Online Communities Essay

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

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.

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.

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

In the digital era, local and global spaces are inconsequential because of technological tools (de Moragas Spa, Domingo & Lopez, 2002; Howley, 2009). Social interaction is one of the primary terms that help define community (Bell, 1979). Even within digital communities, shared location is one potential identification point for members of a community (Hollander, 2002). The hybrid community is an interesting combination because people tend to engage more online with those with whom they have offline relationships, and hybrid communities do allow bridging within groups and potential bonding within groups in terms of social capital (Ellison et al., 2011). There are similarities between community media and digital community networks (Hollander, 2002). Online community can serve as an alternative to the traditional public sphere; it can be a place for members of a physical community to discuss issues that are important locally (Murillo, 2009). Community journalism online acts in the same way as print outlets, with both providing members of a community with a location where they can share the important elements of life, including births and deaths (Murillo,

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.

The second concept I want to talk about is virtual communities. Virtual communities are social groups whose interactions are mediated through information technologies, particularly the internet. Like modernism, virtual communities are very dependent on technology and the internet. Since science and technology has advanced in the past decade, people don’t need to go to different places to meet different people and can meet others over different social media platforms or even video games. Sometimes, those people met over the internet can become very close friends. For example, I play a lot of video games and I have acquainted myself virtually with many people playing those games. Some of them I even ended up meeting in real life and are still friends with today. Virtual communities have become such a social norm, that soon, people will have friends all over the internet. I think the aspect of virtual communities is good for society, because it allows people to have a greater awareness of other cultures all over the world. With more insight of how other societies and cultures operate, there is a greater chance to expand one's own social

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.

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

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

Anthropologists undergo the practice of participation observation on the internet , allowing them to experience a virtual community; this shapes their understanding and knowledge of this concept. For that reason each individual has different criteria which they believe a community must correlate to, in order for it to be classed as a virtual community. Furthermore, another issue surrounding the ability

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.

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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.