Kellner 1998 and Poster 1997 state that the idea of online groups as the heart of a new revived public sphere. It could also be said that online communities keep you attached to the rest of the world, as you can find out what is going on in different places 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Online communities allow all different types of people to talk to each other on different topics they have in common, they also bring together people who in a physical community may not speak to each other because of different reasons.
It has been asked if communities can be separate from a physical location? I think that online communities can be separate from one central physical location because there is always one central location for each online community which people come to, to socialise with others.
Lister states that online communities allow:
- Opportunities doe education and learning
- Create new opportunities for participatory democracy
- Establish countercultures on an unprecedented scale
- Ensnarl already difficult legal matters concerning privacy, copyright and ethics
- Restructure man/machine interaction
Online communities can be both empowering and disempowering, i think they can be empowering as they can bring people together for example "Jay Allison" telling his story, empowered readers/audience as they could relate to him, it allowed them to share their stories, give advice and reply to him so he knew he wasn't alone, however online communities can be disempowering as some people mat feel like they still don't fit in and online bullying may happen.
The net provides a public sphere, of newsgroups, bulletin boards, email groups etc which all enable users to communicate with the group. Many of the discussions about the affairs of the day and all different kinds of culture. However there are limitations to this.
Having freedom on the net, is a good thing and a bad thing, it is a good thing because it allows to to access all different kinds of material, as a student we need information on all different topic from all different points of view.
Freedom on the net is a bad thing because it enables people, to hack into computers, pornography is widely available, and the worst threat of all, paedophiles having access to children on the Internet. There are other problems as well such as flaming or obscene conversations in chat rooms which adds to the fear of contamination of files via file exchange and downloads. However these aspects of the Internet can be stopped in time, and i do think what with out freedom on the Internet we would think about things in a very different way.
This is quite a long post in which many points are raised. As I've said before, this deters comments because readers think "where do I start?"
ReplyDeleteIf you drop in a quote, develop your point around/upon that quote, otherwise you're not 'adding value' through your post. Look at the 'rules of engagement' for the three areas we're looking for in your online work.