Does the internet strengthen community 2.0?

In the fall of 1999, William Gaston wrote an article to address the question, does the Internet strengthen community? In his paper, he argued that contemporary American society is guided by two forces: valuing individual choice and longing for community. He assessed the concept of online groups as communities under four different criteria: Limited membership, shared norms, affective ties, and mutual obligation. A decade later we can see how the capabilities of the internet for social interaction have changed dramatically. The advent of web 2.0 technologies resulted in a large increase in usability and popularity of interactive online social groups.

New communication technologies affect social interactions in ways that are difficult to predict. As Gaston pointed out, social reality moves faster than empirical scholarship so he could only speculate as to how the internet would affect community. Galston warned against several civic consequences of online groups including an inability to foster mutual obligation, the lack of acknowledgement of authority, and the lack of development of voice. He argued that these “voluntary communities” should not be taken as comprehensive models of a future society. Was he right in his assessment of internet online communities? In this post, I’ll examine his concepts of community and address if his predictions held true ten years after they were made.

Choice and Community

In his article in 1999, Galston points out that several authors emphasized the idea that as individual choice increases, social bonds tend to weaken. BJ Fogg, director of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology lab echoed his sentiment in an NPR article on Social responsibility in January of 2009. He believed that connecting to a wider range of people resulted in a flattening of relationships.
Other authors of recent articles also support the idea of “flattening relationships.” Rosen, in her article on virtual friendship, cites how friendship on social networking sites focuses on collecting, managing and ranking people you know. She notes that mySpace encourages users to make friends with as many people, and people can become competitive over gathering more friends than others. Although most people realize that a “friend” on a social network like facebook has different connotations then a real life friend, the proliferation of social networking connections between people shows how friendship can be “watered down” with online groups.

On the other hand, I believe that this doesn’t address all relationships in internet social groups. As LaRose points out, many authors neglect the possibility that hyperpersonal online interactions may be more intimate than their offline counterparts. While it is difficult to measure level of intimacy, one can argue that for some people, the prospect of anonymity allows them to share details about themselves that would otherwise have repercussions in everyday life. Those who are reserved in real life or those who feel alienated in real life may feel more comfortable opening up to others online who share commonalities.

Not only is the idea of choice relevant to online communities, but does the choice offered in such communities also affect our relationships in real life? For example, if I can meet beautiful women in online chatrooms, would I lose interest in dating women in the local community? Would relations with my wife suffer? If I have all these friends on Friendster, will I spend less time with my real life friends?


Mutual Obligation

Galston’s examination of mutual obligation operates under the premise that mutual obligation in online groups should be measured relative to the same obligations in non online groups. He then quotes Nessim Watson’s theory that mutual obligation has for the most part disappeared from contemporary American society. Thus we must ask a new question, “Do these online groups continue to reinforce a lack of mutual obligation or do they break the trend and help to develop civic virtues?”

The suicide of Abraham Biggs committed in front of a webcam exemplifies a lack of mutual obligation on the part of users in that community. When he posted his desire to commit suicide, some users sent him text messages urging him on. Perhaps other users could do little to stop him, but the fact that they encouraged him shows a lack of consideration for his life.

However, there are other examples that counter the notion that there is no sense of mutual obligation in internet group. Ayelet Waldman received encouragement from people on the internet after writing about her suicidal tendencies on her blog. She wrote a book on her experiences as a bipolar mother entitled Bad Mother. Thus in some ways, there does exist compassion and encouragement in online groups and a sense that people do care for each other. I don’t think this is easy to identify as more or less prevalent compared to real life support in communities.

Limited Membership

I feel the term “Limited Membership” is misleading in the way Galston used it in his paper. His main idea in that section was that a low barrier of exiting an online group resulted in people fleeing rather than working out and resolving conflicts within the group. He called this a loss of the exercise of voice. I can find several examples that challenge his notion that the internet leads people to accommodation rather than expressing dissenting opinions.

For one thing, It’s common for bloggers to argue against the posts of other bloggers. Consider the blogpost of Umair Hague in response to a blogpost by Seth Godin. Umair address Seth’s notion of people blogging too much by challenging the notion that everything must be useful. In his statements on attention, Umair also brings up the point that in a mass media world we all have to share attention space. “Attention is only a commons when distribution is scarce; that’s when end up having to share space with Nascar fans, militarists, and religious fundamentalists.”

Naturally all groups have limited membership but I think it’s misleading to suggest that being less selective makes a group less of a community. We can note that even within social networking group, users form smaller subgroups or factions which may also qualify as communities. For example, people who play MMORPGs like World of Warcraft form and join guilds, which can be very exclusive and even competitive. Some require the submission of resumes of in game achievement and examples of responsible game play.

Shared Norms

Galston wrote that case studies suggested that online groups developed complex systems of socialized norms. It’s easy to find examples where online groups develop a set of shared norms. 4chan, for instance, is a site which first started propagating several internet memes including RickRolling and Chocolate Rain.

Galston also makes the point that voluntary community is likely to lead to demands for offline social and political groups to have norms that are enforced consensually and informally. In other words, they would be weary of authoritarian figures. However, such figures of authority still exist in social networking arenas. For instance, moderators have the power to delete posts of others and sometimes get users banned.

Affective Ties

The main question in this section is whether or not we can create deep, meaningful connections with others within Internet groups. Does the internet encourage us to lie more about ourselves than we normally would in real life? Rosen stated that Social Networking sites made relationships more reliable, but we still cannot be sure whether they are humanly satisfying.

A research paper written by Robert LaRose and co. and published in the Journal of Online Behavior examined 171 students in a study on the internet and depression. They found that Internet communication with people we know can alleviate depression. They concluded that depression happened more from stressful interactions with the internet itself rather than other people.

Conclusion

So after reading all these articles I’m still not sure if I can honestly say that the internet fosters community. It’s not an easy question to answer and there are legitimate arguments for both sides. What is evident is that internet social groups challenge our previous notions of what it means to be a community. My question to research has to deal with Galston’s original question but in a larger scale.

Question

For the most part, Galston talks about American society and American community. He does mention feeling nostalgia after visiting a small town in Portugal, but not of a potentially larger global community. If communities should have limited membership, one of Galston's criteria, then is there such a thing as a global community? Do you believe there is a global community and if so, does the internet strengthen the bonds of that community?

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Part(2) The investigation

I joined WAYN.com, a social networking website that lets you plot what countries you've visited and where you are going. WAYN stands for "Where Are You Now" and I chose it because it sounded like it had a global appeal and it was structured for you to meet people from different parts of the world.

I used to have a facebook account when I was an undergraduate in Iowa, but currently I'm not a member of any online social networking website (unless you count uh discourse). It's been a while since I've used one of these and I was impressed by the features and the interface of WAYN.



One of the first things I was asked to do was fill in what countries and cities I have visited around the world. I could also click on which countries I wanted to visit, and which countries I planned to visit.

The first significant interaction I had was checking my list of friends only to find that several people from England and one person from Poland were already friends with me. At first I thought that these were fake pictures that were just for display, much like the ones that people get when they buy a new pictureframe. I thought to myself, "What a clever idea that the designers implemented. This way it looks like I have some friends so other people won't think I'm such a loser." Later I found out that those people were the "team" members of WAYN and thus they were automatically added to everyone's profile.

The second thing I did was to browse for people online. When I clicked browse I noticed that the default browser displayed profiles that were: Female, United States, age 25-30. I can only speculate as to why this is the default, but it makes sense that the default would be to find people of the opposite sex (or maybe women are the preferred default) who are around my age (or maybe 25-30 is the most popular age) and in the same region as me. However, I personally wanted to find people who were from different parts of the world.

I believe that emphasis of WAYN on travel and where you visited promotes interest in going to other countries and meeting new people. This is why my initial instinct was to seek out people from other countries and why I was surprised to see US women as the first profiles that appeared. My thinking is that if I wanted to meet people from a closer community I would have joined a more popular social networking website like facebook. The appeal of WAYN for me is that you get to meet people who have interest in traveling and have been to other countries (thus possibly more cultured???).



Another feature that surprised me was that I needed to pay in order to browse other peoples profiles without them seeing mine. My first instinct was to click the "Be invisible - browse other people's profiles without being seen" button but I was then redirected to a page that said I needed to pay for a VIP account to get that privilege. I immediately though of the Albrechtslund article on participatory surveillance and how the designers of the site understand the advantage of being able to learn from others without them knowing you.

There were so many features in WAYN that I was overwhelmed trying to look through them all. You could post a blog, pictures, or videos. You could search for travel information in cities including hotel accommodations, restaurant reviews, flight information, night life, other people who have taken or will take that trip, etc...
Another feature that I've never seen before is a mobile translator that translates foreign languages on your phone (supposedly). I didn't try it because you had to be a VIP to access it.

I didn't actually interact with anyone on the site. I'm not much of a social networking kind of person and I tend to lose interest in these kind of sites fairly quickly. Overall though, I felt like there were many features on WAYN that supported communication with other people from other areas of the world. I think that a global community can exist if you think of global as "encompassing all regions in the world". Global community doesn't mean that everyone in the world is a member, but rather there aren't any geographic distance barriers preventing community members from having meaningful interactions.