Rheingold, (1993) described virtual communities as:
“…social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships”.
(Rheingold, 1993, p. 5)
The dominant concern underlying most criticism of online community is that in an offline world, online groups substitute for real community, which is abnormal in several ways. The most serious charges against online communities are their homogeneity and lack of moral commitment. Most of the Internet is organized by interests, thus people form groups based on similarities. Because participants can leave with a ‘click’, online communities do not force their participants to deal with diversity. The homogeneity of the Net is further enhanced by the fact that most of the world’s population has no Internet access and likely never will (Jones, 1998, pp. 36 - 37).
Critics, such as Rheingold (1993) or McGuire (1984) and many others, see the community as an evasion of the moral responsibility to confront the problems categories of people raise offline. For them, valid community is something more than “the voluntary association of likeminded individuals” (Healy, in Jones, 1998, p. 37). Doheny-Farina’s (1996) statement on community embodies these viewpoints:
“A community is bound by place, which always includes complex social and environmental necessities. It is not something you can easily join. You can’t subscribe to a community as you subscribe to a discussion group on the net. It must be lived. It is entwined, contradictory, and involves all our senses”.
(Doheny-Farina (1996) in Jones, 1998, p. 37)
From this point of view, online communities might have harmful consequences on morality and ethics offline. Thus, do online communities really serve as a substitute for offline communities?
Cody’s et al. (1997) and Joe’s (1997) research suggests that those people who are lonely offline remain so online, whereas those who are sociable online also are highly sociable offline. Thus, online communities might create more community without affecting people’s offline lives. It seems like online time replaces television time and not time spent with others. Moreover, as community networks demonstrate, online communities can be used to improve geographically local communities (Jones, 1998, pp. 37 - 38).
In a geographically local community sometimes society faces the problem of social exclusion, which is a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems. For example if a geographically local area suffers of unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, etc. then the community is more likely to suffer from social exclusion. Not all citizens participate in the actions and decisions of the community. If a person is poor or unemployed, participating in the community will not be a priority (PAT 15,2000).
In an online community, however, social exclusion is a completely different issue. Even though participants can choose the community they want to be a part of, and nobody criticizes them because people do not know whether the person they are talking to is a different race, sex, color, etc.; there are several requirements for the participants. People that want to find a ‘home’ in cyberspace must have sufficient money to buy the equipment and live in a home with the telecommunications infrastructure needed for connection (Bell, 2001, pp. 108 – 109).
Even if we assume that these problems can be overcome, there are all kinds of social and cultural barriers also in place. Most online communities are in English and apart that, most of the times there are criteria for membership. Moreover, there is the question of identity. The possibility for identity-play has complex implications. Virtual communities ranging from MUDs to computer bulletin boards, allow people to generate experience, relationships, identities, etc. In cyberspace we can be whoever or whatever we want to be, for example a different gender. Also, we can create different personalities and interact with other people from different roles. This implies that a lot of online communities might be problematic for human relationships and for society in general (Bell, 2001, pp. 103 – 109).
Generally, societal and technological forces have shattered communities in many ways. On the one hand, people may feel like they are part of a crowd with no personal identity. On the other hand they may feel isolated and disconnected from the human community. The questions of how well participants understand the problems of their everyday lives and whether they are willing to involve themselves in addressing them is crucial. It is a fact however, that communities are a natural focus for addressing today’s problems (Schuler, 1996, ch.1).
“People are the pulse of any community”
(Preece, 2001, p. 82)
Without people, there is no community. Some want information or support, to interact with others or others to voice their own ideas. Hence, another strong characteristic of online community is the importance to be able to attract participants (Preece, 2000, pp. 80 – 83).
For example, a community network usually provides discussion on the foremost issues in the community. If the area suffers from problems, such as unemployment, poverty, etc., then these issues are included. Some issues are short-lived, while some topics are persistent: education, and public health, for example. Thus, people will get involved, because the discussion areas are relative to them. The online community must be a part of the larger community, not autonomous and isolated. Situated within the community-network box are its essential attributes, including the on-line community, the community-network services, the community-network organization, and the information-usage policy that guides it (Schuler, 1996, ch.8).
However, even though common interest may be at play, it is not enough to generate a sense of community. As people who join chat rooms or subscribe to mailing lists, differ in how much they feel like a community. Furthermore, some participants in an online group may experience it as community whereas others don’t (Ito, in: Jones, 1998, p. 38).
Anderson (1983) suggested that nations are imagined communities. Meaning that the work of making a nation as a community depends on the use of symbolic recourses and devices. For example, we need ‘things’ to combine a shared sense of identity, such as a flag. Moreover, these communities only exist because their members believe in them. But an online community, as argued by Jones (1998), is shaped by group purposes, participant characteristics and other preexisting structures; hence, online communities are authentic (Jones, 1998, p. 38).
The notion of imagined communities means that we can rethink how we conceptualize and create communities, and the Internet is the most imaginative space to do this. Aside the idea of imagined communities; there are several other processes that have transformed the forms and functions of community. Globalization enables the ‘open up’ of the whole world as a potential source of community, while the Internet has been a fundamental feature to this. Also, disembedding allows us to choose our communities and reflexivity allows us to think about who we are and we want to be. Once more, the Internet gives us choices and it is ideal for ‘playing’ with our identities. Lastly, detraditionalization frees us from old obligations and allows us to give community a make over, and again the Internet offers possibilities to re-imagine the notion of community (Bell, 2001, pp. 95 – 97).
The Internet offers a safe place to build new communities. However, there is a contradiction that needs to be recognized, is the Internet the solution or part of the problem?
Cyberspace already provides a home for large and developed groups of people who meet to share information, play games or even carry out business. But critics argue that these groups cannot be seen as communities, something is missing. Others argue that not only are online communities real communities, but also they provide the potential to support face-to-face communication. Rheingold’s (1993) version of online communities is a process at the same time surprising and inevitable. It is inevitable because people or ‘folks’ as Rheingold says, are going to interact with a new communication technology for the first time; and because virtual communities are a natural response to the need for community Online communities are therefore seen by Rheingold as something growing ‘organically’ to fill in the gap left by ‘traditional’ communities (Bell, 2001, pp. 97 – 99).
Thus, the possibility of community comes from shared interests. But if I have something in common with a group of people does not necessarily mean that I belong to a community. For example, as Bell says, when I drive home from university, I see lots of people driving. Part of my identity is a ‘car driver’ and I interact with other car drivers by talking about cars, signaling on the road, etc. Does that make me part of a car driving community? (Bell, 2001, p. 100).
Ziauddin Sardar expresses his view at the exploitation of community:
“Belonging and posting to a Usenet group, or logging on to a bulletin board community, confirms no more as identity than belonging to a stamp collecting club or a Morris dancing society…. On this logic, the accountants of the world will instantly be transformed into a community the moment they start a newsgroup: alt.accountants (with alt.accountants.spreadsheets constituting a sub-community)”.
(Sardar, CR: 743, in Bell, 2001, p. 101)
Hence, car drivers cannot be seen as a community. This point implies that some online groups are not communities and do not self-identify as communities. At this point, computers give the potential for both ways. Also, Baym (1998) suggests that an online community is a community if participants see themselves as a community. In that sense car drivers might imagine themselves as a community or they might choose to be a community (Bell, 2001, pp. 101 – 102).
Robins (2000) criticizes Rheingold, by reminding us that anything we think about communities has to be located in the real world. In fact Robins is concerned with the way in which writers relate the relationship between online and real life. Online communities are not an alternative society, but an alternative to society. Also, Jones (1995) argues that we always experience something lacking of face-to-face communication, and it might be this gap that we are trying to fill in from being on our screens (Bell, 2001, pp. 105 – 106).
Lastly, online communities can be argued to be a powerful weapon in the hands of criminals. Along with the online communities that support, provide discussion, and innocent games; are the communities whose activities can cause harm, injure others or destroy. Moreover, no matter which online community you have entered, on the Internet there are always advertisements, that might not be appropriate, i.e. pornography (Preece, 2000, pp. 24 – 25).
Considering all these points, I believe that I managed to cover a lot of positions and standpoints. Online communities have a lot of positive aspects but a lot of negative ones as well. The fact is however, that this paper covered a lot of arguments, as needed in order to get a sense of perspective on the issues and questions that surround online communities. Also, I’ve considered the changes brought about by processes such as detraditionalization, globalization, etc. (Bell, 2001, 92).
To conclude, this paper has outlined some key arguments about online communities. Some people argue that cyberspace is the solution to the problem of community and that it provides a new way of communication, while others suggest that cyberspace is in fact making it worse, by encouraging more withdrawal from real life. Cyberspace is seen by many critics as challenging accepted notions of community. From some perspectives, real life communities disappear, and virtual communities can bring people back into meaningful social relations with one another. Other critics argue, however, that over-reliance on virtual communities leads to a withdrawal from real life, making worse the decline of real world sociality. In between these two extremes comes the argument that cyberspace sustains traditional face-to-face social life, but neither replaces nor destroys it (Bell, 2001, 97 – 108).
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