The Anita Blanchard reading 'Blogs as virtual communities' posed an interesting debate on whether blogs can be classed as a virtual communities.
Both sides have good arguments- yes blogs do allow you to be interactive, people can comment on your blogs and this can turn into an online conversation. After all, this is what we're doing now! I'm hoping for comments on this posts, something that can prompt me to ask further questions, and enable me to converse with someone via a blog.
On the other hand....
Interactivity isn't the be-all and end-all of what makes a virtual settlement. You need more than to carry on a conversation with somebody. I believe the sense of community (SOC) is quite important to define the difference between a virtual community and a virtual group. Aspects such as influence, and feeling needed, as far as I'm concerned, is vital to cross the line between 'participating in a conversation online' and actually belonging somewhere. I agree with Blanchard- it is essential to have a SOC to make it a settlement.
Personally, I don't see blogs as virtual settlements, and most certainly not as virtual communities. I don't think that there is a high enough level of sense of community existing in a blog to make it a settlement. There are the odd, highly popular blogs that may drift into this category of a virtual 'settlement', particularly those that have subscribed readers over a length of time that frequently interact with each other, but I see this as very few- most blogs just don't have the community that it needs- interaction, maybe....but community? No.
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Yes, Im sure you are right, most blogs don't reach that level -partly because there are now millions of them and also people have other ways to have their say now (notably SNS).
ReplyDeleteHowever, if 'virtual' is taken to mean 'different from normal' and maybe 'partial' too (in optics, virtual means 'not as it appears to be') then we are not looking for online community to be the same, but to be sufficient to warrant the term.
So the question might rather be, what counts as the outcomes of 'community' whether on or offline? Sharing some important social/cultural interests would seem important? Resisting change which undermines shared interests? Promoting the development and success of the shared culture? Collective action of various sorts (including written material such as rules, manifestos, slogans etc. Do these online forums do this? (or close equivalents).
Some people seem to want passionately to be able to say "yes" others seem equally passionate about finding online communities to be lacking. I guess that in part it depends what you want from a community -and how much you think there is to lose.