are three phases to community - first as a territorial definition, second as a unit f social organisation and more recently as a set of psycho-cultural bonds.
Interesting quotes from this reader:
- People gain a sense of who they are by imagining how others - both live and mediated (online) - view them
- Prior mediated communication technologies, ie rural and party line telephones, ham radio, and CB radio - gave rise to communities
- People coming together in community can accomplish far more than any aggregate of individual action
- Virtual communities have been denoted as 'large groups of individuals who may be linked together to share information, ideas, feelings and desires. These communities are also sustained through personal communication technologies such as mobile phones, text messaging and email devices
- Virtual communities attempt to break through some of the boundaries of race, gender, ethnicity and geographic location established in physical communities
- Mobile phone users ignore their physical peers and communicate with their distant social ties, mobile phones are typically an impediment to society's moral project as unified whole and totality
- Community is formed mentally and not physically - it is created by people's attachment to it and being in it
- An increase in virtual social relations does not entail a decrease in real life relationships, rather the Internet can supplement and extend community relations
- Internet users are more likely to be politically involved (both offline and online) and to be involved in community organisations, and to communicate with friends and family. They are also more likely to be socially tolerant and accept a wider diversity of opinions and social identities.
Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online
This paper defines virtual community, conducts research as to why people join online groups and makes an obvious observation which is that membership in conventional fact-to-face types of communities such as bowling leagues, neighbourhood picnics, church groups, etc has fallen rapidly over the last 25 years.
Interesting quotes from this reader:
- The Well and Usenet Newsgroups were the first virtual communities on the Internet
- Community sites are one of the fastest growing categories of websites
- Virtual communities are characterised as people with shard interests or goals for whom electronic communication is a primary form of interaction
- Members become attached to their communities and visit them often
- Virtual communities are an ideal place to ask strangers about information
- Virtual community messages tend to express views, provide and request information, express feelings and suggest solutions, offer words of encouragement, emotional support and they address the need for self identity
- The structure of the Internet makes it easier to find others in similar situations and meet with them than it is in real life.
A question from the teacher:
I'm curious why you think people go online to escape the problems of real life? I'm old and cranky and I think this is a much too easy answer. I think our relationship to the online environment is far more complex than this. Why do you think this part of the article is still relevant?
In today's society we are all pushed to work hard, buy expensive gadgets, learn more, our kids want the best of everything and we, as parents, want the best for them too. The political environment is depressing, due to YouTube and social media we now have access to visual images which are disturbing, news from across the world which is depressing that traditional media can't or won't broadcast.
We are now made aware of disturbing events happening in our own neighbourhoods which would have been swept under the carpet years ago. The weather is unpredictable, people are being gunned down in the next suburb, the 1% of America are wealthy beyond belief while there are still starving children in third world countries, our cars are too expensive to service and run on 60 cent per litre fuel, our children's teenaged friends are committing suicide, depression and anxiety affect 1 in 4 people! It's no wonder we need an escape!
However the Internet is not the only form of escape. People have been escaping from real life woes since the dawn of time...forming social groups, associations, joining sports clubs, drinking alcohol and taking drugs, reading fiction novels, watching sitcoms and movies and also gaming. The Internet hasn't ruined society - it has simply given them another outlet to forget about the crap that comes with day to day life.
References
Ridings, C., & Gefen, D. (2004). Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 10(1).
Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1999). Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities. In P. Kollock, & M. Smith (Eds.), Communities and Cyberspace. New York: Routledge.
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