Achieving true community May 27, 2012
Posted by Wanetta Ayers in Uncategorized.Tags: social media, virtual communities
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Community exists whenever people connect and interact. The concept of virtual communities arose as people began to gravitate to online mediums nearly forty years ago. Social media is the latest in a long line of evolving technologies that enable people to form community regardless of time, distance, or other barriers. The pace and proliferation of social media is the realization of what McLuhan described as the global village and Telsa envisioned as the globally networked brain or nervous system (Federman 2004).
Social media and virtual communities
Virtual communities have the same challenges as analog communities. Community members play roles and assume tasks in order to sustain the community. In his book The Different Drum, M. Scott Peck describes his theory of the four stages of community building. The first is pseudo-community, where members interact and behave in superficial ways to avoid conflict. I think that best describes the state of most social media interaction.
However, social media is a powerful platform. Through reach, frequency, and immediacy, social media is transforming the personal, family, and social sphere. In Peck’s nomenclature, a sense of community comes from going beyond superficial interaction; hiving around common issues, problems, and needs; developing supportive norms and behaviors for community interaction; and working through difficulties and misunderstandings to achieve community-based learning, problem-solving, and understanding. To achieve sustainability, virtual communities must continue to evolve toward this sense of true community.
Trends and influences
The drive toward true community is already giving rise to the need for specialized private networks. These so-called “white label” platforms provide a generic, almost invisible platform for a community to build and brand its identity through member engagement and user-generated content. These personalized social networking platforms are emerging to fill the desire to achieve true community outside the commoditized, widely known social media sites. Check out these examples:
The convergence of social media to mobile will also influence virtual communities, not because of the mode itself, but because mobile is a ubiquitous, global presence that is embedding social media in all aspects of life. Community members can engage with greater relevance in real-time through mobile social media applications. Your community is never farther away than a text, tweet, or post on a mobile device that is often the first and last check-in of the day.
According to Mayfield and Rheingold, “a particular kind of literacy is necessary for the potential power of communication networks to manifest . . . the skill sets that accompany media such as writing are complex and entail each individual tool-user’s social involvement with a community of other people who have also mastered the skill.” Rather than degrade written communication, as many have theorized, social media may give rise to a renaissance in writing skills by creating the need for brevity, precision, and power.
Conclusion
Virtual communities and social media will continue to evolve. True community is achieved when neither the medium nor the technology defines the community, but rather it is defined by the quality of human interaction. What virtual communities do you participate in? What brings you back again and again? What one thing would you do to deepen the sense of true community?
References:
Federman, M. (July 23, 2004). What is the meaning of the Medium is the Message? Retrieved May 27, 2012 from http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm .
Hendrickson, M. (July 24, 2007). Nine ways to build your own social network. Tech Crunch. Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/
Hinchcliffe, D. (March 22, 2010). When online communities go to work. Enterprise Web 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/when-online-communities-go-to-work/1342
Mayfield, R and Rheingold,H. (2008). Participatory media literacy. Social Text. Retrieved from https://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy/
Peck, M. Scott. (1988). The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace. New York, NY: Touchstone.
Wow. This is good stuff, Wanetta. You’re taking me to new places!
I wonder how KickApps, CrowdVine, and Me.com compare to Ning? I guess I’ll have to go take a look.
I particularly resonate with your last observation, “True community is achieved…by the quality of human interaction.”
In the mid-90s I participated with a community of about 2000 global participants on an email listserve called “learning-org dialogue on learning organizations,” a topic attractive to people from MIT’s Sloan School of Business and others interested in their work on systems dynamics. Weaving through the inevitable dialogue noise, I thought some of the dialogue was brilliant; certainly inspiring at the time for me.
At de Lange in South Africa was developing a theory, then, about community, which significantly derived from his work on thermodynamics.
Among other things, the theory involved seven criteria (he called them “essentialities”) one could use to evaluate community and factors contributing to organizational emergence (for example, the difference between a group and a community). They were “wholeness, sureness, spareness,” and four others that I may share with you some day. I still use that and the rest of his rich framework in my thinking about relationships, communication, and community.
Dan:
Thanks for your comment. One of my classmates shared a resource called Backplane. I have not investigated it yet, but is sounds like a “white label” aggregator where you can rationalize multiple channels like Ning, Canvas, Tumblr, and Pinterest. There is an interesting side story in that Lady Gaga helped financed the start up. Here is a link: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/16/lady-gaga-backed-backplane-raises-over-4m-from-sequoia-more-acquires-sharing-platform-cortex/
I have come across references to de Lange, but never followed up on any of his work. Sounds very interesting.
Thanks again,
Wanetta
Wanetta great post. Never heard of the new communities you mentioned. However agree with you. Private communities will be the future of social media and what will keep social media going.
Thanks Lorena. It will be interesting to see how private or specialized communities develop.
Whoa! Now that was real deep Wanetta!! In a weird and crazy kinda way, I kinda feel like that was a psychological lecture on social media relations verses attributes. I also like your thought process on the mobile aspect of it all, especially because of the fact of it dealing with human interaction and less the electronic piece of it. Overall, social media is the transformation between people and interaction.
Well said!
Thanks Fred. Yes, I agree, we need to focus on the quality of the interaction and how the medium facilitates the purpose and outcomes we are seeking. I appreciate the feedback. Thanks again.
Well said indeed! Your comment that “True community is achieved when neither the medium nor the technology defines the community, but rather it is defined by the quality of human interaction.d! Your comment, ” You nailed it. Regardless of the platform, it always comes back to people connecting with people.
Thanks Devin. I belong to a few online forums. It is fascinating to watch the process of community evolve. Some thrive. Some fail and dissolve. The strength of virtual communities may be that the process is very fluid and can happen quickly if participants are highly engaged and adaptive. Maybe that is what happened with the Arab Spring uprisings – people found that their community was larger, stronger, and more engaged than they had realized.
Great Post; well written! I love the content and graphic. I learned something new from your blog.
Thanks Liz. I struggled with this post for a several days. It took me most of that time to figure out what the assignment meant to me. I related it to a few experiences I have had with online forums. It is interesting to see how members assume certain roles like teacher, gatekeeper, etc. It is also interesting to see how these groups enforce norms and standards. Thanks again for your comment.
I absolutely agree with your statement regarding how true community is achieved. This is the beauty of online communities- they offer a virtual “haven” for almost any type of interest. Each person has their own interests and no two are exactly alike. For example, if a person’s friends are not interested in healthy cooking, that person can find other like-minded individuals who are in an online community. Do you belong to any online communities? I think they allow people to broaden their horizons and explore topics that they otherwise would have no idea about. They enable people to learn more about any interest they may have and collaborate ideas as well, making our world a “smaller” place.
Thanks for your comment Leah. Yes, I do belong to a few online forums. One is for a somewhat uncommon health issue. I was amazed to find an online community of people that had the same issue. The value is incredible – that there are others who understand my issues and concerns, that they share information and resources that allay my fears and point me in a positive direction, and that together we have all contributed to research being done in this area. It’s all good stuff!
I definitely believe that you are right and virtual communities are driven by human interaction. Virtual communities are successful due to how much human interaction they are able to have and how many people are interested. I definitely think that obviously technology and the idea itself plays a huge part in virtual communities but we as humans are the ones who drive it. Great point!
Thanks Sue. I saw real and virtual community at work in an unexpected way this past week. I am visiting friends in Seattle. A horrific crime spree occurred on Wednesday. The murderer ended up about seven blocks from where I am staying in West Seattle. SPD, convention media, and citizens were using social media real time, a community blog was posting updates, and the police closed in on the suspect in less than six hours. There was some misinformation spread, but for the most part, it was accurate or corrected quickly. It was a frightening situation, but amazing to see the community pull together virtually and literally to put an end to the madness.
Sue…
You know, I’m thinking “how much interaction communities have” may be both an indicator of their success as communities, and “how much interaction” may also be a necessary factor for their success. In other words, my experience with deLange induces me to frame my thought to say there may be a threshold quantity of interaction necessary for sustainable community, and sometimes not too much interaction may be a factor as well (spareness: quantity-limit).
In addition, I think quality of interaction plays an important role in a community’s vitality (deLange called it sureness: identity-categoricity).
A lot of us are experiencing novel technology-mediated community. I’m interested in the factors that induce communities to thrive or languish. Maybe you could unpack insights to a question like that, Wanetta, in another essay. ?!