Are online communities real communities?

Disposable1

Hey guys, doing an assignment and would love your opinion. Any information about your online community experience would be extremely helpful. I am interested in what you think but even a "yes" or "no" would suffice. Thanks in advance.

mahamageehad

Yes of course online communities are real communities.
At the core of the issue here, you need to investigate the idea of community.
A commonly accepted definition is "A group of organisms or populations living and interacting with one another in a particular environment." While traditionally this mean people literally living in the same space, the Internet has expanded that definition.

Going from there, I guess you should define what an online community is. Again, here's a common definition: "An online community is a group of people with common interests who use the Internet (web sites, email, instant messaging, etc) to communicate, work together and pursue their interests over time."

Already you can start drawing parallels between online and offline communities - the key connection here is communication. The main differences you need to investigate with online communities are the concept of anonymity and how that contributes/detracts from the community and the fact that their global availability can lead to a lack of variety in the community (potentially leading to echo chambers and the like).

That should give you a good start at least. Do you think that online communities are real communities?

biko

Online communities are redefining communities

Disposable1

Hey, thanks for the replies.

Disposable1

That's interesting. How do you mean?

biko

In the sense that communities used to mean people together in groups in real life.
Community school, community centre, etc...

With the advent of the internet a community is "redefined" to mean groups with shared interests but can be spread over the globe.

Disposable1

biko wrote: »

In the sense that communities used to mean people together in groups in real life.
Community school, community centre, etc...

With the advent of the internet a community is "redefined" to mean groups with shared interests but can be spread over the globe.

Hey,

thanks for replying, that was very interesting.

Disposable1

mahamageehad wrote: »

Yes of course online communities are real communities.
At the core of the issue here, you need to investigate the idea of community.
A commonly accepted definition is "A group of organisms or populations living and interacting with one another in a particular environment." While traditionally this mean people literally living in the same space, the Internet has expanded that definition.

Going from there, I guess you should define what an online community is. Again, here's a common definition: "An online community is a group of people with common interests who use the Internet (web sites, email, instant messaging, etc) to communicate, work together and pursue their interests over time."

Already you can start drawing parallels between online and offline communities - the key connection here is communication. The main differences you need to investigate with online communities are the concept of anonymity and how that contributes/detracts from the community and the fact that their global availability can lead to a lack of variety in the community (potentially leading to echo chambers and the like).

That should give you a good start at least. Do you think that online communities are real communities?

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it. To answer your question, I do think that online communities are real communities. The internet has been a valuable source of social interaction at times in my life when I had none.

Charity2020

Online communities are definitely communities - in the modern sense.

Mrs OBumble

They're real - in the same sense that imaginary numbers are real.

Disposable1

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

They're real - in the same sense that imaginary numbers are real.

Ah well, we're getting in to philosophical territory now, it's quite an interesting area.

Disposable1

Oh, I didn't notice the poll. I didn't even know you could do that. Thanks very much for setting it up.