unfortunately, we didn't have enough time yesterday to discuss the presentation before jessica arrived.
I'm wondering what your thoughts - how do you define community? is it possible to create the emotional bonds online that are necessary to call a group a 'community'? is it better than offline? worse? do we need to re-define what we mean by community?
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I definitely think that an online community is a real community. Sociologist Carla Surrat describes a community as “a social setting in which people derive social solidarity from common identity and tradition” (The Internet and Social Change 83). Many online communites share some common identity through similar interests, attitudes, or actions. They also share in a common tradition of going online and exchaging personal experiences and thoughts regularly. Thus, the online community functions as a real community, despite the fact that common bonds and identities occur in the so called "virtual" world rather then the real world.
i agree that a virtual community is a real community- i've been on message boards were people share real intimate parts of their lives. once the message board dissapeared members actually started up their own MBs and kept in contact. i still call these people my friends.
~T
Online community should be considered as a real community because Internet has already transformed our lives in every aspect. Compared to real communities, the people don't really know each other, but they can be linked to each other by their interest, hobby or attitudes, beliefs, etc. One person can belong to multiple communities and interact with likeminded individuals from anywhere on the globe.
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