The Nature of Online Communities Essay

First of all, a virtual community becomes a real community by serving people’s needs. Facebook or Instagram is a business place that shop owners can advertise their stores, products, or their working teams. Each owner needs to hire employees, yet he or she cannot afford to pay for a career post. The owner establishes a

This paper helps determine the effectiveness of the current social media for four different car brands. This paper looks at the various social media accounts of the Honda Civic, Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra, and the Nissan Altima. The different forms of social media that will be analyzed in this paper are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Youtube. This paper takes the time to analyze the various posts these companies use to try and advertise their vehicles. Then using what was analyzed from the data collection period, recommendations were made on how to make better use of these social media accounts.

Communities are all about groups of individuals who share something in common. This makes going on the internet seem like an odd way to find more communities, form new ones, or strengthen pre-existing ones. The internet however is full of communities. Communities can be based upon religion, location, ethnicity, an interest, or a personal matter. The internet itself is “a global distributed data communications network” (Kirmayer, Raikhel, & Rahimi, 2013, p. 166). This is what makes the internet so full of communities because communication is the key to putting multiple individuals with commonalities into communication, which is the basis of any community. Online communities differ from communities that exists off the web in a couple of

Relationships and intimacy are important during adulthood, especially during young adulthood. Happiness at this developmental stage often come from relationships that are formed. Even young adults who are not looking to form long-term or lasting relationships typically still focus on connections with others.

After watching the movie The Social Network, the first thing I did was to search for Mark Zuckerberg’s real life experiences to see which parts are facts and which are fictions. As a matter of fact, this Harvard genius that founded the world’s first social network was not as childish as the movie portrayed. At least he didn’t write programming for getting into elite Harvard “Final Clubs” or for retaliating his girlfriend. During Mark’s high school, Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase the music player that he built and also invited him to join them. However, Mark decided to enroll in Harvard for further education. From where I stand, although the movie is fictional, it can easily

50), as community building typically requires face-to-face interactions and physical symbols through which people can associate and find shared experience. Though from the advent of the internet, humans began building online communities to connect with like-minded people across the globe, Krotoski suggests the threads binding these communities together are tenuous in the absence of tangible interactions. This quality makes online communities “difficult to measure and therefore to define objectively” (p. 51) implying that digital interactions within a community provide less substance for other members to adhere. Krotoski suggests this thin state of community provides little in social capital in that online, and people only know us by the information we provide, and not information passively gleaned from physical, non-verbal

Dating websites, chat rooms, and other forms of Internet groups help to link together people near and far without the need for personal interaction. This is a major help to people like myself, who happen to be rather shy and reclusive when it comes to talking to people in person; however, on the Internet, I became a completely different person, opening up and letting my best friends know anything and everything about me. This vast communication ability allows for people like myself to do particularly anything they want, from simply meeting new people, to working with groups like Buddy Project to help people and to help myself (buddy-project.org should be their website if you wish to lend some support). The anonymous factor on the Internet, common within gaming universes, is helpful in the sense that it allows you to say whatever you feel without facing harsh repercussions from others. This, however, can also be seen as a particularly good factor - apps such as Brighten can be used in particular with the anonymous factor, where people post anything anonymously on a person's profile, meant to "Brighten" their day. In full, the Internet can potential be a place of anonymous, brooding hatred, but it can also be a place full of opportunities for

Furthermore, some suggest that due to the interactivity possible with new technology researchers should eliminate the distinction between communities of place and virtual communities (Delanty, 2003). Yet, differences do exist between geographic and virtual communities for example using Putnam’s (2000) idea of reciprocity those who lurk, i.e read comments within a virtual community but never post are not part of the group. However, some researchers of virtual community consider those lurkers members of the group based on their knowledge and interest in the community (Blanchard & Markus, 2004). It is possible that technology has created unique social structures within online community that often differ based on engagement involvement (Saramäki et. al, 2014). This leads into the third type of community, which combines elements of place-based and virtual

Society today has us connected more than ever. Over one billion people are active on Facebook and other social networks. In other words, there are more Facebook users then there are people in the United States and Mexico combined. Use of technology, usually like the internet, has brought people together ranging from KONY 2012 to seeing a relative that lives hundreds of miles away. It could be argued that sharing of ideas and being entirely connected has almost been globally reached and implemented, but the result of these virtual profiles, and being globally connected is tragic: People are becoming more lonely than ever. Use of technology such as the internet has given people the opportunity to be connected, but in reality “more than 78% of

Many people in our society can relate. We wake up, check our phones. We go to school, check our phones. We go home, check our phones. And right before we go to bed, we check our phones. And for what? What are we constantly checking? Imagine logging out of social networking sites for one day. How would you feel? You would probably feel disconnected and want to log back on as soon as possible. This generation uses these websites to connect, to stay in the loop, and to become involved. However, people will take advantage of the use of these websites, and in return, the websites take over the majority of their life. The act of constantly wanting to be

With seemingly interminable variety in the world of technology, society has gained access to a new form of communication. It comes in the form of smartphones, tablets, and laptops, which in turn have Internet capabilities that allow us to tap into our social life with a few clicks, swipes, or scrolls. With everything digitalized, it has never been easier to talk, network, and build community with other human beings. Our conception of what community truly means does not change or become degraded merely because these communities are based online or through some form of technology; rather it expands and gives new ways for healthy growth.

This is where members get to post some personal information like interests, hobbies, and the description of the type of persons they'd want to connect with.

With this, online friendships are a self-seeking prophecy. This idea diverges from the original studies of online relationships, which discovered that internet users are lonelier than those with less access to the internet (Tufecki 7). The more recent study of the hyperpersonal nature of today’s society online, known as “Seek and Ye Shall Find”, found the opposite to be true, emphasizing that individuals who believe that online friendships and strong relationships can be gained through those networks have much higher odds (52%) of acquiring new friends (Tufecki 7) and benefit most from online interactions. The hyperpersonal nature of the cyberspace comes to be seen as a space for people to be freer of social judgment due to the mediated communication deemphasizing appearance and shifting its focus towards

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

The project aim at teenagers, therefore sample group is between 13 to 19. I will set the sample sizes in 50 participants since it is easy to identity and more precision. If a sample sizes increase, it is very hard to estimate and become not accurate. Also, I’m worry about the extremes data can’t make a balance out, so the project prefers small sample sizes. It can take less effort to gain and maintain people, it is easy to produce significant results and comfortable to find a group of people. I will obtain samples from friends or friends’ sister and brother.