Report on the Psychology of
Virtual Online Communities:
A New Way to Communicate
Table of Contents
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I researched these sites for my report:
What are virtual communities? What is their purpose?
Virtual communities are groups of people interacting with each other using the internet as the channel for this communication. These communities have members who all have the same interest in a hobby, profession or product. The people who interact over the internet using virtual communities will most likely never communicate with each other through any other medium. The interaction between members allows relationships to develop in cyberspace. The purposes of virtual communities are numarous. If there are people who share a common interest, it is likely that there is a web site devoted to this particular interest. Key to the concept of community for me is interaction with people that I have already talked to before. Feeling secure in a community involves familiar names and faces. Virtual communities are often lacking in this feeling. Depending upon what type of community it is, participants may never associate with each other more than once. In order for virtual communities to be sucessful, there needs to be individuals who come back time after time again to moderate discussion. The example of the virtual community that I give below has a magazine editor who takes this role.
Virtual communities take the form of chat rooms and and bulletin boards (also known as newsgroups). Chat rooms are sites that attract enough traffic so that there is usually more than one person at the site at a time. The people in chat rooms type brief messages- usually sentense fragments, and upload them to the web. In a matter of seconds, this message is sent to everyone else who is at the same chatroom. These people can respond, and conversation can continue, with people coming and going at will. Bulletin boards operate much more slowly. People write longer messages and leave e-mail when they send off their messages. People can either respond to the author of the posting or they can post a response below the original on the bulletin board. Anyone can create a virtual community. Whether or not people will take part in it is not guaranteed. The reasons for discussion in virtual communities is the same reason why people want to talk to each other using any other form of communication. As long as people can find out about you virtual community and as long as people are interested in participating in it, it will work.
A case history of a virtual community
Belize Newsgroup and Trade is an interesting site that I found. Belize is a fascinating little country situated on the Gulf of Mexico next to Guatemala. This site was created for Belizeans, friends of Belize and visitors. I assume that the site was created to round up tourists and forign investment as that is what the rest of the belize.com site is geared towards. The newsgroup has a lot of activity. There are several new postings every day. People are encouraged to post comments, inquiries and to seek advice. It is asked that no one places advertisements on the bulletin board. There are several adventurous American college students seeking summer employment in Belize. These students say that they will do "anything". Other people are looking for long lost relatives that heard fled to Belize. One person in Germany said that he was interested in making business connections for anyone wanting to purchase spare generator parts. Another person was interested in travel directions. Another wrote that he had a wonderful vacation at a certain hotel.
What is the significance of the existance of virtual online communities?
Virtual communities expand the range of human communication. People who would not have ordinarily ever have communicated with each other are able to share ideas. Previous to my exploring the belize.com site, I did not know that there were other people interested in the insignificant little country. People can persue discussions on whatever they want. If you do not have a friend to talk about an interest of yours, there probably is a virtual community devoted to it. People can offer whatever opinions they have without fear of being found out. People can enter chatrooms ananomously, they can even change their identity to be whatever they want. This is a major difference between virtual and face-to-face interaction. Virtual communication is convienant for the participants. When a person logs on to a chatroom, he can be sure that the others are interested in discussing the same subject. If you do not feel like responding, there is no pressure because you simply do not reply. Participation in virtual comminities presently is done by only a small percentage of the worlds population, as the number of computer users grows, so will the number of those engaging in virtual communication.
Two Generational reports on Virtual Communities on Cyberspace Citizenship
G7 student Lori Rapoza wrote a good report detailing her experiences in obtaining cyberspace citizenship. Her experiences were like many others, including my own. She started off the semester rather confident, she had a little experience with the net already from some surfing and research that she had done. Not long after the beginning of the semester she felt "frustration and incompetance." In the end, she felt like she had really accomplished something meaningful. She even said that she had a greater understanding of herself, specifically what motivates and frustrates her. Part of the reason why I believe Lori had such a difficult time is because she wanted to try and figure everything out on her own. She seemed to be interested in internet self sufficienty. There is no mention of relying on others to explain the internet to her. Lori went through a lot of unecissary anxiety specifically for this reason.
Ann Huynh of G7 ran into the same problems as everyone else but was more succesul in overcoming them. Instead of trying to do everything on her own, Ann asked for help from her classmates, Dr. James and even from the computer room employees on campus. The worst of her problems did not come from not being able to figure procedures out, but they came from slow UH computers and from spending what she felt was too much time doing her work. Ann was able to overcome her technophobia in class and stated that she is interested in continuing to use the internet after the class is over. Her advice for future generations was the same as Lori's, that is to not give up because everything is possible.
My report compared to others in my generation
I, and others agree that virtual online communities are a valuable form of interaction.
Virtual communities have value because they facilitate communication that may not have happened without them. People can share ideas and learn from people whom they would never have encountered without the aid of the computer. Virtual communication is not intended to replace normal forms of communication, they are there to suppliment it.