For my practicum project, I am doing Special Interest Communites. So far, it has been going pretty well.
I've joined three different discussion centers about the Milwaukee Brewers because I am a huge Brewers and baseball fan so I thought it would be the most interesting topic for me. I am on the blog BrewCrewBall.com, the Brewers discussion forum on ProSportsDaily.com and became a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers page on Facebook. While their are similarities, there are also some major differences. The facebook page does not garner a whole lot of actual discussion about the team--rather, it just serves as another thing on facebook with very little interactivity with other Brewers fans. The PSD discussion forum is made up entirely of user content. Users create topics, and discussions in that section revolve around said topic. I have already been on BrewCrewBall some, so I know it better. It primarily focuses around blog posts made by authors of the site, but there is a very active comment section and a part of the site for user submitted content.
Discussion Question: A lot of what Watson writes about in his phish.com study revolves around what it means to be a community, particularly online. What, to you, makes a discussion forum/blog/website a community? Are there certain sites that you would say are absolutely communities? Do you think that online communities can't exist--that you need an actual physical presence to be considered a "community"?
I think in order to be considered a community, it's really pretty simple. There has to be interaction amongst the followers--be it chatting, blogging or uploading comments, pictures or videos. Is YouTube an online community? I think so, because there are consistent comments on videos in which followers can discuss their opinions with one another. On the other hand, it's important to distinguish between a "community" and a "fan base". Simply visiting a Web site community with others who consistently view it doesn't make it a community. There needs to be interaction.
ReplyDeleteSome quick examples of online communities are Facebook, Twitter and ChatRoulette, in my opinion. According to the phish.com article, there needs to be communication with viewers to be a community, and it's hard to say there isn't any in those sites.
Our country and world is becoming so virtual and technologically advanced that I think a community can most definitely exist without the physical presence of people. Take Skype for example. My roommate is studying abroad, so when we Skype, does that make it not as valid just because we're not in a physical presence as one another? It's a tough topic to debate, but with everything in our world seeming to go digital, I think it's time to shift the definition of just what a "community" is.