Communities and Networks Flashcards
5 Virtual Community Qualities
- Sense of space
- Shared practices
- Shared resources and support
- Shared identities
- Interpersonal relationships
the platform where the members meet (app, website, or visual OL environments in MMORPGs), not an actual geographic location
Space
o Neither work nor home, sites of informal social
life, critical to social cohesion
o Functions similarly to coffee shops,
community centers, bars, and hangouts
Third place
Third place was introduced by
Ray Oldenburg
Routinized behavior that group members share
Shared practices
4 Communities of practice
Occupational,
Educational,
Recreational,
Regional
distinctive patterns of
language
“Speech community
Skilled Communicative Practice
Hierarchies and moderators
Social norms w/in user’s behavioral context
Shared practices
“composed of broadly based relationships in which each community member felt securely able to obtain a wide variety of help”
Community “Shared resources and support”
resources people attain because of their network relationships,
Social Capital
2 types of social capital
Bonding (close relationships)
Bridging (people who differ)
Benefits of social support
o Better psychological adjustment
o Higher perceptions of self-efficacy
o Better coping
o Improved task performance
o Better disease resistance and recovery o Lowered risk of mortality
Four Motivations for seeking support OL (SEAS)
- Security provided by anonymity
- Ease of access to groups
- Ability to manage interaction
- Social distance from others
Kinds of Social Support: (SEEITG)
o Social integration or network support
o Emotional support
o Esteem support
o Informational support
o Tangible aid
o Gives people the feeling that they are needed
Personalities and roles assumed by individuals by enacting consistent and systematic behaviors, a shared sense of who “we” are
Shared Identities
Most common roles: (7 - LACAFTL)
o Local experts – been there longest, regular
o Answer people - responds, never initiates
o Conversationalists – responds and initiates
o Artists - content contributor
o Flame warriors - argumentative
o Trolls – generates chaos
o Lurker – most common, reads but never posts
Most common roles
been there longest, regular
Local experts
Most common roles
responds, never initiates
Answer people
Most common roles
responds and initiates
Conversationalists
Most common roles
content contributor
Artists
Most common roles
argumentative
Flame warriors
Most common roles
generates chaos
Troll
Most common roles
most common, read but never posts
Lurker
Reasons why lurkers don’t engage: (5)
Feel like they’re getting what they need w/o contributing
Feel like they need to get to know the group better
Contributing by staying silent
Technical problems with contributing
Do not like group’s dynamics
“social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships”
Community (Interpersonal relationships)
- Online groups provide contexts for forming one- on-one relationships
- Visibility of pairings contribute to a sense of connectivity
(Interpersonal relationships)
middle ground between private one-on-one and group interactions, web-based services that allow you to:
Social Network Sites
- Construct a public/semi-public profile
- Articulate a list of other users w/ whom they
share a connection - View and traverse their list of connections and those made by others w/in the system
Social Network Sites
each person sits at the center of their own personal community
Networked Individualism
groups of people network throughout the internet
Networked Collectivism
Fear: Time OL detracts from social life offline
Truth:
o Internet can enhance connections to communities
o Internet users and mobile phone users are more likely to do volunteer work, go to community meetings, or contribute money to a group/cause
Civic Engagement
- Fear that “real” political engagement will be replaced by “virtual” engagement
- Truth, Internet users are:
o More likely than non-users to engage in
political activities
o More likely to be interested in other forms of
civic and political activism
Political Engagement
small groups that affirm one another’s perspective and lead them
away from political action
Monadic clusters
