WEEK 6 BLOG To preface this blog entry I want to refer to some points made by Wood and Smith in Chapter 6. Wood and Smith discuss Qualities of Virtual Communities and go on to define certain aspects which attracts people to an online community (p. 127). The last factor in what gives people the “sense” of community is “the characteristics of the group and its members”. Further elaboration into the last factor details that the level of participation and “gemeinschaft” one has is not solely based on whether they were engaged with the topic or have the means to communicate about it, but it may be due to how much one “enjoys CMC”, or in my case don’t enjoy it (p. 131). I found that the only CMC I enjoy is with people I already know IRL. Otherwise I have absolutely no interest in communicating with anyone online. I am a very outgoing person and I thrive on face to face interaction, without that everything just seems fake, like trying to get a scent from a plastic rose. None the less I followed the instructions of the assignment. I joined three separate online communities. The first was a Google group called “Minds Eye” which was a message board (BBS) where someone would post a topic and others would respond to it. The topics were wide ranging and included anything from politics, to Shakespeare, to gun control in England. The responses from people were very in depth and well written, which surprised me because most online banter I see is shallow and heavily opinionated. It looked like some of the responses were researched thoroughly and I decided I had little time to spend reading all the responses (they were very long and in depth) to one topic let alone doing my own research just to participate. The next one I tried was a Yahoo group called “Feed Your Head” which was an advice column. I read a couple posts on this and felt like I was back in Junior High. First of all it was very impersonal and had a lot of participants. The topics for discussion were pointless and mind numbing such as “What should I get my boyfriend for Valentines Day?” and other useless information (as Postman has described has proliferated the internet). So I decided not to participate in that BBS either since I couldn’t stomach it. The final BBS group I chose was a local newspaper. It was much more interesting because I got to talk about current events in my community (I felt a little more like a real person talking with real people). I found the BBS to have strict “Netizenship” rules (as described by Wood and Smith p. 134) that included not saying anything that could be considered defamation, prejudiced, unduly biased, or representing yourself as someone else. They had a filtering system where all comments had to be reviewed before being posted which took a considerable amount of time (from several hours up to a day) so the temporal sense of this CMC was a put off (I want instant gratification!). By the time my comments were approved the message thread was “old news” or gone and replaced with another. Any feedback or responses from others was lost forever and it lost any commitment. In today’s society, the sense of community one gets from CMC greatly depends, in my opinion, on the person. Wood and Smith explain how people who are moving farther away from their communities, participating less in civic organizations, and grow more and more detached from their geographic communities, need reach out to online sources to fulfill the sense of “inclusion”. Online communities offers this and in a great verity. The individual may be one such as described in Wood and Smith who does very well in CMC, likes the cues filtered out approach and gets a strong sense of community from these groups. On the other hand, people like me, do not get the same sense of belonging and need face to face interaction, I actually feel more alone for some reason. If I were to participate in online communities I would be in the 62% of people mentioned in Frank Weinreich survey (Wood and Smith p. 138) who would meet other users. I would have to in order to keep up any sense of a meaningful relationship, otherwise any further CMC is just pointless empty banter to me, I need to put a face to the voice.
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February 19, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Greg Harper
Boy Scout National Jamboree- suport services.
The community I joined is brand new, 8 – 10 weeks old and there are only 8 or so members at this time. All of our new, do not each other all though we will meet in August of 2110. It will be interesting to see as time progresses and new members join how they are accepted. It will always be a small tight net group at most 50 members. It will be interesting to see if the community stays togther after the event in 2010.
February 20, 2009 at 8:02 pm
arese
I have to say, I am in full agreement of the preference of actual face-to-face interaction, and really on enjoy online interaction with people who I already know. This was a difficult assignment for me because I too, feel that people are pulling away from their actual physical communities and relying on the internet. I grew up in a community that was very hands on (and very small…) but the thing I respect the most was the way everyone accepted each other for what they were, and what they believed- and formed friendships anyway.
Now, people don’t interact with those around them- instead they go find groups of like-minded people. This, I believe, is one of the key factors in the lack of tolerance in our society.
Excellent reflection