I have finally realised that I am a member of several online communities, and have been for quite a while now. This wasn't some momental realisation that happened in a pivotal instant; rather, my conception of my belonging happened steadily, slowly. The knowledge that I belong, and my understanding that I have made choices to both belong to, and align myself with several communities is lingering somewhere in the back of my brain as I trawl through the World Wide Web. I can't read ONTD or it's quirky, slightly tasteless offspring ONTD Trash anymore, without recognising in some part of me that I have chosen to belong to these worlds. I am an active publisher in these worlds. I am a contributor of content, I interact on a 'many to many' basis.
I find it all fascinating.
Our Week Six lecture, 'Online Communities,' was particularly interesting to me, and fueled the slow ember of knowledge burning away in me. Axel Bruns, my lecturer, and author of 'Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage,' discussed the many benefits of online communities, all of which I agreed with. The reason I didn't realise I belonged to an online community, is because my joining it, and affiliating with it, was so easy. I stumbled across a page. I started to read other peoples contributions, I laughed, and i kept coming back, eventually starting to make my own contributions. In my offline world I have to make physical, set decisions and actions to join a community; I have to sign up to a soccer team, or to join a Lit discussion group. On an online platform, all I have to do is browse, until I find an online community based around one of my interests, in the case of ONTD, pop culture and a dual sense of bitterness towards to it, and addiction to it.
Through my interaction with various online communities I engage with, I can see demonstrated some of the benefits of online communities Axel discussed. From the lecture: online communities transcend the limitations of being a physical body in a particular physical space - I have the world at my fingertips, and anything I want is open to me. As Axel said, the strength of online communities lies in the ease of finding other people and communities with which I have a shared interest, rather than having to find these people in the offline world. If I join an Australian hip hop forum, for instance, I can be assured that I have a common interest with all of the joined members, with enhanced possibilities of further mutual interests. Online communities gather people together, the community shares it content, and that content becomes much more powerful.
The sense of belonging and community is liberating, warming, and I feel, is what drives people to make the Web contributions they do, largely pro bono contributions which in turn, makes the Web function as it does. Mark Glaser from blog MediaShift points out that the Web is largely powered by volunteer work. He uses the examples of Ebay's user generated content or Flickr's vast array of user submitted photos, all user submitted, all adding incredibly commercial value to these for-profit companies, yet submitted for free. The layperson does not get any monetary compensation for doing this work, so why do it? Glaser interviewed a woman who acts as a forum moderator for CNN Interactive.
'Many volunteers in online communities do it for the love of the conversation and connections, and are willing to give up their time to make those communities more interesting and pleasant places to inhabit. I believe in the power of the Internet as an experience beyond just sucking up information - it's always been the interactivity that gets me going, and whether I'm paid or not, that's the part that keeps me interested.'
This sense of community and belonging then, is what motivates people to make the contributions they do.
Matt Haughy, founder of popular group blog MetaFilter, told Glaser via email that in the early days, he had to make many of the posts himself, until the momentum and growing community propelled the blog forward.
'Since then, I think the strong sense of community - the sense of belonging and getting something out of the participation is what drives people to contribute.'(Glaser, 2006).
Psychologically and socially, we require a sense of belonging to be active, useful citizens, and the Internet is one platform from which we can get that. From our Week Six lecture, according to Axel, strong online communities lower barriers of cultural and social participation, in a sense democratizing cultural participation. Members of these online communities are citizens, and they are active in creating a grassroots online community, which, when they work to the best of their ability, are a platform across which communities can gather, share and evaluate information, working across community boundaries with each other. It's this sense of community that brings people back, and keeps them coming!
References (accessed May 5):
Week Six Lecture notes
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