Cavanagh A. Sociology in the Age of the Internet
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Introduction
to
Part Three
The previous
chapter
argued
that
the
way
that
the
internet
has
been
constructed
in
media-centric accounts depends
on
unexpurgated
assump-
tions
about
the
social role of
the
media. The chapters
in
this
part
address
this
through
an
examination
of
the
linked
themes
of
community
and
identity.
Chapter
8 examines
the
implications of
the
coming
of
the
internet
for
sociological
understandings
of
community
.
Beginning
by
tracing
the
development
of
the
concept
of
community
in
sociology, this
chapter
goes
on
to
look
at
empirical studies of
internet
life. I begin
by
analysing
the
alleged
divisions
between
online
and
offline communities, before going
on
to
an
examination
of
the
dynamics
of
online
communities,
with
particular
reference
to
forms
of
internal
organization,
group
solidarity
and
the
relationships
between
groups. I here argue
that
identity
has
come
to
be
an
organizing narrative of
community
as this has
been
developed
by
internet
scholars.
Chapter
9 goes on, therefore,
to
examine
the
ways
that
identity
has
been
theorized
within
dominant
approaches
to
the
internet. I argue
that
cybercultural approaches exhibit
profound
inadequacies
as
a framework for
accounting
for
the
dynamics
of
online
interactions
in
so far
as
they
are
demonstrably empirically false,
and
methodologically flawed. Moreover,
as
I
argue
in
the
final part, accounts
of
cyber-identity are often guilty
of
a selective
appropriation
of
prior theory,
and
one
which
is
characterized
by
an
overly
easy acceptance
of
voluntaristic accounts
of
the
self,
which
underestimates
the
constraining
and
enabling powers of
the
social.
8 Community
That
the
coming
of
the
internet
has
made
an
impact
on
the
way we view
community
is
a
common
theme
of
most
general accounts of
the
internet
and
society (see Slevin 2000; Castells 2001; Flew 2005). Before we
can
examine
this
in
detail, however, we
need
to
first
understand
how
it was before
and
this,
unfortunately, is
no
easy enterprise. Earlier I
pointed
to
the
central status
accorded
to
definitions
in
sociology
and
never has
the
issue
been
as
thorny
and
intractable
as
in
the
case
of
community.
Not
for
nothing
did
the
German
sociologist
Herman
Schmalenbach grumble
that'
"community"
has become a
catchword used
to
designate every possible delusion of
the
time'
(cited
in
Delanty 2003: 43). Even a brief scan
of
the
literature reveals
that
one
of
the
few areas of agreement between sociologists of
community
is
that
an
agreement
on
an
adequate definition is impossible
to
reach (Bell
and
Newby
1971; Baym 1998; Delanty 2003).
Jenny
Preece (2000) offers a list
of
definitions
commonly
used
today
for
community,
including
shared goals,
common
interests, shared activities
and
governance, cooperation, satisfaction
of
mutual
needs,
enjoyment
and
pleasure,
and
location. However, Preece's
list,
although
extensive,
is
quite overshadowed
by
George Hillery's,
now
legendary, 1955
study
which
identified
no
less
that
94
commonly
used
definitions
of
community
(Bell
and
Newby 1971: 27-9). From these Hillery
distilled 16 core concepts,
including
in
the
list
common
life, kinship,
consciousness
of
kind, possession
of
common
ends,
norms
and
means,
locality, totality
of
attitudes, social system
and
individuality.
Common
usage
of
the
term
today
includes: geographical location, neighbourhood; member-
ship
of
interest groups, for example
the
sociological
community;
lifestyle, e.g.
the
rock
community;
as a
shorthand
for
common
forms of social identity, e.
g.
the
gay
community,
the
Asian
community;
amongst
many
others. Amidst
such a diversity
of
usages agreement is
thin
on
the
ground.
It
is
not
really surprising
that
community
is such a disputed concept.
In
the
first instance
the
concept
has a particularly privileged place
in
the
sociological
cannon.
As
Nisbet has
pointed
out,
the
community-society
dichotomy
is
one
of
the
central 'linked antitheses [that] form
the
very warp
of
the
sociological
tradition
...
epitomizations
of
the
conflict between
tradition
and
modernism,
between
the
old order
made
moribund
by
the
industrial
and
democratic
Community 103
revolutions,
and
the
new
order, its outlines still unclear
and
as often
the
cause
of
anxiety as of
elation
and
hope'
(Nisbet, cited
in
Bell
and
Newby 1971: 25).
Community
as a
concept
was
at
the
heart
of sociology's project
in
the
nineteenth
century
to
understand
social changes
wrought
by
the
transition
to
the
new
urban-industrial society. Modernity, early sociologists observed,
brought
about
the
decline
of
community
through
the
gradual erosion of its
functions
and
nature,
and
through
the
colonization of these
by
the
state
and
the
nation.
Hence early sociology takes as its
point
of
departure
the
attempt
to
understand
the
forms
and
nature
of
social
cohesion
in
this
new,
reconfigured world. The seminal work here
is
that
of Ferdinand Toennies
(2001), whose analysis of
the
transition
from small-scale, agrarian
Ge-
meinschaft
community
to
the
large-scale, industrial
and
urban
Gesellschaft
was a powerful influence
on
Durkheim
and, later, Parsons
and
Merton.
Toennies argued
that
the
composition
of
society was
brought
about
through
changes
in
the
form of association. The central
point
for Toennies
is
that
the
forms of association
into
which
people
enter
bring
about
different types
of
social organization.
In
the
Gemeinschaft society relationships are 'primary',
close, affective
and
overlapping; law
is
informal
and
derived from consensus,
derived itself from custom;
the
community
is
realized
in
a
common
set
of
customs
and
a
common
sense of place.
In
the
Gesellschaft society, by contrast,
interpersonal relationships are rational, produced
through
and
maintained
by
means-ends
calculations, supported
by
formal contracts
which
derive their
power from centralised authority,
and
in
which
social cohesion
is
achieved
through
public
opinion
and
shifting priorities.
In
Durkheim's work, as
in
that
of
Toennies,
modernity
involves a
movement
from
one
pole towards
another,
in
this case from mechanical solidarity, a sense
of
community
founded
on
shared beliefs
and
customs,
to
organic solidarity, social cohesion
brought
about
through
mutual
dependence based
on
specialization
and
the
division
of
labour.
In
both
accounts
community
is
seen
to
be eroded
by
the
advance
of
modernity. People
become
more
socially fragmented
and
isolated,
the
social
bases of
the
communal
order are
broken
down. For Durkheim this could
produce
the
pathology
of
anomie, a sense of normlessness, social isolation
and
lack
of
purpose
that
was at
the
root
of
social ills (Durkheim 1952).
This
conception
of
community
as
a sense of belonging
and
common
purpose
is
picked
up
and
amplified
in
the
work of
the
Chicago school.
In
the
accounts of Robert Park, Louis
Wirth
and
Ernest Burgess
in
the
1920s,
the
characteristic
concern
of
the
Chicago sociologists
with
the
spatial contexts
of
social action (Abbott 1997) leads
to
an
abiding interest
in
the
composition
and
forms of
community,
social
cohesion
and
integration.
It
is, oddly, this
concern
for spatiality
that
leads
the
Chicago sociologists
to
de-emphasize
the
role
of
location
and
geography
in
understanding
community.
For Park
and
for
Wirth,
neighbourhoods
were
more
than
physical entities
bounded
by
geographical limits. Rather,
the
Chicagoans
understood
space as
the
synchronic organization of social action. This allowed
them
to
put
aside
location as
the
sole identifier
of
community
and
instead consider space itself
as formed
through
interactional fields.
This
in
turn
led
to
an
early interest
in
understanding
media's role
in
social
cohesion. The Chicagoans
took
their
lead here from Dewey's
now
famous
104 The internet
as
a social space
assertion
that
'Society
not
only
continues
to
exist by transmission, by
communication,
but
it
may
fairly be said
to
exist
in
transmission,
in
communication'
(Dewey 1916, cited
in
Foster 1997: 34).
As
Wirth
puts it:
[a]s
long
as
we identify
urbanism
with
the
physical
entity
of
the
city,
viewing
it
as rigidly delimited
in
space
...
we are
not
likely
to
arrive at
any
adequate
conception
of
urbanism
as a way of life
...
The technological
developments
in
transportation
and
community
which
virtually
mark
a
new
epoch
in
human
history have accentuated
the
role
of
cities as
dominant
elements
in
our
civilisation
and
have
enormously
extended
the
urban
mode
of living
beyond
the
confines of
the
city itself.
(Wirth 1938: 4-5)
Robert
Park was
more
explicit
concerning
the
role of media. For Park
it
was
the
newspaper
that
allowed us
to
'learn
to
know
our
community
in
the
same
intimate
way we knew
them
in
the
country
villages' (1923: 278),
to
act
as
the
means
to
convert a 'mere geographical expression
into
a
neighbourhood
...
a
locality
with
sentiments, traditions
and
a history of its
own'
(Park 1926, cited
in
Abbott 1997: 1155).
The decline of
the
Chicago school witnessed a retreat from this newly
expanded
way of treating
community.
'[L]ocation
in
a
natural
area simply
became
another
variable describing
the
individual' (Abbott 1997: 1155),
and
the
shifting sociological sands drifted over
the
work of
the
Chicagoans.
It
was,
therefore, a retrograde step from this richer
understanding
of
community
contexts
that
allowed Parsons
to
attempt
to
define
community
as
'that
collectivity
the
members
of
which
share a
common
territorial area as
that
base of operations for daily activities' (Parsons 1951: 91, cited
in
Delanty
2003: 36). Moreover,
it
is
the
backlash against
the
centrality
of
location
to
this
new
sociology
that
opens
the
door,
in
the
1960s, for McLuhan
and
his
acolytes
to
present
their
thesis of
community
as
connection
by
heterogeneous
means
as
new
and
radical. Thus Richmond defines
community
as:
social systems
in
which
the
characteristic forms of social interaction take
place
through
networks of
communication
maintained
by
means
of
telephone, teleprinter, television
and
high
speed aircraft
and
spacecraft,
etc. Such relationships are
not
dependent
upon
a territorial base
or
face-to-
face contact,
nor
do
they
involve participation
in
formal organization.
(Richmond 1969, cited
in
Bell
and
Newby 1971: 47)
Whilst this would
hardly
be a credible critique of Chicago sociology's
approach
to
community,
it
is
a devastating attack
on
the
mainstream
definitions established after Parsons.
Community
studies were thereafter
forced
into
retreat along
one
of two lines. The first
is
towards
the
affective
root
proposed
by
Weber: 'a social relationship will be called
communal
in
and
so far
as
the
orientation
of social
action
...
is based
on
a subjective feeling
of
the
parties
...
that
they
belong
together'
(cited
in
Delanty 2003: 39). The
problem here is
that
community
can
then
only
be said
to
consist
in
the
subjective
orientation
of
an
actor towards a social situation. Thus
community
moves from
the
more
or
less
involuntary
connections
between people
to
the
solely
voluntary
relations
into
which
we
enter
as
free individuals. This
in
turn
Community 105
then
means
that
the
conceptual space covered
by
the
term
'community'
can
more
validly be represented by
other
terms, lifestyle
or
subculture being
two
leading contenders.
In
these
term
s
community
appears
only
as a resource for
the
individual
in
the
construction
of self-identity. The idea
of
community
as a
compelling moral force,
as
this appears
in
Durkheim
and
Toennies,
is
sheered
away.
The second line
of
retreat is again towards a
'stem'
definition. Whereas
'community'
as
a
term
once encompassed religious belief, family, culture
and
profession, referring
to
ties
that
exhibited
depth
and
continuity
as
well as
an
affective
bond
(see Bell
and
Newby 1971), once these areas have
been
clawed
away
by
other
descriptors
and
concepts sociologists were left
with
the
study
of
'the
formal properties
of
social configurations' (Scott 2000: 9),
which
is
to
say
the
form, rather
than
the
content
of social relationships.
It
is
this
that
aligns
community
studies
with
actor-network
theory
(discussed
in
Part One). This
movement
is
presaged
in
Margaret Stacey's work from
the
late 1960s,
in
which
she calls for
an
abandonment
of
community
as
an
object of
enquiry
and
a refocus
on
'institutions
and
their
interrelations
in
specific contexts'
(Bell
and
Newby 1971: 49)
as
the
proper
subject
matter
for study. The focus
on
the
local
as
a site
in
which
specific
institutions
bring
about
the
interaction
of
local
and
national
systems removes
the
need
for further discussion
of
the
local/national/global divide
but
only
at
the
expense of a
reduction
of
the
object
of
enquiry
to
the
interaction of systems.
Thus
the
development
of
the
concept
of
community
in
sociology has
been
a highly politicized process
but
this again
is
hardly surprising. The status
of
community
as a political
hot
potato,
as
well
as
its centrality
to
sociology,
reflects
the
political loading
of
the
term
more generally.
'Community',
as
Kamenka (1982) has argued, has
been
the
repository
of
political fears
and
dreams
throughout
the
ages,
and
its
invocation
functions as a form
of
ideology.
Community
appears
to
be
something
of a
'hooray'
word (Whyte
2003: 61) for,
as
Raymond Williams
points
out, it
is
never used unfavourably,
whether
in
mainstream
or
alternative discourse. For Williams (1961),
community
evokes
the
ideal or pure form of
the
social,
uncorrupted
by
influence
and
power, a social
bond
which
pre-exists
and
nullifies
the
power
of
the
state. This is
much
the
meaning
of
the
term
community,
as
Delanty
(2003) points out,
when
we speak
of
alternative
communities
such
as
the
Israeli kibbutzim, or survivalist
communities
in
the
USA,
groups
that
are
reflexive, artificially
constituted
communities
organized
by
and
through
opposition
to
modernity.
It
is
also
often
the
ideal
that
online
communities
attempt
self-consciously
to
foster,
whether
through
the
communitarian
ethos
of
groups like
the
Well (Rheingold 1994) or
through
the
provision
of
a safe
haven
which
is
the
purpose
of
many
self-help
and
similar groups online.
These forms
of
alternative
communities
are based
around
a normative
understanding
of
community
which
exhibits either nostalgic or futuristic
tendencies, positing
community
either
as
something
to
be retrieved from
the
past or,
as
in
Marxist ideologies, as
something
projected
into
the
future
(Delanty
2003).
Community
in
socialist terms
is
a project
in
progress,
which
will reach fruition
with
the
death
of
the
state. The
more
common
sociological
and
political
argument
is
more
conservative,
namely
that
we have witnessed a
106 The internet
as
a social space
'loss
of
community',
that
historically real
communities
thrived
in
ways
that
are
no
longer possible.
In
much
the
same
manner
as
the
discourse of
'the
social'
is
used
to
mobilize
and
legitimate political interests (Rose 1991), so
the
discourse of
'community'
is
also a politically loaded site of
contestation
or
reproduction of meaning.
It
is
precisely this politicization
of
the
term,
the
fact
that
it has become a repository of 'fears
and
dreams', ideals
and
hopes,
that
ultimately causes Bell
and
Newby
to
despair
of
ever being able
to
give the
definition
of
'community'
(1971: 31).
Thus
what
the
study
of
online
community
inherits
is a sense
of
community
as a
political
construct,
tied
into
utopian
or
dystopian
possibilities. This idea
often
takes
the
form
of
a portrait
of
community
as
opposed
to
power, a refuge from
the
ills of
the
state or
of
modernity.
Accompanying
this, however, is
another
legacy, a
particular
view
of
community
as
reducible
to
self-created voluntaristic linkages,
which
is
a
severe
attenuation
of
the
concept
as this was initially used. This partial
reading,
in
combination
with
the
utopian
cast of
the
debate privileges a
reading of
community
as primarily
an
affective space.
As
the
next
chapter
will
argue, this
in
turn
feeds back
into
constructions of
the
self. For
the
purposes
of
this
chapter
it
is
sufficient
to
note
that
the
definition
of
community
used
in
many
discussions of
the
impact
of
the
internet
on
it
is a particular,
and
from a
sociological
point
of
view, partial, reading.
As
Joseph Lockard notes,
the
idea
'[t]hat cyberspace
can
even be mistaken for
"community"
testifies
to
the
attenuated
sense
of
community
that
prevails
in
too
many
quarters
of
American society' (1997: 224). The same is true
in
a sense
of
sociology.
In
order
to
examine
the
way
this
discourse
of
community
has
been
mobilized
in
relation
to
the
internet
I will
now
move
on
to
an
examination
of
the
major
themes
that
have
been
foregrounded by researchers of
online
community,
beginning
with
early scholarship
on
the
relationship
between
online
and
offline communities. The
chapter
will
then
consider
the
nature
of
online
community
and
evaluate
the
major claims
to
novelty
which
have
been
made
in
relation
to
it,
including
propositions
concerning
internet
commu-
nities
and
hierarchies,
and
the
nature
and
form of solidarity
in
cyberspace.
Online and offline communities
The study cited
most
often,
and
the
point
of departure for
most
subsequent
work
on
online
community,
is
Howard Rheingold's 1994 work, The Virtual
Community. Rheingold's study
of
the
online
community
'The Well' set
the
terms of debate for subsequent work
in
so far
as
he
posited
that
virtual
communities
were
communities
in cyberspace,
that
they
were supported by,
and
existed solely in,
interaction
online
. This
opened
up
a space for
discussion of
online
community
as
something
unrelated to,
and
therefore
perhaps opposed to,
community
in
real life. This
in
turn
drew
on
and
enshrined
a 'sticky'
common
sense
of
online
and
offline life as
fundamentally
divided
and
it became logical
to
discuss
online
community
in
terms
of
its
impact
on
'real life'. This 'impacts'
approach
has,
then
,
been
core
to
developing
the
field of
internet
community
studies.
In
essence
the
impacts
Community 107
approach
is
focused
on
the
effects
that
internet
use
may
have
on
other
forms
of
social
behaviour
and
interaction,
and
is
concerned
with
attitudes,
demographics
and
time
use. The published research
and
the
conclusions
which
emerge are, however, sharply polarized.
On
the
one
hand,
the
Homenet
study (Kraut et
al.
1998; Kraut
and
Kiesler 2003)
and
the
work of Nie
and
Erbring (2002) found
that
high
internet
use lessens social involvement
in
other
fields. Nie
and
Erbring's studies found
that
internet
users
had
less
contact
time
with
family
and
friends
and
spent
less
time
in
offline social
activities
than
non-users. The
Homenet
studies argued
that
internet
use was
associated
with
a decline
in
the
size
of
the
user's social circle
and
that
users
were more likely
to
suffer from loneliness
and
depression. The Pew Project
on
the
Internet
and
American Life, however, found quite
the
reverse. These
studies established correlations
between
internet
use
and
improved relation-
ships, especially strong ties,
and
a slight increase
in
the
size
of
a user's social
circle. White
et
al.
(1999) have argued
that
internet
use leads
to
a decrease
in
reported loneliness
and
isolation,
and
the
University of Southern California
Annenberg
(USC)
Internet
Reports (Cole et al. 2004) have consistently
shown
that
internet
use does
not
reduce
time
spent
with
family
and
friends.
The contradictory findings of
the
different studies
thus
present a serious
problem for assessing
the
nature
of
the
impact of
the
internet, if any,
on
offline social life,
and
this problem
is
aggravated
by
the
way
that
these studies
have
been
used
in
secondary accounts,
with
Homenet
and
Pew
both
attracting legions
of
adherents.
In
part
the
contradictory results
can
be
traced
to
methodological difficulties
in
the
research designs. For a start,
the
studies draw
on
different data sets
and
ask quite different questions (see
Burnett
and
Marshall 2003: 67). Moreover,
as
Castells has
pointed
out,
the
researchers drew
on
quite different constituencies. Whereas
the
Homenet
studies
took
already active
internet
users as
their
subjects,
in
Kraut et al.'s
study subjects were provided
with
computers
in
order
to
observe their
online
experience. Thus,
in
explaining
the
contradiction
in
findings, Castells
points
to
studies showing
that
frustration, depression
and
information
overload are
linked
to
early-stage
adoption
and
decrease as familiarity
and
competence
with
the
technology
increase (Castells 2001:
123-4).
More serious, however,
is
the
tendency
within
this approach
to
mistake
correlation,
the
co-presence
of
internet
use
and
civic
engagement
or
disengagement, for causation
and
also a lack
of
specification
around
the
direction
of
cause.
As
Putnam
points
out,
the
forms of negative impact
which
these studies register
cannot
logically be traced back
to
the
internet
. 'The
timing
of
the
internet
explosion
means
that
it
cannot
possibly be causally
linked
to
the
crumbling
of
social
connectedness
...
Voting, giving, trusting,
meeting, visiting
and
so
on
had
all
begun
to
decline while Bill Gates was still
in
grade school' (2000: 170).
In
fact,
Putnam
suggests, rather
than
under-
standing
internet
community
as
contributing
to
the
decline
of
the
social, we
should
better
understand
it if we saw it
as
response
to
that
decline. This
point
is
one
that
seems
to
unite
both
the
cyber-optimists, of
which
Putnam
is
one,
and
cyber-dystopians. For Mark Slouka, whose work has
been
a rallying
point
for
the
disaffected,
the
core question
of
online
community
is
'[w]here does
the
need
come from
to
inhabit
these alternative spaces? .
..
the
answer I keep
108 The internet
as
a social space
coming
back
to
is:
to
escape
the
problems
and
issues
of
the
real world' (cited
in
Wellman
and
Gulia 1999: 169).
For Wellman
and
his co-authors
the
rise
of
internet
communities
is
also
seen
as
linked
to
changes
in
the
nature
of
community
in
real life,
although
Wellman would resist
the
easy identification of these wider changes
as
a loss
of
community.
Wellman
argues
that
internet
communities
should
be
understood
not
as
a response
to
changes
in
the
offline social,
but
as
an
example
of
them,
seeing
such
groups
as
'a
technologically
supported
continuation
of
a
long
term
shift
to
communities
organized
by
shared
interests rather
than
shared place or shared ancestry' (Wellman
and
Gulia
1999: 172). This view
is
also taken
by
Castells,
who
sees
the
internet
as
an
instrumental
space tied
to
the
everyday life of users (Castells 2001: 118). Both
Castells'
and
Wellman's work moves away from
the
understanding
of
internet
community
as a response
to
modernity,
an
alternative
community
founded
on
opposition
to
the
status
quo
or
as
a
means
of
meeting
needs
not
addressed
in
modern
communities,
and
understands
them
as
a
continuation
of
those
social arrangements
by
other
means. Castells
and
Wellman
are
the
most
prominent
authors
in
a concerted sociological endeavour
to
dispel
the
dualism between real life
and
online
life
that
was originally
introduced
in
the
work
of
Rheingold
and
others (see also Miller
and
Slater 2000: 5-6).
In
so
doing
these authors are reinstating
the
necessity
of
the
rich contexts
of
the
Chicago tradition. Thus a final
major
problem
with
the
Homenet/Pew
contradiction
is
the
extent
to
which
the
studies are
dependent
on
the
construction
of
the
internet
as
a separate
domain,
distinct from
and
in
competition
with
other
social arenas
and
other
activities.
It
may
be possible
for a sociologist
to
separate
internet
use from
other
activities
in
the
laboratory
but
it
is
more
problematic outside
of
it.
Understanding these
communities
as
an
extension of real life, however,
draws
on
a definition of
the
internet
as
a
neutral
medium
rather
than
as a
social space,
and
this
is
to
sidestep
the
questions
posed
by
internet
communities. A secondary
strand
of research takes
up
this issue,
namely
the
characteristics of
internet
communities
in
their
own
right.
In
this
emergent
area,
internet
communities
are
examined
with
a view
to
under-
standing
their
internal
dynamics,
the
forms of relationship
which
they
facilitate or foreclose,
and
it
is
to
this
which
we
now
turn.
Types
of
community
In
considering
internet
communities
sui generis, a form of association
which
need
not
directly
map
onto
other
forms of
communal
activity,
the
idea
of
the
internet
as a truly social space, rather
than
as
a
medium
of
other
social spaces,
is
foregrounded. However, such studies
in
practice
cannot
disregard
the
offline
in
quite
the
manner
that
such
an
attempt
would
suggest. Indeed,
the
level of integration, overlap
and
replication
between
offline
and
online
is a
core issue for these types
of
study. The
extent
to
which
these
communities
are
structured
by
offline, external considerations is regarded
as
a key analytical
resource for
understanding
their dynamics. Early on, Baym's work
on
fan
Community 109
communities
(Baym 1997) ranked external contexts
as
one
of
the
five
main
influences
on
the
forms
and
style
of
community
concerned,
the
others being:
the
technical infrastructure
of
the
system, speed
of
connection,
organization
of
materials;
the
purpose of
the
group;
the
personal characteristics
of
the
users;
and
the
temporal
structure
of
the
forum. For Baym, virtual
commu-
nities are
not
an
artefact or a resource,
but
a type
of
association
which
can
take
many
forms. The five factors she identifies dynamically interact
in
practice
to
shape
the
eventual form. Thus,
to
take
an
example, a
support
group dedicated
to
helping
members overcome
an
addiction could operate
primarily
as
a
means
of
collating
and
disseminating
information
about
the
addiction, resources for
the
recovering addict, inspiring stories,
and
so on.
In
this sense it
would
act similarly
to
a broadcast
medium,
in
the
sense of a
central message being disseminated
to
multiple sources. Alternatively,
it
could act
as
a support, group
in
the
sense
that
individuals chat, offer each
other
practical
and
emotional
support
and
are 'there for each
other'
when
in
crisis. However, if
the
members are widely dispersed geographically
then
it
is
less likely
to
be able
to
support
that
role. The provision of
emotional
support,
to
be effective, requires a rapid,
if
not
immediate, response. Thus someone
posting
in
crisis
to
the
support
group
who
was
one
of a few members
in
a
different
time
zone
to
the
majority
may
be unlikely
to
receive
an
adequately
rapid response. The
temporal
structure
of
the
group, therefore, also relates
back
to
the
demographic characteristics
of
the
members. If
the
majority are
North
American office workers,
as
in
the
case of
the
soap opera fan
community
Baym first studied,
then
our
exemplar
support
group
would
operate best
to
provide
emotional
support
during
North
American office
hours
as
the
majority of users are
most
likely
to
be logged
in
at
that
time
and
in
that
context. The personal characteristics of
the
members, profession,
extra-communal resources
and
personality will also act
to
shape
the
nature
of
support
received,
whether
advice given
is
practical
help
or
commiseration,
and
so on. The purposes for
which
the
community
was originally set
up
are
also a key
to
understanding
its eventual form, according
to
Baym,
although
it
is
clear from
the
above example
that
such
purposes are
dynamic
and
change
according
to
changes
in
the
other
four factors.
In
studying
the
nature
of
online
communities
the
core issue
which
has
been
foregrounded
by
sociologists has
been
that
of
heterogeneity versus
homogeneity.
In
large measure this is a reactive research agenda,
prompted
by
fears
that
the
prevalence
of
online
communities
is
producing
a
deformation
of
what
it
means
to
be social.
As
Putnam
explains,
the
fear
is
that
internet
communication
is
subject
to
a form of cyber-Balkanization,
where interaction
is
single-stranded,
connected
only
in
one
limited
context
(Putnam 2000: 178). The fear
that
internet
communities
actually represent
the
dissolution
of
the
concept
of
'community'
into
that
of 'interest group'
is
founded
on
the
anxiety
that
such
'communities'
actually close
down
the
options
that
they
purport
to
elaborate. Where
the
promise of
the
internet
is
bringing people together, providing
the
opportunity
to
explore
new
interests
and
gain
new
knowledge,
it
is
argued
that
the
processes at work
in
online
communities
tend
to
reduce
the
possibility of exposure
to
the
new.
'Much
of
the
net,'
argues Doheny-Farina, 'is a Byzantine
amalgamation
of fragmented,