Internet Communities and Social Networks - Part One

Katz, J. E., Rice, R. E., Acord, S., Dasgupta, K., & David, K. (2004). Personal Mediated Communication and the Concept of Community in Theory and Practice. In P. Kalbfleisch (Ed.), Communication and Community: Communication Yearbook 28 (pp. 315-371). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1999). Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities. In P. Kollock, & M. Smith (Eds.), Communities and Cyberspace. New York: Routledge.

Observation #1

The readings so far seem to be focused on the argument over the definition of what a community is.  That is to say, they're against the view that a community based exclusively online cannot be a 'real' community. While I agree with their stand, I see the argument as fruitless; those who have the non-real view are unlikely to revise it, and these articles feel like a big defensive justification.

The only part of the original community meaning that I can see doesn't apply to an online community is the physicality.  I'm not necessarily sure that was part of the original definition, but it possibly been implied.  So, I went to the Oxford Dictionary.  While some of the entries referred to the physical location of a group of people (communal living, living in one place), many didn't.  Others include: 'viewing things collectively', 'generality of people as a group' (used as early as 1395), 'a body of people having common or equal rights or rank', 'a body of people leading a communal life according to a religious rule' (society or body), cluster, 'nationality, race, religion, sexuality,...", "share the same interests, pursuits, or occupation..."

So, prior the internet the term used by the masses could really only be applied to those in a particular location because physically it was difficult to form a community otherwise.

"community, n.". OED Online. December 2012. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/view/Entry/37337?redirectedFrom=community& (accessed March 10, 2013) 


 Observation #2 

Sort of related to the above, the foundation or parameters of a community can change from group to group.


So, I've decided I don't like the term 'virtual community'.   There is nothing 'virtual' about it; it is a community of some sort.  

2.2 Community and Identity

Shafi states that communities: a. have a common interest or b. are a segment of society.  Is (b) not the same as (a)?  The common interest is the segment or location.  'Virtual' brings down the geographical limitations to the community.  The opportunity to collaborate or communicate with others is increased.  While their are some limitations the internet has made the ability to stay in touch much more feasible - cost and time.

Also, the degree to which people participate can vary.  Some may lurk, not really saying much but observing others, without any pressure to participate unless they choose to.  Others may be active to various extremes via discussion and other participatory activities (games, wikis).  In real communities to participate you generally must physically attend, but it's a little trickier to stay in the background and you have no choice but to be seen.

Where a community might have been based around geographical limitations, a community online uses geographic identity to create a community.  That is, where someone is from a particular place, they might seek out others from that same place but don't live there either, online.  Facebook has plenty of these in their school groups.  Past students join a common group based on where they went to school.  Within those they seek out people who were 'located' in their year or knew people who were.

In the Slater article he mentions the virtual and I suspect that the virtual is usually associated with the internet.  However, in relation to spatiality pre-internet meeting via phone could be considered a virtual.

Identity
In online communities using a real name may not mean much other than a way of letting people know it's you. Usernames can be more creative and can change from community to community; they may also reflect more about the person - humour, personality.  Nicknames in the realworld are usually picked by friends, whereas user names (is this the online nickname) are picked by the user themselves.  

Key terms:

CMC - computer-mediated communities (Shafi, 2005)

Online: ecosystem of subcultures (Rheingold, 1993, cited in Slater, 2002)

Shafi, Can a Virtual Community be any different from the experience of a Real Community?  Incoherent Thoughts, December 13, 2005. http://shafisaid.wordpress.com/2005/12/13/can-a-virtual-community-be-any-different-from-the-experience-of-a-real-community/

Don Slater. (2002). Social Relationships and Identity Online and Offline. In Leah A. Lievrouw, Sonia M. Livingstone & Sonia M. Livingstone (Eds.), Handbook of New Media (pp. 533-546).

[insert politian's name here] is my Facebook friend, Week 4, 1.6

Kinds of involvement that two political websites encourage (from nominated list)

While Coombs (2009) states that direct communication with politicians has never been easier, this is not evident in the websites for the leaders of the two major Australian political parties

There is very little opportunity for participation on the Prime Minister's (Prime Minister of Australia) website and encouraging involvement appears to be limited to signing up to a newsletter via email, contacting the Prime Minister via the contact page or visiting her external sites on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube.  Were you to use the contact page to send a message, if it was greater than 10,000 characters - about 1,500 words - the communication would need to be sent via regular post.  When accessing the Facebook button a popup window appeared stating that you were leaving the PM's site and they had 'no control over or responsibility for external sites'; not accurate as while they do not control the websites they do have some control over content and comments on Facebook, Flickr and Youtube with permissions and editing rights.

The Facebook page had much greater opportunity to contribute, but only by commenting on the PM's posts, and contributors who were opposed to her or the ALP did not appear to be deleted.  The PM seemed to use this as a less formal news feed and there was an image of a social media flyer (Social Media Guide, 2011) for the ALP national conference held in December.  This flyer contained details of how people could follow what was happening and communicate with the ALP during the conference, particularly via a dedicated Facebook page and specific Twitter hash tags.  Following another link took the visitor to the ALP website and a section dedicated to encouraging people to 'Get Involved' .  This provided specific ways and tools for people to share and discuss ideas and opinions

The Opposition Leader's (Abbott) website content and opportuntity for participation was almost identical to the Prime Minister's with the addition of a link to 'Tell us what you think', a community survey for the Opposition Leader's electorate only.  The links to the same social networking sites were also prominent and  the same path to Facebook ended up the Opposition Leader's page.  A link to the Liberal Party's website needed to be specifically sought rather than directed there from other information and that site (Liberal Party of Australia) was similar to the ALP's and had a tab to 'Get Involved'.  The layout of this page was simple and an easy way into participating with the Opposition on matters that interest the visitor.

Both Parties' websites' participation pages provided a diverse range of areas or ways for those wanting to participate.

Coombs, A. (2009).  How cyber-activism changed the world.  Retrieved from http://griffithreview.com/edition-24-participation-society/how-cyber-activism-changed-the-world/all-pages

Get Involved.  Australian Labor Party.  Retrieved from http://www.alp.org.au/get-involved/

Prime Minister of Australia, Retrieved from http://www.pm.gov.au/

Social Media Guide [Image]. Australian Labor Party. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150471412757328&set=a.10150173759707328.302398.161674172327&type=1&theater10 Ways to Get Involved with the Liberals, Liberal Party of Australia, Retrieved from http://www.liberal.org.au/Get-Involved.aspx

Tony Abbott, Retrieved from http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/

Faith and Spirituality Online, Week 4, 1.5

How has the internet been used to resist or counteract religious persecution and human rights abuse?

In my searches for sites around religious persecutions a good number of sites returned focussed on China.  And it seems like religions, or in China's and Russia's cases, state atheism - where the religion governs the country, would be threatened by the internet.  Those authorities can control the internet to some extent but savvy users (and bold given the penalties) can risk working around the firewalls.When religious beliefs are made public they can be questioned.  China's sensorship of the internet made headlines (Bennett, 2011) earlier this year when Google took the country on, but there are harsh penalties for anyone who breaches the government's internet laws.  Therefore, those wanting to speak out about persecution or abuse would generally do so from outside their country.  If they choose to use their own name it is knowing that they are unlikely to ever be able to return.  The persecuted, those who are close to them or those who oppose human rights abuse such can create websites such as the Falun Dafa Information Centre (2008), which provides background information for those unfamiliar with Falun Dafa and their persecution.  This particular website states it is the 'official source' of Falun Dafa information and while it is managed out of the US it does contain reports from inside China.

Scientology has a reasonably high profile due to its celebrity membership: John Travolta and Tom Cruise in the US, Kate Ceberano in Australia.  Its website is very well organised and is non-confrontational with plenty of reasoned statements about the foundation of its belief system. There is another side to this church as shown via websites, such as Ex Scientologist and it's message board Ex Scientology Message Board.  These sites provide resources and an opportunity for ex-Scientology members or those in that church and questioning it to share their stories, provide resources and create a supportive community for others who might have experienced abuse or intimidation by that church.  The two points of view can coexist in the one place.  

Bennett, I. (2011). Media Censorship in China. Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/china/media-censorship-china/p11515
Ex Scientologist.  http://www.exscn.net/ 

Ex Scientologists Message Board.  http://www.forum.exscn.net/forum.php?s=2ea5591c6cff68078e34a4b6bfcf691f

Falun Dafa Information Centre.  (2008). http://www.faluninfo.net/

Health: what my doctor didn't tell me, Week 3, 1.4

First thing I noted was Mike's (lecturer) notes about medical advice needs to be based on trust and identity:  not unlike the previous topic of online romance and sexuality.


When I was seeing a specialist recently I joked that self-diagnosis via Google (Eysenbach, 2008) was probably his worst nightmare.  He wasn't so dismissive, saying he 'Googles' frequently.  But, for me, the difference between a non-medical practitioner and a practitioner hopping online to research medical conditions is that the medical practitioner has a little more understanding about what they're reading than the non-medical person.  Having said that, the searching could be influenced by their own bias - and Google's filter bubbles (Pariser, 2011).

In searching for information regarding Atrial Fibrilation (AF) google predicts what I might want to type and suggested four search terms: treatment, causes, emedicine and ecg.  I chose causes and was faced with pages of links.  How do I assess quickly which are credible?  Ordinarily I might limit the results to Australian pages, but, in this case I won't because of the opportunity for global knowledge.  I scanned for sites or names I recognised and ended up linking to It's My Health because it was an Australian link.  I was expecting it to be a little tacky, but, it was very clean, clear and easy to navigate.  It also gave the name of the writer, who was a GP in Australia, so I felt a certain level of comfort.  I also expected the information to be very wordy; it wasn't and all the information was explained very simply in a paragraph or two and dot-points.  This site linked to AF section on The Australian Heart Foundation website, which had the same information but linked to an AF information sheet (pdf).  This contained a lot more detail and was around eight pages.  It was easy to read but would've been better with links to heading or an index of some sort.  The It's My Health site had several ways of finding what you were looking for: by name of condition, symptoms or body part.  While there I did a search on another medical condition that had no information on the site.

The next site I went to from my search results was the Mayo Clinic - AF. This site had a similar depth of information to the others but included diagrams.  Because there was no personal information on the page it took me to, ie. a doctor's name, I scanned the page for information about the clinic.  I found a link to a Mayo Clinic Health Manager tool where there was 'About' link.  It's a site which manages a family's medical matters, not unlike the centralised data described in Eysenbach's reading.  From what I can tell it seems to be a US based site.  The legal information refers to Microsoft Corporation and a little further reading reveals that you must have a Microsoft Health Vault account as well to use the service.  I'm not sure I'm comfortable revealing information this personal to Microsoft.  I got more interested in looking around the Mayo Clinic's site - you can look for a doctor or make an appointment.  I can imagine that this could work for some people who may put off calling to make a time and would rather fill in the fields in the online form, hit send and wait for a call.  When digging around the education section I discovered there is a Mayo Clinic College where you can get a degree in medicine.  This site seems to be a coming together of many parts of medicine and provides a community where anyone can find information relevant to their purpose, as a patient, professional, researcher or student.  The clinic seems to have established a very intricate online presence and the visitor should be able to navigate their way around the site fairly easily.

All the information about AF matched fairly closely with what I already knew about the condition.  In fact, when hearing or taking in this information for the first time there is so much that plenty is not remembered.  It was useful to go back.


The Australian Heart Foundation, Artrial Fibrilation, http://www.heartfoundation.org.au/your-heart/cardiovascular-conditions/pages/atrial-fibrillation.aspx
Gunther Eysenbach. (2008, August 25). Medicine 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 10(3).
It's My Health, Artrial Fibrilation,  http://www.itsmyhealth.com.au/conditions/heart/atrial-fibrillation
Microsoft Health Vault, http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/healthvault/default.aspx
Pariser, E. (2011).  Beware online "filter bubbles". http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

Dating, Intimacy and Sexuality Week 3, 1.3

How far does a partner need to go online before it's considered cheating?  Is flirting acceptable? Is cybersex real?

These questions highlight that activity on the internet is similar to any other activity away from the internet.  When we do anything we bring to it our own set of ideals and values, and they may well be different to others.

Some of the student discussion around this agreed that it depends on the people involved and the boundaries set.  The word 'guilt' popped up, but, cheating doesn't depend on someone feeling guilty; their nature may mean they feel no guilt at all about behaving in that way.  However, if the user feels the need to be secretive or deceptive about their activity it's likely that would be considered cheating.  The hurt can be as intense online as offline. 

Flirting on the other hand is a little greyer: what one person considers flirting may not be to the other.  Each person brings their own influences (or agenda) to the way they interpret another's actions; what one person intends to be sarcasm another may perceive it as an insult.  Pascoe (2009) mentions that the teens researched are very careful to make what they're writing 'say' exactly what they mean it to.

When participating in online activity users need to always have in mind that what they say and do may be interpreted by others differently.  If you already know someone offline this may be less of an issue; although, if they have a reputation for being flighty it could be exacerbated online.

I remember some of my first chats online and one of the first questions asked was 'a/s/l?' - for age/sex/location?  I found this quite confronting, particularly because I felt it was almost irrelevant or that the person might change their behaviour based on what I told them.

Pascoe, C.J. (2009). Intimacy in Mizuko, I et. al. Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. Available from http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/book-intimacy

At work no one knows I'm a wizard Week 2, 1.2

"implications of the rise of casual and social games on the internet"

The first thing that I think of is that the ability for games to be played online is an opportunity for people to be more social than less social.  Brooks (2008) states the culture of gaming in Korea being more mainstream or socially acceptable than gaming in the US.  And the state provide a solid infrastructure which supports this activity, with an abundance of high speed cabling made easier by the compact geography and population.  The availability of high speed broadband makes a more diverse group of online gamers accessible anytime.  The accessibility of sofware and hardware to Korea from neighbouring producers must make this easier too.

Business is now using gaming to engage their consumers, using the psychology of rewards (badge system) (Derryberry, 2011; 2008)

Brooks, Geoffrey.  (2008).  Counting Rupees: Korea bangs. http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/08/counting-rupees-korea-bangs/

Derryberry, Anne (2011). Badges?! We don’t need no stinkin’… Oh, wait, maybe we do.

http://imserious.typepad.com/imserious/2011/10/badges-we-dont-need-no-stinkin-oh-wait-maybe-we-do.html

Derryberry, Anne (2008). Serious games: online games for learning. http://www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/pdfs/serious_games_wp.pdf