Community & Identity - Learning Portfolio task

Tough week! Essay 1 was due,  the flu thing going around that has been dubbed the '100 days cough' had me in it's grasp and it was school holidays. However, Community & Identity was the topic, which is such an interesting topic for me. Most of the time I spend online is to communicate with and nurture relationships and maintain community ties.


The learning portfolio task:

Chose an online community and answer the following
· How is this a 'community' (and what is a community)?
· Connections and gaps between the world of this community and face to face life.
· Who are the 'powerful' in this community, and how was this power acquired?
· Is there a difference between 'virtual' and 'real' life? What do these terms mean, nowadays?


A new online community to me, is my Instagram community. Formed through an interest in social media and using my iPhone for photography it has become, to me, another way to reach people that I would not have before.
Individuals gain different things from a community, therefore the description of actually 'what' a community is, is a little fluid. Overall a community can be described as a group of people, with something in common be that political, emotional, economic (fashion etc), faith, communicating with one another. Shafi says 'There is also a strong sense of unity and fellowship in a community'. (Shafi, blog)
Being on Instagram is an interesting community to me, as I did not join with the purpose of keeping in touch with people I already know, which is one of the main reasons people use Facebook. Due to this, I do not have a great drive to meet these people offline. We know each other, know where we live (in a general sense) and share images of our day to day lives. The main difference therefore between this community and face to face life, is the physical face.
There are people on instagram world wide, and some of these seem to try to gather 'likes' with a passion! Through gaining greater exposure of their images they are exerting a kind of power over the greater community. Behind the scenes, Facebook offered a huge sum to buy Instagram (a massive power play!) and and many individual business people use the application as a form of advertising - there are a number of power mongers amongst us! However, at this stage, they are not directly effecting my experience within the community.

My tutors response, Good example Sarah. Its an interesting one, as you identify, because it probably doesn't 'look' or 'feel' like a traditional community, yet does share some of those key characteristics used to define community. However, it is not dissimilar to offline 'photography clubs' or 'book clubs' for that matter. These communities were formed around shared interests, and this process of 'sharing' was a big part of the value of belonging to these communities.

Another question was raised this week,  what is the difference between a ‘real’ or face-to-face community and ‘ virtual’ community? Go beyond the two readings and see if you can find another source that contributes to how we might define this distinction?

Beside the actual physicality of offline v's online, perhaps there is no real distinction between the communities. Henry-Waring & Barraket maintain that emotional online interactions are part of the real world, not separate from it (Stanley 2001), meaning that in the case of intimacy, feelings are real online and part of your whole, not separate from it. Therefore, the investment people make in online communities is just as great as the investment in offline communities. With the growing access to online communities, I propose that people spend more time tweaking, touching, updating their online community than the communities they are members of offline.

Shafi says,’ In Online communities, anyone can jump the bandwagon and become a member of the community’.(Shafi.2005). This is true in an offline community also. There is just as much scope for duplicity offline as online, in fact, there is a lot more trust in people believing the authenticity of others online because of the lack of physical cues. Therefore, the emotion investment could be higher online than offline. 

Lots and lots going on in my head, and I have a number of readings to get through. Essay 2 is looming and it is LARGE. Some big ideas to deconstruct and understand.

I'll get cracking!

cheers

Sarah

References (for both responses)

Shafi, (2005) Can a Virtual Community be any different from the experience of a Real Community? Incoherent Thoughts

Henry-Waring, M., & Barraket, J. (2008) Dating & Intimacy in the 21st Century: The Use of Online Dating Sites in Australia International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society 6(1), 14-3