Virtual-Communities, Virtual Settlements & Cyber-Archaeology: A Theoretical Outline (By Quentin Jones)

Table of Contents




Coming to Terms with Virtual-Communities

This first section that Quentin Jones covered dealt with the issue of Virtual-Communities and understanding that these communites can be seen as a type of group CMC (computer mediated communication). In reading the introduction, I got the sense that there are two ways in which one can view a virtual community. The first deals with a virtual community which incorporates and operates using various types of computer mediated communication (CMC). The second deals with the idea that CMC creates and is responsible for the existance of a virtual community.
With that sense aside, my personal definition of computer mediated communication, as I see it, is a computer which mediates communication between two people, or a group of individuals whether it's through e-mail, IRC (chat), newsgroups, or BBS (bulletin boards), for example. I have to admit, though, that when I hear the term "community", I automatically think of a neighborhood or a place where people live in. This can be applied in the virtual sense, where the "community" is in Cyberspace and netizens or people who are on-line are a part of a virtual community, communicating in some way via CMC. Mr. Jones mentioned that the first virtual communities were made up of scientists who used the Internet to share information with eachother. This was a thought for me to ponder on. I wonder, did these scientists realize that they had created a virtual community simply because they were exchanging information with eachother? Or did they just view it as a convenient, effective way for them to get important messages across to eachother?
The whole issue of the appropriate use of the term "community" seemed to be the underlying issue here. There were many different perspectives and definitions on what a community is and if the term could be applied virtually. For example, Rheingold says that, "virtual communities are 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 in cyberspace" (p.5). Hmm, I wonder what "sufficient human feeling" means to Rheingold. One argument of Rheingold's that I totally agree with is where he stated, "whenever computer mediated communications technology becomes available to people anywhere, they inevitably build communities with it". Prior to reading this statement, I hadn't actually given much thought to just how often or casually these virtual communites are created.
This whole issue of defining a virtual community was taken lightly by me until I found out that a person named Hillery actually wrote a paper about it, entitled "Definitions of Community: Areas of Agreement". I thought, "wow!, someone actually took the time to write about this issue that I never even knew existed..." It also made me think more seriously about this whole issue because I realized that sociologists have been pondering the term "community" for a while now.

Defining & Characterizing Virtual Settlements

In this section, I fumbled over the issue of a virtual settlement vs. a virtual community. There are some defining characteristics of a virtual settlement that were mentioned. These include: "(1) a minimum level of interactivity; (2) a variety of communicators; (3) a minimum level of sustained membership; (4) a virtual common-public-space where a significant portion of interactive group-CMCs occur."
"A minimum level of interactivity" deals with the issue of have some type of interactive communication among individuals, in my opinion. Rafaeli defined the term "interactivity", saying that it is "an expression of the extent to which in a given series of communication exchanges, any third or later transmission is related to the degree to which previous exchanges referred to even earlier transmissions". I don't really know what he means by this, but I stick with my own definition that I mentioned earlier. Smith (1992), Rheingold (1993), and Erickson (1997) all give different definitions of a virtual community. An excellent point that was made in this report was about the requirement for a minimum level of interactivity. Basically, what was said was that an e-mail list, for example, would not be considered a virtual community in the sense that it does not have a minimum level of interactivity. There is no interaction taking place; instead, people just receive information and do not have interactive discussions with others. This really shed some light on my previous "personal" definition of a virtual community. If I use this criteria of a minimum level of interactivity, I would have to exclude e-mail, newsgroups, and bulletin boards from being classified as virtual communities because these are places that people can visit to gain and share information, but not conduct interactive discussions with others (like an Internet chat room).
A key characteristic of a virtual community also includes having more than one person. There has to be at least 2 or more communicators who make use of the virtual community common-public-space. Just like in real life, for a person to have a conversation, he or she would need at least one more person to converse with. Sure, many people "talk to themselves" or try to carry conversations with themselves, but I would not place this in the category of having a true conversation. There definitely has to be at least another person, if not a number of poeple, present.
A good point to think about was stated by Fernback and Thompson (1995). They said that "a virtual community needs a virtual-space. At the same time a virtual community is not equivalent to its cyberspace." After spending a few minutes on what this could mean, I thought of it as meaning that a virtual community takes up what is called virtual space. This is all within cyberspace, which doesn't necessarily exclude itself as being a virtual community. So, what then, could we view or think of as the boundaries in such a community? I think that the inhabitants of the virtual community make up the boundaries of the community they participate in. After all, they are the ones who are interacting with eachother and I view words or feelings as having no boundaries.
In any community, membership is important. A visitor to a community would not necessarily be viewed as a part of the community, but merely, a temporary guest. I like to compare this analogy to a virtual community as well. Regular users who continuously make use of the interaction (i.e., posting messages, chatting) are what builds and maintains the community that they identify with.

Cyber-Archaeology

Trying to compare archaeology in the traditional, human settlement-type vs. the CMC researcher virtual settlement-type is very new to me. I think it's cool to think of studying virtual communities using "cyber archaeology". After all, humanity is studied through archaeology which has brung many discoveries and information to scientists. The term "technological determinism" was used in this section and I don't really know what it means. From the way I see it, maybe it means learning through technology? (Technology, in this case, being computers, the Internet, etc.).
The issue of online behaviors was also briefly mentioned and how important the social context is because it may influence online behavior in different ways. Perhaps the behaviors or even identities of people online are different depending on what they are engaging in. So, would social context determine behavior? I think it would INFLUENCE behavior rather than determine it simply because no one can determine behavior online. Even if someone manipulated the social setting in hopes of producing wanted results/effects, the person him/herself can behave in a totally different way. It's their predisposition. A person will act and behave the way they choose to and the way they want to convey themselves as being. But, social context does have a lot to do with it.
The prerequisites and bounded hierarchies of technologies really confused me at first. But, an example helped to clarify the issue: "the invention and use of the telephone may well be a prerequisite for high rise living, but that does not mean that the use of telephones by a society will automatically result in the creation of such structures..." (Aronson, 1971). I totally agree with this analogy. Just because something (i.e., a job) may be an indicator for something else (i.e., money), doesn't necessarily mean that it (the job) will bring about that something else (money). There is a medium that needs to also be at work in this example, it being a human being actually doing work at the job to earn the money. So, back to the example of the telephone. There could be many different things that also need to be at work before high rise living can take place.
I think the number of virtual communities will rise as more people become technologically updated. Just after reading this report, I now realize that virtual communities do exist in different contexts within cyberspace (i.e., chat rooms). I have also come to realize that I am a member of a few different virtual communities, where computer mediated communication takes place. Technology...It's a wonderful thing!



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