A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. One of the most pervasive types of virtual community include social networking services A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user , his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and, which consist of various online communities An online community is a virtual community that exists online whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership rituals . An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted number of people can initiate posts, such as.
The term virtual community is attributed to the book of the same title by Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold is a critic, writer, and teacher; his specialties are on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing), published in 1993. The book, which could be considered a social enquiry, putting the research in the social sciences, discussed his adventures on The WELL The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, is one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation. It currently has about 4,000 members. It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. The discussion and topics on the WELL range from the deeply serious to the and onward into a range of computer-mediated communication Computer-mediated communication is defined as any communicative transaction that occurs through the use of two or more networked computers. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats (e.g., instant messages, e-mails, chat rooms), it has also been applied to other forms of text-based and social groups, broadening it to information science. The technologies included Usenet Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums that are widely used today; and can, MUDs A MUD , pronounced /ˈmʌd/, is a multiplayer real-time virtual world described primarily in text. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters, and actions performed in the (Multi-User Dungeon) and their derivatives MUSHes A MUSH is a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected at the same time. MUSHes are often used for online social intercourse and role-playing games, although the first forms of MUSH do not appear to be coded specifically to implement gaming activity. Today's two major MUSH variants are descended from TinyMUD, which was and MOOs A MOO is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users (players) are connected at the same time, Internet Relay Chat Internet Relay Chat is a form of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client (IRC), chat rooms The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology ranging from real-time online chat over instant messaging and online forums to fully immersive graphical social environments. A chat room is a Web site, and electronic mailing lists An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers, but typically refers to four things: a list; the World Wide Web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British as we know it today was not yet used by many people. Rheingold pointed out the potential benefits for personal psychological well-being, as well as for society at large, of belonging to such a group.
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Introduction
The traditional definition of a community is of a geographically circumscribed entity (neighborhoods, villages, etc). Virtual communities, of course, are usually dispersed geographically, and therefore are not communities under the original definition. Some online communities are linked geographically, and are known as community websites. However, if one considers communities to simply possess boundaries of some sort between their members and non-members, then a virtual community is certainly a community.
Early research into the existence of media-based communities was concerned with the nature of reality Virtual reality is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds. Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional, whether communities actually could exist through the media, which could place virtual community research into the social sciences definition of ontology. In the 17th-century, scholars associated with the Royal Society The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London". The Society was initially an of London formed a community through the exchange of letters.[1] "Community without propinquity", coined by urban planner Melvin Webber in 1963 and "community liberated," analyzed by Barry Wellman Among the concepts Wellman has published are: "the network city" , "the community question", "computer networks as social networks", "connected lives" and the "immanent Internet" (both with Bernie Hogan), "media-multiplexity" (with Caroline Haythornthwaite), "networked individualism& in 1979 began the modern era of thinking about non-local community.[2] As well, Benedict Anderson Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies at Cornell University, and is best known for his celebrated book Imagined Communities, first published in 1983. Anderson was born in Kunming, China to James O'Gorman and Veronica Beatrice Mary Anderson, and in 1941's Imagined Communities The imagined community is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson which states that a nation is a community socially constructed, which is to say imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. Anderson's book, Imagined Communities, in which he explains the concept in depth, was published in 1983 in 1983, described how different technologies, such as national newspapers, contributed to the development of national and regional consciousness among early nation-states.[3]
Purpose of virtual communities
Virtual communities are used for a variety of social and professional groups. It does not necessarily mean that there is a strong bond among the members, although Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold is a critic, writer, and teacher; his specialties are on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing), author of the book of the same name, mentions that virtual communities form "when people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships".[4] An email distribution list may have hundreds of members and the communication which takes place may be merely informational (questions and answers are posted), but members may remain relative strangers and the membership turnover rate could be high. This is in line with the liberal use of the term community In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting species sharing an environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.
Internet-based virtual communities
The explosive diffusion of the Internet since the mid-1990s has also fostered the proliferation of virtual communities taking the form of social networking services and online communities. The nature of those communities is diverse, and the benefits that Rheingold envisioned are not necessarily realized, or pursued, by many. At the same time, it is rather commonplace to see anecdotes of someone in need of special help or in search of a community benefiting from the use of the Internet. Virtual communities may synthesize Web 2.0 The term "Web 2.0" is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, technologies with the community, and therefore have been described as Community 2.0, although strong community bonds have been forged online since the early 1970's on timeshare systems like PLATO_(computer_system) PLATO was the first (ca. 1960, on ILLIAC I) generalized computer assisted instruction system, and, by the early 1970s, comprised some 1,000 terminals worldwide. Originally, PLATO was built by the University of Illinois and functioned for four decades, offering coursework (elementary–university) to UIUC students, local schools, and other and later on USENET Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums that are widely used today; and can. Online communities depend upon social interaction and exchange between users online. This emphasizes the reciprocity In social psychology, reciprocity refers to responding to a positive action with another positive action, and responding to a negative action with another negative one. Positive reciprocal actions differ from altruistic actions as those only follow from other positive actions and they differ from social gift giving in that those are not actions element of the unwritten social contract Social contract describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people form states to maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up sovereignty to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. It can also be thought of as an between community members. The embedding of virtual community in the experiences of everyday life and its reflection of and influence on the communication practices and patterns of identity formation make online community a colossal research enterprise which requires continuous investigation and theorizing[5]
Howard Rheingold's Study
Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold is a critic, writer, and teacher; his specialties are on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing)’s Virtual Community could be compared with Mark Granovetter Mark Granovetter is an American sociologist who has created some of the most influential theories in modern sociology since the 1970s. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of information in social networks known as "The Strength of Weak Ties"’s ground-breaking "strength of weak ties" article published twenty years earlier in the American Journal of Sociology The American Journal of Sociology , established in 1895, is the oldest scholarly journal of sociology in the United States. It is published bimonthly by The University of Chicago Press. Rheingold translated, practiced and published Granovetter’s conjectures about strong and weak ties in the online world. His comment on the first page even illustrates the social networks in the virtual society: “My seven year old daughter knows that her father congregates with a family of invisible friends who seem to gather in his computer. Sometimes he talks to them, even if nobody else can see them. And she knows that these invisible friends sometimes show up in the flesh, materializing from the next block or the other side of the world.” (page 1). Indeed, in his revised version of Virtual Community, Rheingold goes so far to say that had he read Barry Wellman Among the concepts Wellman has published are: "the network city" , "the community question", "computer networks as social networks", "connected lives" and the "immanent Internet" (both with Bernie Hogan), "media-multiplexity" (with Caroline Haythornthwaite), "networked individualism&'s work earlier, he would have called his book "online social networks A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes," which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige".
Rheingold’s definition contains the terms “social aggregation and personal relationships” (pp3). Lipnack & Stamps (1997) and Mowshowitz (1997) point out how virtual communities can work across space, time and organizational boundaries; Lipnack & Stamps (1997) mention a common purpose; and Lee, Eom, Jung and Kim (2004) introduce "desocialization" which means that there is less frequent interaction with humans in traditional settings, eg. an increase in virtual socialization. Calhoun (1991) presents a dystopia A dystopia (alternatively, cacotopia, or anti-utopia) is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, though under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence. A dystopia argument, asserting the impersonality of virtual networks. He argues that IT has a negative influence on offline interaction between individuals because virtual life takes over our lives. He believes that it also creates different personalities in people which can cause frictions in offline and online communities and groups and in personal contacts. However, more than a decade of research has not supported Calhoun's arguments. (Wellman & Haythornthwaite, 2002). Recently, Parsell (2008) has suggested that virtual communities, particularly those that leverage Web 2.0 resources, can be pernicious by, for example, leading to attitude polarization, increased prejudices and enabling sick individuals to deliberately indulging in their diseases [6]
See also
References
| This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (November 2009) |
- ^ Pears, Iain. 1998. An Instance of the Fingerpost. London: Jonathan Cape.
- ^ Webber, Melvin. 1963. "Order in Diversity: Community without Propinquity." Pp. 23-54 in Cities and Space: The Future Use of Urban Land, edited by J. Lowdon Wingo. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Wellman, Barry. "The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers." American Journal of Sociology 84 (March, 1979): 1201-31.
- ^ Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
- ^ Rheingold, Howard (1993). The Virtual Community (1st. ed.). Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. ISBN 9780201608700. http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html. Retrieved 2008-12-29.
- ^ Rybas, S. (2008). Community Revisited: Invoking the Subjectivity of the Online Learner. PhD Thesis. Graduate College of Bowling Green State University.
- ^ Parsell, M. (2008). Pernicious virtual communities: Identity, polarisation and the Web 2.0. Ethics and Information Technology. Volume 10, Number 1: 41-56. http://www.springerlink.com/content/p737755248127761/
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Q. I know that many users would like to join a totally free virtual world like second life,etc but obviously there aren't any that don't require payment. What do I have to do to create such a site? I want to spend time doing this if it takes long :)
Asked by Lalalalaa life is beautiful - Sat Feb 7 14:35:07 2009 - - 1 Answers - 0 Comments
A. How to create a totally free virtual world like Second Life: Step 1: Hire a couple dozen network architects, application designers, artists, and programmers with a combined salary of well over from a million to 2 million dollars per year. Step 2: Purchase servers and hardware to place your virtual community on at a cost at a minimum of a few hundred K. Step 3: Spend 2 to 3 years developing this virtual world system with your team. Step 4: Put it into production with all the costs that running those servers would entail. So, after spending about 3-10 million dollars you are ready to open your doors! Now do you see why they aren't free?
Answered by M. L. - Sat Feb 7 14:43:02 2009
