Com125 Assignment 7: Open to the Communtiy

What is a community?
A community is a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. Most people are involved in some type of community whether they know it or like it. According to the article, "Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure?"by Fernback and Thompson, Cooley (1983) says that all normal humans have a natural affinity for community. (Fernback and Thompson, 1995) Theres no way you can avoid it unless your a hermit and I doubt thats the case. Fernback and Thompson also states, "The structural process that is associated with community is communication. Without communication there can be no action to organize social relations." (Fernback and Thompson, 1995) People who are active in communities gain social ties and relationships with the members they interact with. There are two types of communities people associate their selves with. People are involved in online as well as offline communities. There are some who prefer the online community better. As for me I prefer both.

Reasons behind me preferring to belong to both communities is because online you can communicate with people you probably will never see. You can be online to communicate with friends, family members, people you have just met, people you want to meet, etc. Online community is good, but it can also be a bad thing. There might be people that are frauds and are not who they say they are. You may be thinking their one thing, but can be totally different. Other than that you can catch up with friends, view how they are doing, how they are interacting and communicating with others. Its a excellent way to keep in touch with the ones you care about. What I admire about offline communities is you can physically get involved in it. It allows you to go out and actually meet new people, hand out with friends and family, create better relationships with people, and generate stronger ties. Also with an online communtiy you can't participate in community activities where you are able to communicate with a wide range of people. For instance, when I go to Alumni to play basketball I meet and make new friends all the time in which I would most likely only have communication with them at the gym. Being with a community you can't really do things like being physically active with the people you communicate with at the current moment. I think the online and the offline community both have its ups and downs.

I feel the internet helps improve someones relationship. For instance, I am a facebook user and if I didn't use it I probably wouldn't keep in touch with my freshmen roommate in college at all or others they i used to be close to, but am now relocated in different areas from them. Using IM is another way for people to develop stronger ties with people because you can communicate with people faster than on facebook or myspace. I feel the internet helps social ties more than they hurt them. With the internet you also have the option of adding who who want to communicate with so that you can keep internet predators away. According to the article, "Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing Community into being on social network sites" by Danah Boyd, it says, "“Are you my friend? Yes or no?” This question, while fundamentally odd, is a key component of social network sites." This statement is very true. These networks give you the option of accepting who you want to be your friend. If your accepting people who know and would like to know you can create a better relationship with the person because your not as afraid of sharing personal information with them.