Community and Communality in a Virtual World Flashcards
1
Q
What can a virtual world contribute to discussions of community
A
- Being online together is in important part of late modern experience
- In multiple ways we are online together
- Whether that togetherness constitutes a community has been a question largely answered from the outside
- it is worthwhile investigating how online togetherness might constitute community and whether it is essentially different form online forms of community
2
Q
A kind of an abstract
A
- In the virtual world, Second Life, a group of residents play a game that simulates working out in a gym.
- By examining the feelings of belonging to the group of lifters, we can explore how community is created and understood
- The importance each ‘lifter’ gives the game to their experience of SL helps them interpret their relationships with other ‘lifters’ and shapes their actions towards them.
- Belonging together online only creates community for those who attach high importance to the game and have empathetic encounters with others.
- High importance of SML is often related to altruistic activities, which increases the feeling of belonging together, for themselves and for those they help.
3
Q
Communities as tangible object
A
- One problem with examining community in cyberspace is that many of the means to study communities developed for offline contexts treat communities as real objects with borders and boundaries.
- They study the artifacts, features and practices of a community using a particular model
- Models that linguists use—dialect communities or Communities of Practice—often get anchored to places and locations and very concerned with the notions of boundaries
4
Q
What are McMillan & Chavis (1986) 4 criteria for communality, ?
A
- Membership
- Influence
- Fulfillment of needs
- Shared emotional connection
5
Q
4 criteria for communality, McMillan & Chavis (1986):
1. Membership
A
- Feeling of belonging/a sense of shared connectedness
- One has invested oneself to become a member
- McM & C don’t psychologize boundaries and assume they are real objects in all cases, it seems.
6
Q
4 criteria for communality, McMillan & Chavis (1986):
2. Influence
A
- Members will feel more linked to a community if they feel they are influential
- The reverse direction, members will feel more linked if they are influenced by group norms.
- McM & C claim conformity as a force of communality
7
Q
4 criteria for communality, McMillan & Chavis (1986):
3. Fulfillment of needs
A
- Membership must be rewarding to the member
- See the group as having resources to fulfil their desires
- See themselves as a resource for others
8
Q
4 criteria for communality, McMillan & Chavis (1986):
4. Shared emotional connection
A
- Relies on positive, quality interactions
- Shared history
- Closure to shared events -endpoints, goal achievements
- Importance of shared events to the community
9
Q
The phenomenology of community/communality
A
- Since communality is about the feelings of/experiencing belonging together it has been an interest to a particular branch of philosophy for some time.
- Phenomenology: branch of philosophy that examines how we experience things, concepts and constructs in our minds.
- Modern phenomenology was founded by Husserl in the early 20th century and was a particularly prominent part of German philosophy for the first half of that century.
- The study of how we…or I…experience things, or the study of meanings I give to the things in my consciousness
- It different from more classical ontology which is the study of the nature of being and existence
10
Q
Gerda Walther’s prerequisites for communal experience
A
- Common intentionality
- Reciprocal awareness
- Interdependency
- The effective requirement
11
Q
Gerda Walther’s prerequisites for communal experience
1. Common intentionality
A
- Phenomenologists love the word intentionality
- Really just means doing the same thing, having the same interest or focus on the same object.
- Gerda and Lucy are both watching the movie
- Not yet a we experience!
12
Q
Gerda Walther’s prerequisites for communal experience
2. Reciprocal awareness
A
- Mutual awareness of the fact that they are doing the same thing
- Gerda is watching the movie and knows Lucy is watching the movie.
- Lucy is watching the movie and knows Gerda is watching the movie.
- Still not a we experience!
13
Q
Gerda Walther’s prerequisites for communal experience
3. Interdependency
A
- The experience of the intentional object or focus…the thing that they are doing together must be intertwined.
- How Gerda likes the movie or even goes about watching the movie impacts somehow on how Lucy likes the movie or even watches the movie.
- Still not a we experience!
14
Q
Gerda Walther’s prerequisites for communal experience
4. The effective requirement
A
- Here the important feeling is experiencing the intentionality as part of a ‘we’.
- Or a feeling of belonging and experiencing something together. Sounds like communality, no?
- Walther calls this an ‘inner unification’.
- Gerda must feel the inner unification and Lucy must feel the inner unification too.
- Note that the we experience is not necessarily exactly the same feeling for both both Gerda and Lucy.
15
Q
2 theories of empathy
A
- The simulation theory
We see and recognize someone experiencing an emotion
We simulate that emotion to understand how they are feeling - The theory theory or the theory of mind theory
We draw on our knowledge of contexts and rules of association with expressions and feelings and knowing how people act when feeling specific emotions.
