Tutorial Six: The internet and online communities

This blog is about online communities. The online community that I will be discussing is Facebook. The web address for Facebook is www.facebook.com. The focus of the community is communication and networking.

On facebook people can create their own account where they can upload their own videos, photos, notes and links to other websites, photos or videos. The photos, videos and notes can then be commented on. Each account has a wall on which the user can add posts called a statuses. Their status can be anything from saying what they did that day to telling a joke. To communicate people can write messages on eachothers wall. People can comment on both the statuses and the comments and can click a function to proclaim that they ‘like’ the status or comment. People can also send their friends videos, photos and links. Messages can be done privately through email or publically onto the walls. Users add other facebook members to be their ‘friends’. Walls can be public or private and if private then only their friends may view their wall and content (such as photos). Users can also join groups where they can be informed about the topic of interest and also communicate with the other members of the group who share the same interst. When the user is logged on to facebook they can enter a chatroom where they can privately chat backwards and forwards to their friends who are also logged on. This sight is very interactive as it allows for backward and forth communication and forums for multiple people to communicate and share ideas, thoughts and feelings. People contribute by adding to their account (such as photos or statuses) which provides other users something to view which may be of use for entertainment, informing, educating and much more! They also contribute by interacting with others which can be in the chat rooms or sending messages (privately or to others wall) which can be written or in photo or video or link forms. They also contribute by commenting on other people’s activity such as statuses and messages.

The facebook community can offer a lot for people which means there are numerous reasons why people contribute to it, some of these being
-A way to communicate with friend and family serving as a purpose of organising events, being up to date with happenings etc, in this seeking to stay in touch with friends and family
-A way to see what friends and family are doing with their lives, in this seeking to be informed and up to date with their friends and families life activities
-A way to get to know new people, in this way seeking to extend the network of people they know and making freinds
-A way of being able to let out thoughts and feelings (this may be via messages, statuses uploading of photos and videos), in this way seeking to personally express themselves
-A way of knowing what’s going on in the community, in this way seeking to gain a sense of ‘in the know’ and inclusion to the wider community
-A way of sharing life events with others, in this seeking to allow others to be involved in your life and being up to date with your life events.
-A way of communicating with people of similarity to you, in this way connecting with people who you can relate to
Cut and paste an example of the type of topics being discussed (you may have to provide a context to your excerpt).
An example of a topic that is discussed is social events. For example a someone’s post is “Everybody come to Danny’s Hawaiin party this saterday night, it’s gunna be meean!”. Some of the comments to this post was people sharing what was going to happen at the party and people asking and being informed about information about the party (time, venue, dress code etc). This served as a purpose of discussing and organizing a social event.

With the use of Facebook, ethical issues may arise if
-Information is posted which causes harm to or is of offence to any individuals
-Intellectual property is published with no attribution or consent
-Information is published in an unjust manner

The facebook community provides benefits not available traditional notions of community. The facebook encompases a world wide community. This means that there is a large variety of cultures being able to contribute to the community giving it great diversity. It also means that people can travel afar and still be in community with their loved ones. It also means that people have a large range of options to extend their networking.
The draw backs however are that with out face to face contact the level of communication is limited as there is limited expression of tone and no facial, volume body or physical touch for expression to communication. This can cause miscommunication and confusion. The lack of face to face contact can make people lose social skills and they can withdraw from face to face social settings. Online communities can only be accessed by people who are able to access and use the internet. The users being in a range of geographical contexts means that the people linking up are in a position of limited support of eachother as they cannot practically interact.