This chapter describes various points of view regarding online communities.

It begins by looking at the general concept of communities in order to understand online communities.  In an attempt to define “community” Bell and Valentine (1997) are quoted: “It’s [...] about belonging and exclusion, about ‘us’ and ‘them’.” Other definitions go back to Tönnies’ work from 1887 where he defines ‘Gemeinschaft’ as a traditional, close-knitted community and ‘Gesellschaft’ as the impoverished urban society. The idea of ‘Gemeinschaft’ is “tinged with nostalgia” and can be compared to the concept of ‘village life’.

There are also imagined communities (like nations) which “exist because their members believe in them and maintain them through shared cultural practices” (p.95)

Threats to communities are detraditionalization, which is linked to disembedding (no longer rooted in place) and globalization. These in turn inspire heightened reflexivity giving us more choices about our identities, our politics. A negative aspect might be ’schizophrenia’ or loss of depth. On the other hand this might give us a stronger desire for community.

These concepts of imagined community, globalization, disembedding, reflexivity and detraditionalization might all open up the Internet as an ideal site for communities.

Are virtual communities a good thing? Rheingold seems to think so. He describes them as the natural response to the disintegration of traditional communities. He describes shared social codes, reciprocity, longevity, critical mass and sufficient human feeling as the elements of virtual communities

But what makes a community? There need to be some social codes, as described in examples in the text. This can be made more difficult through multiple identities. The rules themselves form a sense of identity.

Are online communities a bad thing? Critics of online communities describe participation in virtual communities as ‘bunkering in’.  The notion of community itself could be seen as very exclusive and uncomfortable places if you don’t fit in.

Other ways of thinking about community: The concept of ‘Bund’ might be an alternative: “an elective grouping, bonded by affective and emotional solidarity, sharing a strong sense of belonging’.

Problems of inclusion and exclusion. There are in fact a lot of requirements to joining an online community. Apart from the aspects of access and skills there are also social and cultural barriers. Virtual communities can be just as problematic as “real” communities in terms of exclusion and bounding out of other communities and individuals.

My thoughts: This text is again very concerned about the topic of inclusion and exclusion which I am also interested in. It would also be interested to find out how many people actually want to belong to totally virtual communities. Often online communication is formed to keep in touch with real life friends and acquaintances. As my 17 year old niece was saying “Why would I want to chat to people online who I don’t know. It would be a waste of time.”

Bell, David (2001) Community and cyberculture, chapter 5 of An introduction to cybercultures. Abingdon: Routledge. pp92-112 [e-book]

At the beginning of this week I was still looking at the visual artefacts made by other students and commenting on these.

I then turned to Block 2, looking at virtual communities and ethnographies. The lifestream reflects the readings I have done on this and shows some of the searches I have undertaken on the Internet to find a community which I could research. The two examples of virtual ethnographies I have read so far were interesting to read. Personally I like investigating interactions and making meaning out of these, though (as I stated in one of the posts) this makes me feel quite voyeuristic. I think the ethical aspect is definitely one worth considering, particularly the ethnography on “Happy Land” left me feeling somewhat uncomfortable. It was also good to get back to the discussion board to see what other people are thinking of doing their virtual ethnography on.

Chan, A (2008) The Dynamics of Motherhood Performance: Hong Kong’s Middle Class Working Mothers On- and Off-Line. Sociological Research Online. 13(4). [web site]

A Flickr Ethnography

This text gives a good illustration of what a virtual ethnography can be like:

There are some comments on how you could structure it:

“Broadly speaking, an ethnographic approach involves providing a description, an analysis and an interpretation of a culture-sharing group” (p.4)

The research centres around six questions (p.4):

“1. Is this a good place to study given the overall cultural themes we are tackling?

2. Can the individuals we see interacting here be described as a culture-sharing group?

3. What might be the main themes emerging from the investigation of this group and how does one go about identifying them?

4. What level of involvement is to be justifiably expected of the researcher? How will the participants’ perspective be given an appropriate voice? What are the ethical issues at stake?

5. How does the personal experience of the researcher come to bear on the analysis and the proposed interpretation?

6. How transferable to different sites is an approach which might work here?”

In the abstract provided Clari only offers answers to the first 3 questions.

1.She describes the flickr site and its differences to a real site. She compares it to a theatre setting. She describes it as a complex “deep” site worth investigating.

2. Clari offers a definition of community (p.7)

“In his Introduction to Virtual Communities Research and Cybersociology Magazine Issue Two, Hamman (1997) defines the sociological term ‘community’ as:

a. A group of people

b. who share social interaction

c. and some common ties between themselves and other members of the group

d. and share an area for at least some of the time.”

In this sense the individuals can be defined as a group.

3.In this section Clari focuses on the user-generated texts.

She comments on

-         their signature and their use of icons (p.10):  “The use of icons complements the text as a powerful tool in establishing one’s character, one’s identity on this stage: the theme of identity performance, how it unfolds and what affects it, begins to emerge here and will remain important throughout this discussion.”

-          the user-contributed tags which tend to “democratize” the picture and share it with a wider audience.

-         the user-contributed notes which interact with the actual photo

-         the comments of the participants: She distinguishes 3 groupsof comment: comments about the digital object as an artifact – comments about the ongoing interaction – comments on the actual subject of the photograph; all these groups interact with each other and construct meaning around the original object.
Clari defines the following themes which emerge from the interactions (p.25):
“the overarching themes of identity building and performance, of ownership and of power continue to stand out”

My thoughts: You feel quite voyeuristic when reading this ethnography! Maybe this is the nature of ethnographies though, you are “listening in” to what people are saying. I thought this was a very clear example of how you can construct a virtual ethnography. I liked the way she included the use of icons for the participants to construct their identity. This refers back to the text by Kress that we had been reading and the power of pictorial representation vs representation through speech. However, the identities here are made up of a mix of both (particularly as by clicking on the user names you can access their photo collections and view the identity they have created for themselves through these pictures).

The whole notion of having discussions around picture shows once again the power of this form of representation and how open it is to interpretation.

Clari, M (unpublished, 2009) A Flickr ethnography.

This text uses Virtual Ethnography in order to examine the concept of motherhood. The community being researched consists of a group of working mothers in Hong Kong. The author investigates this concept primarily through chats in a dedicated website for mothers called “Happy Land”. She has been a participant in this forum for a year before she starts investigating it. She has also met a lot of the participants off line and the off-line conversations verify and extend the online chats.

The author draws three conclusions:

a)      A lot of the chat shows mothers “performing” in a conventional mode as expected by society. This is shown in chats where mothers talk about their children in a positive way where they dwell on household issues, etc

b)      Some of the chat also refers to discontent. Interestingly, the reaction of other mums in the public forum is to pacify and to support. In offline conversations or private talk there may be different reactions like criticism or urging someone to leave their partner.

c)      Some of the conversations (online and offline) show the participants behaving “badly”, or somewhat subversively. The author interprets these moments as incidents where the mothers free themselves from their identity as mothers.

I enjoyed reading this text, as I’m personally interested in this subject. While the findings are interesting I don’t find them very surprising. I think they correspond very well to experiences I have of offline groups of mothers. I would also say that the larger a group is the less critical people would be with one another. Serious problems would be discussed in one to ones or in more intimate groups, while people in larger groups, particularly when they are new to the group would “represent” themselves in a more conventional way. I wonder whether the banter and “behaving badly” incidents can really be classified as subversive. This might be an opportunity to let off steam in order to “function” better again in the conventional mode.

I was quite concerned about the ethical questions behind this research. The author herself admits that this is borderline. I think if I had been one of the participants I’d have been quite upset about being observed and interpreted. At the very least it would have made me more vary in future to be open about private problems.

In short, although chatroom communication allows users more time to consider what they say and thereby greater opportunities for reflexivity, at the same time they are necessarily limited to certain masterstatuses by virtue of the way websites and chatrooms are set up and operate.

When chat is immediately objectified on the computer screen as one hits the ‘return’ key, the presentation of the self thus articulated and emerged is the product of a much more reflexive, dynamic and interactive process.

Chan, A (2008) The Dynamics of Motherhood Performance: Hong Kong’s Middle Class Working Mothers On- and Off-Line. Sociological Research Online. 13(4). [web site]

The Virtual Objects of Ethnography

This reading gives an introduction to virtual ethnography.  As a definition of Ethnography, the text cites Hammersley and Atkinson:

“…it involves the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly in people’s daily lives for an exended period of time [...]collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research”

This view, however relies on a realist interpretation of reality. Constructivism is challenging this view by denying that there is an objective reality.

This text looks at alternative approaches for the ethnographic study of the internet. It focuses on three areas:

1. Ethnography and the face-to-face

Previously, travel was important as a means of engaging with a different culture. Through participation and experience the ethnographer opened herself up to learning.  For an ethnography of the internet this displacement will be experiential rather than physical. Authenticity of participants cannot be proved, but should only be a problem if it arises as a problem through interaction with other participants.

2. Text, technology and reflexivity

Communication on the internet can be seen as interaction or as text (”as a temporally shifted and packaged form of interaction”, p.50). Texts can also be used as ethnographic material “in the ways in which they present and shape reality and are embedded in practice”. The text becomes “meaningful once we have cultural context(s)  in which to situate it”. (p.52) It might be of interest to follow the construction of a website or to see how contributions in a newsgroup are justified and rendered authoritative. An ethnographic researcher of the internet herself becomes a user of the internet and the account will always have elements of reflexivity. This construction of knowledge however can be challenged as not being a truthful representation of reality. 3 strategies can deal with this paradox:
- Including the member understandings of culture alongside the ethnographer’s account
- Focussing on the ethnographer, reflecting on this particular perpective, history and standpoint
- Embracing the paradox and making clear how the accounts are a constructed act

3. The making of ethnographic objects

Previously, ethnography focussed on physical space. This has come into question by a new concept of mobility. Recently, researchers have been more aware of the partiality and selectivity of their descriptions.

For virtual ethnography a multi-dimensional approach might be intersting (including online and offline relationships).
A different approach might be using “connectivity” as an organising principle. This could be “a multi-sited ethnography, conceived of as an experiential, interactive and engaged exploration of connectivity” (p.61) The new question is “not what is the Internet, but when, where and how is the Internet” (p.62) – the researcher could follow hypertextual links, follow the borrowing of material and images from other sites and other media, follow the authorship and readership of sites, the portrayal of the Internet in other media… The researcher can concentrate on flow and connectivity.

The article ends with 10 principles of virtual ethnography.

My thoughts:

While the idea of following the flow of the internet is interesting, I wonder how doable this is. As the author points out there are no boundaries, the researcher would have to set this out herself. You might be able to unravel the flow of a text from backwards, but never forwards. For instance if someone emailed you an extract from an article you could follow this up, read the article, see whether this was original or taken from somewhere else, etc. This might give you some insight on how we deal with knowledge.

Hine, C (2000) The virtual objects of ethnography, chapter 3 of Virtual ethnography. London: Sage. pp41-66

Wow, this was quite an intense week. I have to admit I found the visual artefact task really challenging!  I think this was a) because I don’t feel I’m a very creative person and b) I don’t feel very technologically able (which is why I find this whole MSc very daunting sometimes). I think the lifestream reflects how I was searching for tools and pictures and this was very random at first. I was looking at storybook, slideshare,  photostory, prezzi, etc. Photoshop particularly was a real revelation. I’d heard about it, but never used it so far. Then the first artefacts were finished and I really enjoyed them all and thought they were incredibly well done. The comments and peer review have also been extremely interesting to read. Ifeel I’ve learnt loads through this exercise and it’s really given me confidence to try out more tools and applications. It’s surprising how easy it is to use them. On the other hand it’s not only about using them, it’s also about wanting to say something with them.

There is a downside to all this, however, which was described very well in the reading “Mind the Gap”. Are we creating an exclusive society where some people become increasingly confident with technology while others are left increasingly insecure. (I can empathise really well with this. As I’ve described above I don’t feel naturally drawn towards technology, and I’m lucky to have the time and the money to embark on a programme like this MSc, otherwise I’d be one of the people left out in the rain.) I’m investigating e-readiness in my dissertation and am becoming increasingly aware that the digital divide is not only a world-wide problem of access and money (even though this is a huge problem). But also within our society you really need to keep up with the rapidly changing technology and a lot of people don’t have the resources to do this. The stunning visual artefacts that have been created really bring to life what is possible if you have the skills and the tools.

On another note I really liked the reading by Rose. I felt this was very relevant to all interpretation of visual materials whether digital or not. I liked the idea of meaning being created at various levels. The artefacts showed this, particularly the ones that weren’t immediately obvious. It was interesting to see how we (the audience) were interpreting them. But it was also interesting to hear what the authors had wanted to create.  The artefacts were also very much an indication of our times and of what is possible to create in this digital era.

A very thought provoking week! I feel quite exhausted!

Merchant, G (2007) Mind the gap(s): discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies, E-learning, 4 (3), 241-255.

Rose, Gillian (2007) Researching visual materials: towards a critical visual methodology, chapter 1 of Visual methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. London: Sage. pp.1-27.

This text looks at what is meant by visual culture.

Culture is defined as a process or set of practices, production and exchange of meanings between the members of a society orgroup. These meanings or represntations structure the way people behave. The visual is central to the cultural consruction of social life in contemporary Western societies.

The author outlines a framework for a critical visual methodology:

There are three sites at which the meanings of an image are made:
The site(s) of the production of an image
The site of the image itself
The site(s) where it is seen by various audiences

Each of these sites has three different aspects (the author calls these modalities)
- Technological
- Compositional
- Social

The author then exemplifies this framework by  interpreting a photo by Doisneau.

I think this will be a useful text for critically evaluating photos, or rather of finding meaning in them. I particularly liked the idea of considering the site where the image is seen by various audiences, as this means evaluating your own thoughts critically.

Rose, Gillian (2007) Researching visual materials: towards a critical visual methodology, chapter 1 of Visual methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. London: Sage. pp.1-27.

Merchant, G. (2007). Mind the Gap(s): discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies. E-Learning. 4(3): 241-255.

This texts states that digital literacy is “digital capital” (244) “I argue that those who have access to new technology and knowledge of its potential wield the power of the new force of digital capital”, particularly significant in advanced education and employment in late capitalism. Merchant shows an example where online socialization sparks political campaigns (street piano) and another example where category tagging in Flick-R leads to joining an interest group and founding an affinity space (p. 250). This affinity space then sparks learning through sharing of interest and “clearly constitutes socially-situated learning (Wenger)” p. 251. Merchant argues that digital literacy is necessary for these processes as it is “Central to new kinds of social practice” (p. 253) and people will increasingly be at a disadvantage if they are digitally illiterate.

I had already come across this text when I was researching digital literacy for my dissertation project. I want to conduct a survey on e-readiness amongst students in Continuing Education. This text could serve as an argument that it is worth introducing students to technology not only as a learning tool immediately for the classes, but also as a method for all kinds of social engagement.

Merchant, G (2007) Mind the gap(s): discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies, E-learning, 4 (3), 241-255.

I’ve been thinking about examples where pictures and text are traditionally put together for ease of understanding. This is particularly the case with signs. I’ve collected a few for my artefact. In this slideshow a sign without text will be followed by the complete sign with text. Please compare the examples. Does the image “need” the text? Is the image more obvious without text? Would the text alone be more effective?

I do apologise for the poor quality of some of the photos.

Another week has gone by. I’ve started to “feed” my lifestream from work as well. I thought it might be interesting to see how I make use of digital tools when preparing lessons, etc. I had been looking at quite a few videos which I was thinking of using in my lessons and had stored them in diigo.  I ‘ll probably just keep a few in for the end version of the lifestream. I like the way the lifestream keeps hold of all these different threads. It’s quite reassuring, as I’m usually the sort of person to take notes here and there and leave them lying around or save them on the computer somewhere. With the lifestream I know everything is there (somewhere – that’s the only drawback that it might get a bit unmanageable over time). The lifestream includes various sites I’ve been looking at with the visual artefact in mind. It includes my notes on the readings I’ve done and some video clips which were suggested by other students in the course.

The skype session was good this week as it was a chance to communicate more directly with the other students. My only problem was that I had only read one of the texts, but the discussion still helped me when I finally read the texts.

I read the three core texts this week and I found them all really interesting. I think these are questions that we are constantly grappling with as we make use of digital tools. How we are expanding our skills to deal with different types of communication and represenatation. What place these new forms of communication and represenation take up in our lifestyle and in our perceptions. When I was a student first time round we had to visit our lecturers during their visiting hours if we needed to speak to them. Now I get a constant flow of emails from my students. And even though there are no official “email rules” I do somehow judge my students on the way they express themselves in the emails. And even though emails are much more laid back then other forms of written communication there must be some underlying code that most students are aware of, for instance not to use texting abbreaviations in official emails etc. The genre of emails is changeable according to which activity system it is being used for.

I was also interested in the opposition between pictorial representation and representation through language as described by Kress. I’ve been on the outlook since them of examples combining the two as in picture dictionaries, signs etc.

Kress, G (2005) Gains and losses: new forms of texts, knowledge and learning. Computers and Composition.