Virtual Communities
Technology reflects the lives human beings lead; cell phones represent our desire to communicate remotely from virtually any location, computers and the internet reflect our thirst for information, and online social networks are the spitting image of the kinds of connections humans make on a daily basis in reality. On Facebook and Myspace, people use their personalized profile pages to demonstrate their social or economic status. Sometimes the number of friends a person has is used as an indication of their social classification. While these online communities are entirely digital and, from a literal standpoint, have no material basis, they are very much an extension of humanity. But questions have arisen over whether they can serve as an equivalent to face to face interaction or even if they can replace face to face interaction altogether. While technological remote communication may never permanently replace face to face interaction altogether, the question pertains to whether they will be the preferred means of communication over person to person contact. What is it that makes social networks so addictive to the majority of the population? Is it the chance to broadcast one’s self to the world or is it the convenience of being able to maintain long term social connections? Most importantly, are the connections which are maintained and made through these online profiles valid communities in spirit, or is it something else? The short answer to all of the above questions could easily be that like the invention of radio and telecommunication, any new technology that makes human interaction easier and has aesthetic appeal is something that has lasting power. Given this fact, it could very well be that such online communities are here to stay and that they are merely the latest development in the field of community organization.
Human beings in most cultural settings like to communicate and interact with others as well as make statements about their socioeconomic or sexual status. Today, as in the past, those who are most eager to establish dominance tend to be the youngest members of the population. Anthropologists such as Danah Boyd have analyzed what it is that makes virtual communities so appealing to us; and to young people in particular. The goal of Boyd’s online ethnography was to determine if these networks were used merely out of convenience or if younger people were getting something else out if the experience. Certain trends began to arise in Boyd’s research; one if which being that private conversations are held not only in public, but broadcast to their entire network of friends, and potentially, the world (Boyd 2007, p.8). Despite the fact that sites like Facebook allow users to send messages privately, younger users see no issue with posting messages outright, in plain sight of their fellow users. Security and privacy is not necessarily a concern for many young network users. It is for this reason that virtual communities cannot necessarily be seen as equivalent forms of interaction to that of the physical proximity of daily conversation. A certain alternate persona is taken on by the user of an online social network that one does not normally adopt in daily life. That is to say that the version of one’s self that is presented through social networks is bolder and more outspoken than that of daily life. The reason for the outspokenness of online communicators is the fact that conversations held on the internet lack the filter people normally have when speaking or writing on paper; two activities which require quick internal revisions before messages are delivered or heard. On the internet, however, the first and most immediate emotional reaction typically prevails, and cruel behavior often times becomes more common because the repercussions of said behavior do not exist on the abstract plane of the internet. When communicating face to face, insults and verbal attacks have visible and audible results; individuals on the receiving ends of such attacks react, strike back, or can even retaliate physically (something which is not a factor online). Removing the danger and the guilt involved in verbally bullying someone is taken away by the comfort of hiding behind a computer monitor. One recognizes that such a concept can potentially affect the development of younger people who were exposed to these kinds of exchanges from early childhood (Lysloff 2003, p.238). People who were born after the invention of the internet and social networks may have a different understanding of etiquette than those of older generations as a result of having gotten used to the impersonal nature of online conversation. All of these can be considered evidence against the idea of virtual communities being identical reflections of everyday life, but still worthy of note in the anthropological sphere.
Alternatively, if the effects of frequent online interaction change the way people communicate in every context, then one might be able to make the claim that social networks really do reflect life. This is the argument presented by Denise Carter in her own article on virtual communities, where she makes that claim that valid connections can be made online and in some cases, even carry on in the real world. Carter conducted an ethnography of one particular online community called CyberCity, in which she recorded the behaviors and trends of people she encountered. Surprisingly, after three years of studying CyberCity, Carter found that members of the community were eager to interact with one another honestly, and that 69% of friendships made through the community really did continue in the real world (Carter 2005, p.160). It was through this study conducted by Carter that she determined the interchangeability of virtual and physical life. Carter came to the conclusion that virtual communities operate in very much the same way as do communities in the outside world, but that the online aspect provided a convenient medium for people to interact across great physical distances; thus making it easier for individuals to find other people that they had much in common with. The openness expressed through online interaction in this sense served as an advantage to those who may have been introverts in most social contexts but they had a way to learn about and understand human connections through this platform that was CyberCity. Does that mean that, at least for some people, CyberCity can serve as a replacement for traditional human interaction? While it may seem that some people prefer online interaction to face to face conversation, it is merely an alternative, rather than a replacement. Online communication does not typically satisfy the void left by an absence of a true social life. But in cases like the ones studied by Carter where real friendships began in a virtual setting, this alternative source of human indirect human interaction actually provides for those who struggle to make friends in most social situations, but they’ve made valid connections either way, so it would seem that the desired end result is still being achieved.
In other forms of virtual community, such as Twitter, connections are made quite differently in that the connections, themselves, are made asymmetrically; meaning that people can follow one person’s account but the person being followed is not required to follow his or her followers in order for the connection to be made. As a result, most of the connections made through twitter are either indirect connections or each user has more followers than they actually know personally (Gruzdi, Wellman, & Takhteyev 2011, p.1298).
The indirect connections formed by virtual communities means that groups and organizational entities are formed through these virtual means and the very existence of the group is abstract in that communities exist within the member’s minds. Much like the concept of a nation exists within the minds of its members, so too do virtual communities serve as a figment of a user’s imagination. One member of a nation can imagine the larger entity that they are a part of, but they do not truly know every fellow member of their nation, while they can imagine it. Everyone will have their own vision of the entity that they are contributors to, but they will not fully grasp the magnitude of said entity. In this way, virtual communities are “imagined”, as stated by Benedict Anderson (Anderson 1991, p.224). Anderson’s argument is that virtual communities by definition have no real connection to the material world and are therefore neither a parallel nor an extension of actual human society, but a faint imitation of how humans interact and communicate. It should be noted, that in 1991, when Anderson wrote “Imagined Communities” perceptions of the extent of the internet’s usefulness were debated amongst experts of numerous fields. Certainly, as this technology changes, it changes with us a species and is both the product of our innovation, while at the same time, shaping the way in which we interact with the introduction of new generations who have never seen a world without this technology on-hand.
Our desire for interaction will never cease, as it is a large part of who we are as a species, and any tool used to increase the ease of human interaction is going to remain with us in one form or another; therefore, the internet appears to remain the tool of humanity’s future. It appears to be the latest development in human networking and communication.
References:
Anderson, B.R. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London: Verso. pp:224.
Boyd, D. (2007). ‘Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Public in
Teenage Social Life.’ In Buckingham, D. (ed.) MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Carter, D. (2005). Living in virtual communities. Information, Communication & Society Vol. 8,
No. 2. pp. 148–167.
Grudz, A. Wellman, B., and Y. Takhteyev. (2011). Imagining Twitter as an Imagined
Community. American Behavioral Scientist, Volume 55, Number 10, pp: 1294-1318.
Lysloff, R. T. A. (2003). Musical Community on the Internet: An On-line Ethnography. Cultural
Anthropology, Volume 18, Number 2, pp: 233-263.
