Online Communities Essay

Abstract: Burton Speakman’s research focuses on how community functions in the digital sphere. The study of community grows in importance online as media transitions from being less vertical (mass) to more horizontal (person to person) delivery of information with the expectation of interaction and increased public influence due to social media and sharing technology.

The words community and conversation both have concrete definitions. The definition of community is a group of people that either live together or share a common characteristic. A conversation is an exchange of ideas through spoken words. In the article, titled Technology, Neil Postman states: “how the words 'community' and 'conversation' are now used to mean, simply, people with similar interests, a considerable change from an older meaning...” (53) Postman is implying that these two words have been extended and redefined. The introduction of social media and the Internet have redefined the terms community and conversation.

When a concentrated population of the differing groups a person knows from their life merges in one place, like a social networking site, a sense of confusion is eminent. This is due to the fact that there are varying levels of trust associated to every person. According to Petter Brandtzaeg, a Senior Research Scientist at the research institute SINTEF, “A central issue is whether personal networks in which the size and diversity exceed a certain threshold erode social bonds, thereby engendering distrust and less public content sharing.” (Brandtzaeg et al. 1011) This issue comes down to the privacy within a network of people on a website. As one definition states, “Privacy…is control over knowledge about oneself” (Fried 483). With a large diverse audience, a person does not have control over the knowledge being shared to everyone on the site. Therefore, there is a huge loss of privacy in relation to the faint connection a certain person shares with vague network ‘friends’. This causes a problem as a person will resort to sharing less content for fear of oversharing, or overstepping boundaries, to the lesser known groups of people within their network, which, in turn, initiates distrust because the person has no idea what is considered correct sharing etiquette for all persons in the

An online community is a network of people who come together and communicate online, usually because of a common interest or goal. There are many different types of online communities. Some examples of online communities are: email distribution lists, message boards and newsgroups, instant message (IM) services, chat rooms, blogging sites, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and online classrooms/school groups. I intend to discuss three of these types of online communities – chat rooms, social network sites, and online classrooms/school groups – and look into the pros and cons of using each of these.

On-line communities are a foreign concept to me. I have never joined one, or even been curious to see what they are like. The only experience I have had with them is in middle school when I used to go into chat rooms and talk to other teens. The only conversation involved there was about music and movies. It has been years since I have ventured into anything on-line except for checking my e-mail or downloading music. In order to write about on-line communities, the assignment given to the class I am in, I had to go on-line and explore the culture myself. Since I had no idea what server to use or what sites were popular, the task was a little daunting.

Online communities on Tumblr and elsewhere are leading people into dark places that weren’t there before. People are self-identifying with depression. They are confusing their normal and commonplace emotions and feelings of sadness with this idea that they cannot come out of this dark place in which they are in. Rather than seeking help from loved ones or medical professionals, they go to these online communities to be understood, but to be understood, you must be accepted. This is leading young people, especially females, to cut wrists and perform other instances of self-harm, and take pictures to document their feelings. To further their acceptance, they put quotes like “So it’s okay for you to hurt me, but I can’t hurt myself?” and “I want

It seems as more information has become available, people have felt less need to develop the close bonds of community. Yet, as traditional communities decline in modern life, new types of communities will emerge in their place (Delanty, 2003). This is because community is important in the basis of modern social relationships (Delanty, 2003). The Internet has taken over as the new public sphere, and its role as the public sphere connects with social media’s ability to facilitate discussions and create engagement among users (Dahlberg, 2001; Papacharissi, 2000). Since the 1990s, there has been an increase in the number of virtual communities and other structures that have formed online; some researchers have questioned if the Internet will reinvigorate the democratic process (Bimber, 1998; Johnson & Kaye, 1998). There remains concern about if information online has the same ability to promote activity among the population that print does (Hoffman, 2006). However, it is unknown if these digital tools are the structures needed to help people reconnect with one another. The media have traditionally sought to inform and engage the public, so it is now time to discuss the media’s role in creating

A ‘virtual community’ is a type of imagined community and is a difficult concept to define; the ambiguous nature of this concept is highlighted by the many definitions created by researchers. A Virtual Community is when “Individuals communicate and form a relationship with each other in a computer mediated space with the use of technology".

Online Self-disclosure is risky and someone can lose his or her privacy in split second. People overshare daily life information such as what they eat, where they are and whom they are with. Not only murders can take advantage such information, but burgles too. After watching the creepy man at Take this lollipop, I realized how dangerous is to share information in social media and how it can affect us.

A social group of any numbers, residing in a specific location, often having common historical heritage and cultural. Community is a set of people of common interests, culture and norms. After the new era of Technology, in which Internet, cell phone taken place as the most important thing of once life. Now Community can’t be considered be specific and limited to a small locality. Common interest oriented people share virtual or an online community which do not have any physical or geographical

Although virtual communities and social media primarily exist in the virtual world, they have made an impact on the physical world just as much as the virtual one. The Internet is changing the way people work, relax, interact ... it is changing the way they live their day-to-day lives. More and more people are beginning to replace face-to-face interactions with online interactions due to the easy interaction offered by online platforms. These new found virtual communities are new ways of interaction that have been made possible by the Internet.

Communities can be found everywhere and can be created anywhere. You may be unaware of it, but you are part of a community not only based on your location, but also based on your lifestyle, your religion, your heritage, your education, or your abilities. As Hewitt once said, “Community provides a psychological world and a place of identification for its members.” Identifying yourself with a particular community may be easier than it

After searching through various online communities, I finally found one that looked very interesting and informative to me, fitness.com. I chose an online community in which I would not only gain helpful information and advice, but I could also communicate with people who are interested in the same topic as I am. I knew right away that it was a community rather than just a typical webpage that someone had made. A community has places where people can post messages on a discussion board, a chat room for people to talk instantly to one another, and a place where people can go to anytime of the day to post messages. The site was available for anyone that was interested in fitness or nutrition facts. The online

programs, and calendar pages of the Wharton County Junior College website hold up in terms of

Communities in an online space have changed drastically since the rise of web 2.0. Web 2.0 refers to the current state of the World Wide Web. The previous version Web 1.0 allowed users to only read, material in a linear format online. With the introduction of web 2.0 it gave anyone the tools to read and write information online (Oreilly, 2007). It is the reason why social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit exist. It allows user to communicate on an instant level. Web 2.0 increased the popularity of blogging, forums, i.e. online communities as anyone was able to participate on them (Oreilly, 2007). Web 2.0 has given people all over the world the tools to create and take part in communities based around common interests. Platforms such as reddit have taken advantage of these tools and have given people the ability to invent new forms of communities which are now a staple part of the online experience.