Here
are some ideas about online community suggested by our readings this
week:
Online
and offline communities overlap.
Online
communities do not exist in isolation, and there is no
clear dichotomy between online and offline communities.
They overlap ...
Literally:
People who communicate with one another online also communicate
offline. The boundaries
are quite
fluid.
Contextually:
We exist in multiple worlds, and social practices are carried
over from one to the others. |
Social
rules are portable.
We
do not abandon social norms when we go online. Rather, we appropriate
rules and resources of social interaction
from the offline world and apply them online
in both innovative and traditional ways.
In
fact, the process of doing so may be fundamental for turning
an aggregation of online individuals
into a true community. |
Online
communities are real.
They
are not pseudo communities. The fact that our physical bodies
are not necessarily present in
online communities does not by itself make them less
real in
terms of the connections we have to them, their effects or their structures.
Strong
(as well as weak) ties are possible among members of online communities. |
…But
they also are partial.
Online
communities are incomplete in social terms. They cannot -- or
should not -- function as the sum total
of our social selves. (But then, what community can?)
That said:
*
Online communities are not solely about their ostensible topic.
Social interactions within them are far more wide-ranging.
*
Almost no one is a member of just one online (or offline) community.
So while any one community may be homogeneous, all
of them together are heterogeneous. |
Relationships
are “glocalized.”
Our
communities are both local and long-distance. The sort of connections
facilitated
by online media fit our post-modern world of “networked
individualism.”
A
related issue is the tendency to romanticize geographic communities.
In fact, we are long way from the time-based
societies described
by Innis, in which kinship
or other strong ties connected us to our village and to other villagers. |
Online
communities challenge
civic life.
Online
communities are arguably all these things. But they further distance
us from people who are unlike
ourselves, with significant implications for civic
life.
Traditional
media, for all their faults, do produce broadly shared experiences
as well as connections to a physical community. Despite
their networking capabilities,
online media ironically make it less and less likely that we will have
any shared contexts at all. |
|
What
do you think?
Are
online communities real?
Are
they real in the same way -- or to the same extent -- as offline
communities? |
How
do these ideas relate to Pippa Norris' ideas about bridging and
bonding communities?
Are
online communities more likely to serve bridging functions (bringing
dissimilar people together) ...
Or
bonding functions (strengthening ties among similar people)?
What
are the benefits of each function? The dangers? |
Steve
Jones, one of the editors of Society Online, says the
computer is an efficiency machine, with an emphasis on ever-increasing
speed. But once you overcome any humanly discernible constraints
of time
and space, the key for continued development of this
machine isn't more efficiency -- it's linkages and connections:
| "Once
we can surmount time and space, and BE anywhere, we must
choose a WHERE at which to be. The computer's functionality
lies in its power to make us organize our desires about the
spaces we visit and stay in." |
Do
you agree that its communal function is the fundamental difference
between the Internet and other mass
media forms? (Is it a mass media form at all ... or a new and complex
combination
of
forms
and attributes, as the Web Theory authors suggest?) If so,
what are the implications? If not, what is its most central characteristic? |
|
Speaking
of Web Theory, this week's chapter was mostly about different communication
models and the nature of networks.
But the
authors also deal with ideas about the Web as a social creation. It
was created as a vehicle for sharing knowledge -- giving people the
tools and the capability to collaborate, to build something together.
Links
do more than move us around the online medium:
"When
sites are connected, they are not defining each other's content;
rather, they are indicating that there is correlation between
the sites. No location on the Web stands on its own because of
this massive system of interlinkages. ...
"The
loose Web is an interconnected media and communication mix that
produces simultaneously audiences, community, conversation and
connection."
Yes?
No?
What
are the social implications of interconnectivity? What becomes
of traditional senders and receivers?
If
the medium is the message, then what message does a network communicate? |
How
are "multilogues" different from monologues or dialogues?
How
are multicasts different from broadcasts or narrowcasts?
And
.. what happens to "mass communication" in this world?
|
|
Dreyfus this
week connects ideas of existentialism, notably Kierkegaard's 19th century
views, with ideas about the public sphere.
Existentialism
emphasizes individual freedom, choice, action or commitment, and responsibility.
Individuals must make their own decisions, act on them -- and take
responsibility for them.
Kierkegaard
saw the popular commercial press of his day as undermining the potential
for such commitment: "Here men are demoralized in the shortest possible
time on the largest possible scale, at the cheapest possible price."
Dreyfus
says the Internet is even worse. It undermines existential commitment,
allowing us to go through life as dilettantes. We browse, we surf,
we graze ... taking no real risks, accepting no long-term consequences.
It requires no passion, courage or risk to live in such a disembodied
world.
What do
you think?
Does
the disembodied nature of our online existence deny us the potential
for constructing a meaningful existence there?
|
Can a public sphere take shape
in such a place?
|
| How
might a society made up of individuals who have grown up in and
with this environment constitute itself?
What will such individuals be incapable of doing? What, if anything,
will they do well that previous generations have not? |
|