Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. What is Online Community? 4-6
3. The Origins of Online Communities 7-9
4. The Future of Online Communities 10-12
5. Conclusion 13-14
6.Bibliography 15
1. Introduction
The Internet is a relatively new technology; it is unique in the way that it allows the communication of information on a global scale in an almost instantaneous way. This technology has almost completely transformed the way in which people communicate and has done so at a rapid rate and already appears to surpass the usage of other well established communicative mediums such as radio, television and the written letter.
The widespread use and adoption of the internet technology has given rise to many new phenomena, one of the most notable of these phenomena is that of the Online Community, a term which has been used interchangeably with Virtual Community. It is the aim of this report to investigate and determine the characteristics and impacts of online communities since their first emergence, in order to make a judgement on the potential future of the technology and its current and forecasted impacts on society.
In order to describe and investigate such a community it will be important to clarify the meaning of community and discuss whether any non physical group can really be described as a community of people. Through looking at the change in society since the mass adoption of the internet as a communicative or informational medium (a time which many professionals describe as the information age) we aim to gain an understanding of whether the phenomenon’s popularity is destined to continue to increase exponentially in the future or whether it is a phase which will level out and reduce in popularity with time.
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Summary of the Book Today, the internet is a growing community. Millions of people from all over the world go online everyday to check email, research, shop, or even just interact with someone halfway around the world. As this community grows, so does the number of interactions between people. The Psychology of the Internet examines the psychology of new behavior produced by this novel method of ...
1. What is an Online Community?
The Oxford English Dictionary define ‘the community’ as a group of people ‘considered collectively, especially in the context of social values and responsibilities’ (University Press, 2010) therefore using the phrase “The Online Community” implies users of the internet as a whole, this is not the type of community which we aim to discuss, this can be taken in the same way as “The Student Community” is, there are no geographical ties and particular common interests apart from “being a student” or “being online”, these are terms used to describe a demographic of people, but do not imply a relationship.
Oxford defines a community (or communities) as a ‘group of people who live in the same place or have a particular characteristic in common’ (University Press, 2010).
It is questionable whether the communication between the users of social networks is something that is inherent to the community that they already inhabit. From personal experience, the most part of social network interactions are that between people who already know each other in a “real life” scenario but does this qualify? If interaction between people who are friends but not in a close geographical does not strictly qualify as a community, is the relationship of “friends” enough to warrant the term “common interest”? People on these networks link themselves with others who they are not interested in at all. Perhaps this means that social networks as a whole are not the communities but communications between users within these networks are the real dictation of an Online Community?
In the article by Jonathan Lazar and Jenny Preece entitled “Classification Schema for Online Communities” the statement is made that there are four classification schema and that each of ‘these classification schema have important implications for the design and management of online communities’ where these classifications are broad they help to identify types of Online Communities and are as follows:
The Essay on Natural Disasters Community Disaster People
Throughout earth, the life of an average person can change because of one day's events. Communities that had been established over numerous decades, can become a pile of rubble in a matter of hours and even minutes. The effect of a natural disaster can change a community forever. A natural disaster is anything that causes harm or damage from nature. Natural disasters can strike any part of the ...
• By Attribute
• By Supporting Software
• By relationship to Physical Communities
• By Boundedness
(Lazar et al, 1998)
There are various communities who have centralised their location to an online medium, using these definitions it would be very hard to dispute the fact that these are indeed communities, for example consider this scenario:
A sports club which is based within an inner city area has a lot of members who come from surrounding areas. Formally the club advertised in shop windows, gyms and by word of mouth however there was a lot of work to manage, therefore a website was developed. This website gave the ability to leave messages, chat with other logged in members and read up about up and coming events (much like any online forum).
By the definition, a sports club attended by people in a defined geographical area is a perfect candidate for being a community, there is both a common interest, sport and a geographical location. By this community migrating its information from paper based handouts to an online format, does this take anything away from the community or merely strengthen it? If the viewpoint is taken that in this case, the community is strengthened, then it should be easy to assume that in the future online communities will continue to gain strength and ultimately be indistinguishable from any other community, however this is not the case.
Other types of online communities being communities in their own rights are more arguable, consider this example:
Joe Bloggs develops website which allows anonymous chat with others, upon loading the page there is a textbox which requests the user input a name to be used for this chat session, through advertising on the Google search engine Joe’s website gets very popular and on a daily basis the same usernames appear in the chat session, there is never a particular topic of discussion and nothing is considered out of scope of the conversation (like many other web based chat sites).
Except for the anonymity of the scenario of Joe’s website there is little difference in technology between this and the website described in the sports club scenario however it seems far less plausible that this collection of anonymous users with no predefined interest are a credible community. Is this because Joe’s users are anonymous? That the sports club scenario involves physical user interaction? Or that the topic of discussion/common interest in Joe’s website is often random and is undefined?
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A virtual community is a network of people who interact through various forms of media, and allow users to obtain support, advice, friendship and sometimes merely just interaction with others. In a world where the internet is becoming ever more important, and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are now a part of many people’s every day lives, there is a strong sense that ...
There are examples of communities online which have no physical interaction but are hard to dispute in relation to the dictionary definition. Interest forums online are a good example of a form of online community which is hard to dispute, as a member of a programming help forum I can say there is a definite common interest between users, people are sharing their knowledge on a particular subject matter and in general speak solely about this matter, users often get to know each other and may eventually converse about the subject in a more social manner. Although there is a lack of location there is a common interest between users on a forum of this nature, this shouts out for nothing short of the definition “Online Community”
Through looking at different examples of online media that are commonly considered to be “Online Communities” I have come to the conclusion that to define a community online it is important to remove the online aspect and decide whether there is a community. The most important factors appear to be whether there is a predefined relationship between users at time of initial communication and whether users are identifiable. The sports club had a common interest and members were physically interactive and the members of an interest forum all had the common interest of programming.
The web based chat (which may or may not be seen as a community) has no specific intent and due to the anonymity there is nothing to guarantee communication with a specific person, this therefore results in a poor sense of community. The most justified online community through comparison with dictionary definition appears to be the interest forum. Does this mean that there is place for development in the future and that this type of community will grow whilst others cease to exist?
The Essay on A virtual community and a social networking web site
QUESTION 1. Write a paragraph to explain and distinguish between a virtual community and a social networking web site. In Social networks everyone has their own social network (whether online or offline). Everyone has friends, families, and people they are acquainted with. An online social networking site simply makes our social networks visible to others who are not in our immediate network. So ...
2. The Origins of Online Communities
The first incarnation of the Online Community, as a form of collaborative communication technology was the Bulletin Board (BB), it is still in existence today and was initially conceived in the early 1980s and is designed on the metaphor of a bulletin board people post messages onto. For the most part BBs are designed in a threaded manner which means that messages on the same topic are ordered hierarchically with the first message at the top and other messages below this one. (Preece et al, 2003)
The first realisation and benchmark study of the potential of Online Community came in the form of “The Virtual Community : Homesteading on the electronic frontier” written by Howard Rheingold in 1993, around the time where real time chat was first established through in form of MUDs(Multi User Dungeon) and Talkers.
Rheingold opens his book talking about his own feelings on and experiences of online community ‘The idea of a community accessible only via my computer screen sounded cold to me at first’ and goes on to state ‘I care about these people, I met through my computer, and I care deeply about the future of the medium that enables us to assemble’ (Rheingold, 1993).
Rheingold is clearly a strong believer in the power of Online Community, this can be seen by the way he speaks and the comment he makes however he does still acknowledge that there is ‘no such thing as a single, monolithic, online subculture; it’s more like an ecosystem of subcultures, some frivolous, others serious.’ Which is something which is still true today, there are discussion groups for technical issues which are very important to some users and also services provided which allow people to talk about things which are of a far more social nature.
One of the main differences between an online community and a community who interact on a physical level is the ability to be anonymous, perhaps this is down to the incarnation of one of the most widely used early online, the MUD. MUDs (or Multi User Dungeons) were the first popular type of online community, first developed 1979-1980 at Essex University these were primitive but became popular quickly with the connection to JANET (the Joint Academic Network).
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The investigation of the reasons by which volunteers involve themselves on specific organizations, and actually stay for a long period of time, or leave groups which they became a part of is the theme of this article. The researcher wanted to provide an explanation that will cover the queries on volunteerism including its effects on the lives of the volunteers, importance in our current society, ...
These were typically role play games following the rules of the board game Dungeons and Dragons but were of a text based nature and consisted of simple commands to play and communicate. MUDs strongly facilitated the anonymous nature of the user. Rheingold states ‘Identity is the first thing you create in a MUD, you have to decide the name of your alternate identity… And you have to describe who your identity is for the benefit of other people inhabiting the same MUD… ’ (1993)
MUDs were the first chat technology to allow users to “emote” behaviour, this gave a stronger ability for users to put into context something that words along may not convey, for example, typing the command “emote has lots of work to do”, “say anybody else want to do it for me?” would appear to other Users as:
UserAndreas has lots of work to do
UserAndreas asks ‘anybody else want to do it for me?’
As Rheingold says this gives an ‘odd but useful kind of disembodied body language’, perhaps this was the reason for the initial popularity of the technology.
It is noted by Rheingold that even in this very early implementation of an Online Community the anonymous nature of the technology gave rise to a lot of deviant behaviour, often including lying about gender he states that what he calls ‘Net. Sleazing’, the practice of aggressively soliciting mutual narrative stimulation is ‘an unsavoury but perennially popular behaviour in MUD culture’ (Rheingold, 1993)
MUDs were intended as a form of game however later on in 1990 after the MUD had established itself certain developers (notably a developer named Ew-too) stripped the game element away and left the social interactions and released this modified MUD under the new name of “Talker”. As the name implies a Talker is designed for one thing alone: talking, the technology of such that it was not unique, however the uniqueness of the rise of the Talker was that it they were solely developed with the purpose of creating an Online Community, a significant step and possibly one of the most important in terms of Online Community for this type of technology.
The social implications of this (as Rheingold’s opinion) are that it can lead to deviant behaviour and addiction resulting in users being online for up to and above 80 hours a week, longer than most people work. Users such as these can often find themselves sacrificing their social life (in reality), their job and their education. A characteristic which few other communities show, these types of sacrifices are implicit with substance addiction and obsessive compulsive disorders. Up until this point this social phenomenon had not been realised. It is an important question whether Online Communities are responsible for this, or could a physically interactive community produce these types of obsession and deviance for its members?
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Five years after Rheingold conducted his initial exploration of the nature of Online Communities there was a study called “Homenet” which was conducted by Kraut (1998), this study was directly related to the implications of the internet upon society and was conducted upon 93 households in Pittsburgh, USA. Each of which had no previous internet experience, the participants were interviewed previous to the study and then interviewed again 24 months later after having been exposed to the internet for a significant length of time. From this study the Kraut found significant correlations between internet use and a decline in ‘the amount of time spent with family, the participants’ local social networks and psychological well being’(Castells, 2004).
The biggest concerns in the findings by Kraut (1998) and other researchers such as Nie and Erbring (2000) were that the computer-mediated communication for which existing social networks were maintained are completely ignored, meaning the study may give the impression of that “if a participant speaks with an existing social group through the internet, it means that in turn their social interaction has reduced”. This may not be the case at all, if these social groups carry on communicating online there will naturally be less need to communicate in a physical way.
The use of one of the most noted modern implementations of an online community is Facebook. Facebook functions by allowing members to network and communicate with other members, the addition of articles and media to which your networked members get updated and the ability to leave messages on what is essentially a modern implementation of a Bulletin Board System (BBS).
Using and being part of the Facebook community has almost become a way of life for some people. Facebook currently boast more than 250 million active users who log in on a daily basis, on average the users of Facebook have 150 connections to other people who each publish around 90 messages, comments or articles to in the space of a month (and these figures do not including instant messaging).
I am a user of Facebook therefore analysing my own behaviours may at flaw, after all I am part of these usage statistics, however it seems important to note that I have many more than 100 connections or “friends” in my life (outside of the Facebook Community) but communicate with between 5 and 10 people a day, or none at all in particular circumstances however using this online social network may post a message to everybody online, link a webpage to a friend or even invite everybody in my Facebook world to a social event.
So do the behaviours of users using a social network/online community really mimic the behaviour of a physical community? Or do they differ in some way? Will online communities in the future ever be as apparent or valuable as other communities, or have they developed as far as they can?
Another scenario is that: The number of other accounts networked with a single account on a social networking website is four hundred and fifty; one of these accounts consists of fifty other people. Can we warrant the term “Online Community” for one account with four hundred and fifty friends whilst this account’s community differs from the other account’s community of fifty? Does the definition allow for this? Or does a “group of people with a particular characteristic in common” imply some form of harmonised collective and collaboration of information rather than a lot of groups which are interlinked by individual members?
It is my personal believe social networks allow the building blocks for communities however other than by looking at which relationships between accounts and mutual ties or links to other users there is no way to quantify how much of this community actually qualifies with the strict definition of “Online Community” this report is taking.
3. The Future of Online Communities
Many researchers into the sociology behind online communities have predicted the future social impacts of Online Communities to be that of a bleak world, suggesting people are destined to be isolated, obsessed and addicted to the impulse and satisfaction of publishing frivolous information for everybody to see. Some of these investigations completely disregarded the type of communication being taken place online and in the real (physical) world or particularly whether these communications replace one another. It is important that a cross-cultural view is taken in analysis of the impacts of this type of communication, something which may be harder said than done.
Benkler takes a different viewpoint, talking about the effects of a networked society he states
‘These practices make their practitioners better “readers” of their own culture and more self-reflective and critical of the culture they occupy, thereby enabling them to become more self-reflective participants in conversations within that culture. This also allows individuals much greater freedom to participate in tugging and pulling at the cultural creations of others’ (Benkler, 2006)
Benkler talks about a heightened individual capacity and this causing many to raise this question of whether the internet further fragments community, he goes further to disregard these previous studies and states:
‘Internet is used largely at the expense of television and that this exchange is a good one from the perspective social ties. We use the internet to keep in touch with family and intimate friends, both geographically proximate and distant. We do this to the extent that we see a shift in social ties; it is because, in addition to strengthening our strong, we are also increasing the range and diversity of weaker connections.’ (Benkler, 2006)
Benkler goes on in his book to talk about the potential for increased democratisation, helping gain a greater understanding of other cultures and even challenges world poverty talking about ‘advance human development through cooperative efforts in both rich countries and poor’ and also about imposing regulation on global human justice and rights, very radical concepts, Benkler seems like a strong advocate of these beliefs.
Hill also takes this viewpoint talking about the apparent risks such as information overload causing non productivity though need for data completeness, people socialising online when they might otherwise be working but he goes on to say
‘Nevertheless, one must not allow the problems that have arisen to hide the immense gains that have accrued from modern systems. The benefits of having of having the sources one uses regularly instantly accessible and up-to-date quite outweigh the disadvantages encountered in the occasional search.’(Hill, 2005)
These opposing opinions presented are the most recent and most valuable, where it is true that there are inherent risks to society the most important factor is massive informational and educational gains that seem apparent, causing people to be liberated from the confines of their own social environment and enabling them to challenge the very foundations of their culture through insight into others, Agger also takes this view stating
‘The virtual self composes himself in daily e-mail, web surfing, chatting, cell phoning, faxing. It is a postmodern self, less stable and centred that the self of previous modernity, when there was a clear boundary or barrier between oneself and the world’
Agger goes on to talk about the internet opening doors to creation, storytelling, online communities, interactive instantety and political organising. (Agger, 2004) With this opportunistic outlook on the internet there are many opportunities, what does this mean for Online Communities?
Due to the defined purpose of online communities in the form of interest groups they are the most prevalent form of community, although social networks have recently taken over in popularity, I see online communities such as these growing at a steady rate, these knowledge bases will become invaluable as they continue to grow, allowing more information readily available for specific communities and the ability to share and direct others to this information. I believe that these types of community will always have a purpose online, and as long as that purpose doesn’t go away these communities will continue to grow steadily.
Chat environments such as MUDs and Talkers were outgrown by most users, a handful of such still in existence (where users have idle times of weeks on end and apparently simply survey the bleak background of a Telnet window).
So this could mean that chat was simply a far too open avenue for community and that people got bored and stopped logging in? This doesn’t seem likely, with the rise of the Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) and particularly IRC chat (a standalone software based chat program) it seems that users simply migrated to a much simpler type of chat community. The user experience didn’t differ much between telnet and IRC, if anything IRC was a much bleaker interface to look at, imposing white backgrounds with black text but incorporating “smileys” and the abilities to click between type of messages to send rather than typing commands.
The “Chat Room” as a standalone has almost completely disappeared, where many websites and services offer the ability to chat in a communal way these are most often serving as a sub-feature to some greater feature from personal experience the last time logging into such a chat room was for an online radio station, allowing conversation between other listeners and station DJs. It seems likely that in the future implementations of the chat room will be seen everywhere, whether people will continue to spend hours a day trawling over a screen full of names and comments remains to be seen however this technology is definatly becoming more ubiquitous to other internet technologies, not just for radio stations and other sites on the web but also quite importantly this technology has made its way into the realm of online gaming. With the early first person shooter genre of online game, games such as Doom, Quake and Unreal incorporated this chat concept, something which had not been done prior to this.
Social networking websites such as Facebook are currently gaining in popularity, it is likely that these networks may follow a similar path to chat rooms, with being devoid of sense of purpose it could mean that people are inclined to move to a new type of social network, one that “looks nicer” for example, it may be for this very reason that such social networking websites redesign their interface on a regular basis, constantly trying to stay fresh and intuitive for users. I think it is also a likely outcome that these types of social networks will indeed become more ubiquitous as the chat room did and this may create more of a social tool than something which is to be obsessed over. Collaborative websites for social networking promote user created content, something which is dynamic and unique and also these actually help strengthen existing social ties and to build more diverse geographically distant ties with others.
4. Conclusion
It appears that it is a common trend for technologies which enable Online Communities to start out as something quite significant and then fade into the background as something ubiquitous, this is demonstrated through the culture of being obsessed with chat room communication and the rise and fall of this type of communication. These type of chat environments where everybody addresses everybody can be seen to be incorporated into online gaming and ubiquitously with other web services.
The Bulletin Board System was an important technology which was also similar to the message board or guest book, at one point these types of system were incorporated into many different websites but have now their use in Interest Communities have been replaced with the more modern concept of the forum. This has not made the BBS completely extinct it is now incorporated in much the same way as chat tools, to serve a specific purpose rather than as a whole website, for example the employment of a typical BBS into social networking websites.
I forecast that whilst social networking sites such as Facebook appear to be growing in numbers exponentially at the present there will be a point where incarnations of this web application technology appear everywhere and the currently popular social networking sites will begin to lose novelty, I believe that where Facebook has a massive user base each user with the vested interest of their own published content this may drive users to stay with it as long as the developers continue to work on the design and layout on a regular basis in order to keep it new and up to date.
I think where social networking sites lose novelty it will allow the more serious communication between members of an online community, allowing these users to carry out more specific social interactions rather than frivolously wasting hours away browsing, at the moment it begs the question whether publishing “Andrew has a belly ache” to hundreds of people is really worthwhile, I forecast that eventually all websites will have a type of social network as a powerful tool for sharing information on a subject matter, maintaining existing social relationships and potentially organisational social networks will become more popular.
When social networks cease to be a novelty it is likely that less time will be spent simply browsing people’s posts and more time will be spent carrying out direct social interactions for the aid of education, work or existing social interaction, it may even lead to the democratising of the world through collaboration of knowledge, resources and power in a way which does not govern people depending on their geographical location but upon their own personal views as individuals.
Whilst Online Communities continue to build a wealth of knowledge there are also vast implications of the impacts on society in the manner of segmenting people and their views from their governments, will this lead to revolution, and is this a good thing? Benkler would say that this is, saying that the wealth of collaborative information and knowledge of the internet is the key to human development, helping us not only intellectually but also understand culture and social phenomenon. Television had a similar effect to this by allowing people a vast amount of information straight to their living room, however this differed in a couple of way, by the activeness of the user, the mediation by governing bodies. Online Communities and the internet have vast potential to effect people in much the same way, causing them to question and challenge the realms of the norm within their society. Whether these effects are large or relatively subtle it is always a human emotion to be uncertain of the unknown however it is my determination that any information is good information, even the negative information(such as hate sites) and things which may be considered explicit content will help to broaden minds and push taboo issues into the public eye.
5. Bibliography
1. Rheingold, H. (1993) The virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier, USA: William Patrick
2. Castells, M. (2004) The Network Society: cross cultural perspective. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing
3. Lazar, J. and Preece, J. (1998) Classification Schema for Online Communities, November 2010 [Online]. AMCIS 1998 Proceedings. Paper 30, http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis1998/30
4. Preece, J., Maloney-Krichmar, D. and Abras, C. (2003) History of Emergence of Online Communities. In B. Wellman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Community.
5. Benkler, Y. (2006) The wealth of networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom, Yale University Press
6. Hill, M W. (2) (2005) The impact of information on society: an examination of its nature, value and usage, Munchen: K.G. Saur
7. Agger, B. (2004) The Virtual Self: A contempory sociology, Cornwall: Blackwell Publishing
8. Harvard Conference (1997) The Internet and Society, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
9. Porter, D. (1996) Internet Culture, New York: Routledge
10. Preece, J. (2000) Online Communities, Sussex: John Wiley and Sons
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Internet Culture & Psychology
2010
The origins and potential futures of Online Communities
ISAD340
Andrew Maston
