In our second lecture we were asked the question ‘What do you think makes an online community and how does this differ from an online network?’ I thought this topic seemed fitting for my first post seeing as we are using an interactive program for our assignment in this course.
For me an online community is more personal and intimate than a network. Those in our online community are people we choose to communicate with on a regular basis and possibly have strong or familiar ties with. For instance, I have a both a facebook and bebo account. My ‘friends’ in these programmes are the people I have personally added or accepted as friends; most are family or close friends that I correspond with very regularly. I use the systems to keep in touch with people and in turn share a little bit of my life with them through photographs and comments.
In contrast to this, I view a network as a more broad community. There is often a common interest and weak ties between people. I will use facebook again as an example to illustrate my point. On facebook I belong to a ‘New Zealand’ network. There are 278,619 members in this network. Obviously I do not know all these members, but there is a common interest; our country. The same example could be used on bebo. Bebo allows members to join ‘groups’. These groups vary, from sports to television shows, to fan clubs. People joined to these networks are linked by their common interest. Many are strangers to one another and may never interact, but they are still in the same network.
These are just my views on the topic but if you have any thoughts of your own let me know!
Michaela
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Hey guys, I'm Michaela. This is my 3rd year of university but 1st in Dunedin. Previously been studying in Christchurch but thought I'd brave the cold and do the move to the mighty Otago for the last 2 years of my degree. Good times so far :)
2 comments:
I have seen websites similar to the NZ group on Facebook - where there are thousands of people who don't know each other yet just have a similar interest - and within that network/website the most regular users start to get to know each other and become more of a community, knowing more personal details and starting to converse in places other than the actual site e.g. Windows Live Messenger. And then in these forums you almost get an "In crowd" like is often the case in real life situations such as high school.
So, so true...I remember when chat rooms first came 'popular'...I think I was about 13! A group of our friends from school used to meet up on a certain chatroom so we could all 'goss' or talk about whatever 13year old girls talk about. Looking back I notice that whenever I logged in there were regular 'chatters' who always seemed to be online and would domintae the public chats, talking to eachother. I doubt these chatters knew eachother in 'real life' so to speak, but because they were frequenters in that particular chatroom they created online bonds. There was quite a group of them really! I never got invloved with the public chats and merely used the room to have private discussions with a couple of my friends, but you are totally right...there was a group that totally dominated the room, they'd have personaly jokes with one another and I suppose you could view them as the 'in crowd' of that specfic forum!
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