How many of you are Linkedin to Myspace or spending time on Facebook? Well if you are then welcome to the world of virtual communities.
Approximately three to four years ago, I was looking for a friend I had lost touch with Donovan. He was in a band, so I “Googled” him and the band name, Wayside. After finding the bands homepage, I discovered the band had gone by the wayside. I went back to the Google search page and noticed my friend had a MySpace page. Eureka, I found him! However, the only way to connect was via computer mediated communication (CMC) and for me to become part of his virtual community. I joined MySpace, set up my profile, uploaded a picture, and my space on MySpace was ready to go! It was very exciting to be reunited with my friend and technology made this happen! We were able to reconnect, exchange numbers and organized a face-to-face (ftf) reunion.
As pleased as I was that MySpace allowed me to revive a long lost friendship, do I believe, based on my education about community, that it is possible to make a virtual community? No. Yes? Well, maybe.
“Remember also that the dichotomy between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ often implies that anything ‘virtual’ isn’t real” (Thurlow, Lengel, Tomic, 2004, p.70).
People have different opinions about what “community” means to them. Further community structures and the needs of people in the community change over time (Thurlow et al., 2004).
We must first examine and understand the definitions of community and virtual community to attempt to prove validity of creating a successful online society.
What is a Community?
I found two standard definitions on dictionary.com:
1. “Social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.”
What is a Community?
I found two standard definitions on dictionary.com:
1. “Social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.”
2. “a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually prec. by the): the business community; the community of scholars.”
In fact, the term community is often used as a rhetorical tool for creating a sense of comfort or establishing a sense of togetherness (Thurlow et al., 2004).
What is a Virtual Community?
It makes sense that when searching to define virtual communities that in this day in age, I would find as many opinions and explanations as I’d find with the term community. The following are two I found to be useful:
1. “Virtual communities are 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 in cyberspace” (Weinreich, 1997).
2. “Online or virtual community is the gathering of people, in an online "space" where they come, communicate, connect, and get to know each other better over time. From that point on, the rest is up to you. Your community will be what you and your members make of it” (Boetcher, Duggan, White, 2002).
Why Build a Virtual Community?
For many, including me, creating and maintaining a community is an essential part of life, work, hobbies, and such. “The structural process that is associated with community is communication. Without communication there can be no action to organize social relations” (Fernback & Thompson, 1995).
By building virtual communities, it allows people to complement and supplement their non-virtual communities. For example, going back to my search for Donovan, joining MySpace allowed me to reconnect with a friend who was formerly part of my real-life community. We had lost touch – without the virtual world I may not have been able to re-connect with him. In addition, after a year on MySpace I only had four friends. I re-adapted my virtual world towards my job (at my bosses request). I was able to create a synergy between two communities (non-virtual and virtual) to keep the communication alive and strong so our customers can feel connected to the company and to me, making it a somewhat “more personal” experience. It is important to mention that 99% of my “friends” on MySpace have communicated via ftf with me at one time or another.
Interestingly enough, there are other reasons people manufacture virtual communities. (See Video_Virtual Communities) “Some people use virtual communities as a form of psychotherapy. Others, such as the most addicted players of Minitel in France or Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) on the international networks, spend eighty hours a week or more pretending they are someone else, living a life that does not exist outside a computer” (Weinreich, 1997).
Conclusion
In the “real” world every type of community has its strengths and weakness, good and bad. This can also be said for the world of virtual communities. Those who attempt to construct a virtual community in hopes of creating a utopian society may encounter problems. For even in the virtual world one must find a sense of reality.
References
Boetcher, S., Duggan, H., White, N. (2002). What is a Virtual Community and why would you ever need One?? Full Circle.com. Retreived September 26, 2008, from http://www.fullcirc.com/community/communitywhatwhy.htm
Conclusion
In the “real” world every type of community has its strengths and weakness, good and bad. This can also be said for the world of virtual communities. Those who attempt to construct a virtual community in hopes of creating a utopian society may encounter problems. For even in the virtual world one must find a sense of reality.
References
Boetcher, S., Duggan, H., White, N. (2002). What is a Virtual Community and why would you ever need One?? Full Circle.com. Retreived September 26, 2008, from http://www.fullcirc.com/community/communitywhatwhy.htm
Community. (n.d.). Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/community
Fernback, J., Thompson B. (1995). Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? Retrieved September 27, 2008 from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html
Thurlow, C., Lengel, L., & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer Mediated Communication: Social interaction and the Internet. London: SAGE.
Weinreich, F. (1997) Establishing a Point of View Toward Virtual Communities. CMC Magazine online. Retrieved, September 26, 2008 http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/feb/weinsen.html
Additional Sites Visited:
Video Clips Viewed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31wwbYwvAbQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B37wW9CGWyY&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jk-NlgWdAE&feature=related
