'The open-source programming world has a lot to teach democracy, says Clay Shirky. In this fascinating talk from TEDGlobal 2012,
Shirky harkens back to the early days of the printing press. At the
time, a group of “natural philosophers” (who would later adopt the term
“scientists”) called the Invisible College realized that the press could
offer a new way to share and debate their work. However, because
printing books would be far too slow for this purpose, they came up with
a new invention — the scientific journal. So what does this mean for us today?' Shirky explains, “If I had to pick a group that I think is our
Invisible College — our generation’s collection of people trying to take
new tools and press them into the service of, not more arguments, but
better arguments — I’d pick the open-source programmers.” Read the rest..
The word community is defined as a group of people living in the same
place or having a particular characteristic in common. Can people that
use Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) be considered as living,
working and existing in the same space but not in the same place? As
such is it justifiable to consider them a community? Social media users
and ‘Digital Natives’ are considered to be the largest constituency in
the 2012 American Presidential race. Given the difference in
demographics and the varying locations of this constituency to each of
its participants, is it fair to consider them a constituency? In
‘Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and the Internet’
we are given reasons for and against considering digital natives
belonging to certain groups to be a community. The reasons given against
are “Computer networks isolate us from one another, rather than bring
us together…. Computers teach us to withdraw, to retreat into the warm
comfort of their false reality … only the illusion of community can be
created in cyberspace.”1 To the contrary according www.intergov.org
“The Internet has opened a whole new frontier that has brought every
person in the world together in one place. The internet is a world
within itself; it is a virtual community of hundreds of millions of
citizens from every corner of the planet. No longer do personal
differences separate the seven billion citizens of the Worlds 244
nations; we are now one people united together.”2 In relation to the
impact on communities, of CMC technologies, the positions held on both
sides of the debate have strong arguments that tend to fall into
language that can exaggerate the argument. The position against hold the
view that CMC technologies “like the internet are to blame for the loss
of real, offline communities and so-called online communities are not
proper communities anyway.”3 While the view held on the opposing side
stating that “New communication technologies, and especially the
internet, make possible exciting, new communities and help reinvigorate
or enhance existing offline communities.”4 Further to these two
statements what a community is and the evolving nature of what we
consider a community to be will be explored in the subsequent
paragraphs. The internet as described by Howard Rheingold is an
“ecosystem of subcultures”5. This is derived from the process and
experience of sharing “with unseen others”6 by the participants which
cultivates a sense and feeling of belonging. According to Patricia
Wallace who elaborates on the ‘Global Village’ metaphor but frames it in
the context of “the Internet is not really like that most of the time
with respect to human interaction it is more like a huge collection of
distinct neighbourhoods where people with common interests can share
information, work together…”7 Sociological studies and endeavours
despite exploration in the areas of community and feelings of group
belonging has done so without reaching consensus on what a community is.
Internet facilitated communication has created platforms that enable
people to communicate both individually and in groups in a semi public
sphere. This has encouraged the sharing of creative works, information,
media, news, video and games. As such this has led to the study CMC to
inhabit the area in which sociology and communication studies converge.
Given the position held by traditional communities in society it would
be naive to think that online communities could hold the same weight of
respect in a societies psyche. Most people when faced with the question
of what is a community would think of the archetypical community
structure. With digital natives however this is evolving given the
sharing between groups and the feelings of belonging experienced by
these groups. That said there have been a number of criticisms that have
faced the development of online communities that include “the lack of
commitment between members, the lack of moral cohesion, the lack of
global access”8 . Nancy Baym in her studies on online communities
exposes the fact that there has been no comparative studies undertaken
to explore the effect online communities has had on the traditional
communities and sees problems with the idea that they have. She says “it
is fundamentally reductionist to conceptualize all ‘Virtual
Communities’ as a single phenomenon and hence to asses them with a
single judgement [there are] countless thousands of offline groups that
vary tremendously. Some groups are surely bad for offline life but there
is no reason to believe that most are”. Offline archetypical
communities are based on proximity, this is how people meet and
interact. As such they would have a diversified range of interests,
principals, belief systems, ideology’s in many areas such as sport,
politics, religion, art and culture. Howard Rheingold said in 1993
that”CMC liberates interpersonal relations from the confines of physical
locality and thus creates opportunity for new genuine communities”. 9
Criticism of online communities and an ability to find community online
is a question largely asked by people who have yet to experience it.
Does CMC create proper community? According to Computer Mediated
Communication: Social Interaction and The Internet “The question whether
or not one can find community online is asked largely by those who do
not experience it. Committed participants in email bulletin boards, chat
lines [and] MUDS… have no problem accepting that communities exist
online and that they belong to them” 10 Online communities have the
opportunity to connect on the basis of shared value systems, shared
beliefs and more specifically common interests. The many examples of
online communities can counter the arguments made that CMC is “unsocial,
cold and task focused.”11 As a result Rheingold states “online
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.”12 Rheingolds
assertion is that people or groups only begin to feel like a community
once the individuals in that group are there and involved long enough to
feel like they are part of that community. According to a hypothesis
put forward my Benedict Anderson “all communities larger than primordial
villages of face to face contact are imagined.”13 These communities are
meaningful and have power influences over people’s lives so because
they may be strictly imagined does not mean they are not real. The
important point that Anderson was trying to make was that community
despite traditionally held beliefs is not about places or numbers it’s
about activities and feelings. The four social processes that Bayn
predicts community emerging through are forms of expression (e.g. our
talking about our communities), identity (our shared sense of group
identity), relationship (our connections and interactions with others in
the community), norms (the rules and conventions we agree to live
together).14 The use of CMC is facilitating the evolution of
communities from the traditional example to ones formed on common
interest and feeling. Just as in traditional communities the evolution
of these CMC mediated communities is based on a foundation of practice
and memory. This can be seen in people that “feel a part of online
communities, they talk about their online friendships networks as
communities and they share a history of interaction together.”15 Digital
natives that belong to online communities come in many forms, creators,
pirates, aggressors, innovators and learners. Wikipedians as an example
have an official and non-negotiable neutral point of view policy.16
They have developed norms of behaviour and standards that need to
adhered to for instance it has a requirement that “articles should be
written without bias, representing all views fairly”17 These types of
norms are much more prevalent in strong communities, they are clear,
known to all members and are followed strictly. The standards can vary
in different communities with differing rules and adherences this helps
with the “dissemination of information and the quality of that
information”18 In a similar community fashion Facebook users found them
using Facebook’s own facilities when the newsfeed was introduced. It was
an introduction that inspired a revolt. Within hours of the newsfeeds
launch and due to privacy concerns, hundreds of thousands of users had
mobilized into a group. This mobilization caused Facebook executives to
acknowledge these concerns and acknowledgement from Mark Zukerberg, the
founder of Facebook that “we really messed up on this one.”19 Groups
and communities that have come about due to CMC are still at a young
evolutionary stage. It will be fascinating to see how they evolve into
the future, with the dismantling of the digital divide as CMC becomes
available to a wider pool of people. As more people get online and more
communities are created we will see how these communities interact and
grow with communities that are created due to proximity. The traditional
communities may not be as under threat as traditionalist might think.
Online communities may begin to synergise with their offline
counterparts, promoting the breaking down of traditional barriers that
keep communities offline segregated. They may help inter community
co-operation and sharing of information offline like they do online.
Traditional communities will always be around as will online
communities. It will be interesting to see how they evolve in tandem and
if hybrids will begin to emerge from their interaction and add a whole
new dimension to what people view as a community. The key factor here is
that the participants feeling of involvement and belonging in relation
to online communities legitimizes there existence. They exist because
participants feel part of them and as such will continue to do so.
References 1, 2, 3, 4 Lengel,
Thurlow, Tomic, A.T., C.T., L.L. 2004. Computer Mediated Communication:
Social Interaction and The Internet. 1st ed. London: Sage Publications
Ltd. P107, 108. 5, 6 Crystal, D.C, 2006. Language and the Internet. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P63. 7 Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, Kelly, M.L, J.D, S.G, I.G,
K.K., 2006. New Media: A Critical Introduction. 1st ed. New York:
Routledge. P175 8, 9 Lengel, Thurlow, Tomic, A.T., C.T., L.L. 2004. Computer
Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and The Internet. 1st ed.
London: Sage Publications Ltd. P109, P112. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Lengel, Thurlow, Tomic, A.T., C.T., L.L.
2004. Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and The
Internet. 1st ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd. P111, 112. 16,17,18,19 Palfrey, Gasser, J.P, U.G, 2008. New Media: A Critical Introduction. 1st ed. New York: Basic Books. P174
