Communities are networks that provide socialization, resources, belonging and social identity. Traditional community’s interpersonal ties are tightly knit and geographically bounded making social and material support easy to provide but limiting the amount of connection with outsiders (Wellman, 2001). However, the development of communication and transportation technologies have led to the dispersal of interpersonal ties resulting in the atrophy of geographically bounded communities. As social interaction on the internet has developed some have excitedly hailed the development of online “virtual communities” (Rheingold, 1993). However, before conceding the existence of virtual communities we must we explore various conceptions of community, how they can be applied to different forms of online interaction, and the problems with such applications.
What Makes a Community?
Communitas is a concept developed by anthropologist Victor Turner during his work concerning ritual in tribal societies. Communitas can be defined as “full, unmediated communication, even communion, which arises spontaneously in all kinds of groups, situations, and circumstances (Turner, 2004). Communitas during rites of passage can be broken down into three phases. First, individuals experience separation from their individual identities and prior roles within the structured social system. A second, liminal phase is a period of ambiguity during which individual identity is submerged and the impact of existing social structures on the individual is dramatically decreased. The internet may provide a liminal space in which nonverbal signs of status and role within society are invisible to those with whom one interacts. Finally, following the liminal phase aggregation occurs during which the individual returns to a more defined social structure.
Communitas, as an unstructured communal experience, is an alternative form of human interaction to formal, hierarchically structured social systems (Turner, 1995). At first glance it is easy to interpret communitas as the antithesis of structured forms of human interrelatedness. However, communitas does not destroy the existing social order but actually strengthens it. The experience of communitas is grounded in the emotional impact of being intimately connected to another. There is an inherently spiritual element to the concept of communitas which is understandable given that the early application of the concept to supernatural and religious experience within tribal societies. Still the emotion powering communitas is difficult to maintain and will eventually subside. This is not necessarily undesirable; Turner notes that “communitas cannot stand alone if the material and organizational needs of human beings are to be adequately met” (Turner, 1995, pg. 6). Rather than destroying the hierarchical structure of a society in which it is couched, it provides an emotional release which serves to validate, renew, and strengthen the existing structure (Turner, 1995). Indeed, the ideas and philosophies developed during communitas can be infused into the larger society resulting in subtle change. However, this modification is not an overturning of the existing social order but rather a small step in a society’s evolution. Thus, communitas and hierarchically structured social systems can be conceived of as dialectically opposed social systems that are alternately favored based upon the needs of the society.
Wellman (2001) provides an alternative definition of community with the concept of “networked individualism”. Until relatively recently most communities were bounded geographically by the area within which one traveled. Hence, most communities were neighborhoods with house to house contact. Improvements in transportation has led to advent of door to door communities in which a person may have very limited local ties but have relatively developed dispersed ties which are maintained by visitations. The introduction of personal communication technologies, such as the internet and mobile phones, have allowed individuals to develop person to person communities consisting of the network of individual with whom they communicate. This manner of thinking about community differs from that of communitas in that communitas necessitates a shared space, real or virtual, in which to take place. At its heart communitas is about shared group experience. In contrast, networked individualism holds that even physically collocated individuals may be operating within different person to person communities based upon the interpersonal ties they choose to maintain (Wellman, 2001). However, the development of person to person communities does not mean that interaction in shared spaces cease to be important. Wellman (2001) acknowledges that person to person communication functions to supplement and support face to face interaction rather than replace it entirely. In short, networked individualism is essentially personalized communication networks which often supplement face to face interaction leading to a diminished importance of place.
Community in Online Media
Rather than conceiving of computer-mediated communication as a monolithic medium it is more productive to acknowledge it as a conglomeration of various media (Preece, 2000). Each medium has different properties which influence both the extent to which a community can be coalesced through it as well as the community’s structure. For example, instant messaging is useful for providing quick, person to person semi-synchronous communication that is devoid of most nonverbal cues. While this medium may be capable of supporting Wellman’s person to person community, it is inadequate for the development of communitas which requires group participation. Therefore, it is important to separately explore individual mediums and how they impact the types of communities formed around them. Specifically, the early bulletin board based community of the WELL, wikis, with Wikipedia considered as the paradigm case, and blogs will be examined.
The WELL
The term “virtual community” was coined in reference to the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL), which can be considered the prototypical online community, by author Howard Rheingold (1993) in his book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Rheingold provides a history of the WELL in his book while making an argument that the online interaction found on the WELL constituted community. The WELL was an early bulletin board system created in 1985 by Steward Brand and Larry Brilliant as an extension of their Whole Earth Catalog, a counterculture publication first published in the 1960’s. The Whole Earth Catalog’s objective was to provide tools to allow individuals to become self-sufficient thus freeing themselves from the capitalistic market (Seabrook, 1997). The WELL was a continuation of these ideals as it was started as a deliberate social experiment with the hope that it would be vehicle of social change. Additionally, many of the original support staff were recruited from the Farm, a hippie commune in rural
Rheingold (1993) believes the WELL experienced a major turning point with the first death of one of its participants. He describes Blair Newman as an overly enthusiastic individual and prolific writer who was addicted to the attention that he garnered by participating in the WELL. Newman, who although quite accomplished, had previously suffered from drug addiction and was an unstable individual. Near the end of his life he decided almost on a whim to erase most of his contributions to the WELL, an act, which given his abundant contributions, damaged the continuity of many conversation threads on the WELL. According to Rheingold when Newman finally succeeded in taking his own life people responded to Newman’s death it two ways, but both were unmistakably emotional. First, some of the WELL’s participants attended his funeral and held a “virtual funeral” consisting of conversation threads set up where individuals both eulogized him. The second response involved criticized both Newman’s actions and accusing his eulogizers of hypocrisy due to their none to kind treat of Newman while he lived. This dual response to Newman’s death highlights the need to distinguish between cyberspaces and the communities which dwell within them. Not all participants felt that the WELL was a community, although a community of users may have existed within the WELL (Matei, 2001; Rheingold, 1993). Even Rheingold (1993) himself tacitly acknowledges this when he notes that rarely did individuals from the Grateful Dead forums interact in other parts of the WELL. The ritualistic response to Newman’s death and WELL participants perception of this event as a rite of passage provides evidence for the existence of communitas on the WELL. Rheingold notes a fellow participant astutely observed that “you aren’t a real community until you have a funeral” (23).
A much less rosy account of life on the WELL can be found in John Seabrooks (1997) book Deeper: A Two Year Odyssey in Cyberspace. Seabrook was a journalist for the New Yorker who first gained the WELL’s attention after writing an article about being “flamed” online. After initially critiquing his approach and writing style, the WELL participants began a series of vicious personal attacks on his competency when they became aware of his lurking on the forum. After Seabrook admitting how distressing he found these attacks, Rheingold, one of his most vocal detractors, soothed him somewhat by telling him, “It’s an initiation ritual, John Seabrook. Stick around and help us dump on the next guy. ;-)” (Seabrook, 1997, pg 177). These ritualistic attacks may have been especially consequential given Seabrook’s occupation as a journalist at an esteemed publication. During rites of passage initiates are broken down only to be reshaped by the community into which they are entering. Fledgling members are expected to behave humbly and to submit to abuse by more senior members (Turner, 1995). Seabrook’s journalistic credentials set him apart from other WELL participants making essential that he undergo initiation that striped that status from him prior to joining a community of writers.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia, the brainchild of Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, grew out of Nupedia, an early effort to create a peer reviewed online Encyclopedia. Unlike Wikipedia, Nupedia relied on a seven step peer review process that was eventually reduced to a two step process more in line with traditional academic publishing (Sanger, 2005) . Furthermore, it required that participants demonstrate expertise in their field of contribution. These policies, while not completely preventing participation from non-experts, certainly restricted their potential contributions to the site. Wikipedia was revolutionary because the wiki software allowed anyone to edit content. Additionally, it did not have the formal review process of Nupedia. Originally Sanger reports that both he and
Wikipedia holds to its claim of being an encyclopedia and justifies its lack of a formal review process through a philosophy that high quality entries will emerge through continual collaboration and improvement over time. Numerous critiques have been written of this philosophy, and claims have been made that what more accurately describes the product of collaboration on Wikipedia is regression towards the statistical mean in terms of quality ( Schiff, 2006; McHenry, 2004). Although Wikipedia claims to be an encyclopedia, perhaps the best metaphor to describe it is a knowledge swap meet where individuals share what they know with each other (Matei, personal communication). Wiki software offers an ideal environment for the development of communitas; anyone can contribute and the articles are unsigned. This provides a liminal space in which individuating features are submerged and status, in the form of traditional expertise, means little. Furthermore, gaining access to the administrative core of Wikipedia’s community requires hard work that can be equated to a rite of passage. About seventy percent of the articles on Wikipedia are the product of two percent of its participants.
Wikipedia is a good example of a community that is cycling through stages of communitas. First, as communitas progresses it proceeds through phases of spontaneous, normative, and finally ideological communitas. During ideological communitas societal models are prescribed in order to ensure others the opportunity to experience communitas. The development of Wikipedia policies, such as the neutral point of view policy, can be seen as the early stages in the development of policies and models for which ideological communitas calls. Second, Turner (1995) notes that communitas is a cycle that ends with the revitalization of the existing social structure. Wikipedia, which started as a grand experiment in egalitarianism, is showing signs of the power consolidation. For example, currently a small group of administrators have the ability to delete articles, block other users, and revert text more easily than other participants (Schiff, 2005). Sanger describes the Wikipedia as having progressed from “a nearly perfect anarchy to an anarchy with gang rule” (Schiff, 2005, pg. 6). In short, Wikipedia is a community on the downward arch of communitas.
Blogs
Another medium that has the potential to foster internet communities are weblogs, or blogs. Since blogging began in the late 1990’s they have been hailed as revolutionary because they allow publishing to the masses without the traditional publishing houses. The basic blogging technology allows authors to easily post content to a web page and allows audience members to comment on posts. The topics of blogs vary from the personal diaries, which seem to be strewn across the internet, to forums in which artists can display their photographs, to detailed travel accounts. However, two varieties of blogs that may be particularly conducive to the development of online communities are collaborative blogs and political blogs.
There are many blogs on the internet that do not constitute communities. Therefore, it is important to identify what properties successful blogs include that allow communities to coalesce around them. First, blogs must have a devoted audience in order to develop a community which can be built by a network of hyperlinks between blogs. Adding hyperlinks has been shown to attract other hyperlinks in turn building traffic (Barabasi, as cited in Wolf, 2004). Linking between blogs not only serves to build bridges to other potential readers on other blogs but also encourages bloggers to interact and collaborate. This can be consequential considering individual blogs are more likely to suffer narrow topic focus and low visitor traffic (Madden, 2005). Commercial blogging ventures recognize the potential of collaborative blogging communities and have attempted to amass networks of bloggers that work together producing fresh content among a set of blogs much faster than individual blogger would be capable (Madden, 2005). However, merely building a readership is not enough to ensure the formation a community.
The second element that allows for community formation on blogs is interaction in the form of comments on individual posts. Commenting allows individuals to engage both the blogger and fellow readers on either an intellectual or emotional level creating the potential for relationship formation. This feature of blogs is being embraced by technologically savvy politicians, corporations, and progressive advertisers. During the 2003 presidential campaign Howard Dean used blogs as a way to both communicate with his constituency as well as gage reactions to his speeches. He notes in a Wired magazine interview that people had “given up on traditional politics precisely because…they had no way to shout back” and the net provided them with that opportunity (Wolf, 2004). Additionally, technology companies have such as Sun Microsystems have also informally encouraged employees to blog as a way of reaching consumers (
Communitas may be especially likely to develop when individual bloggers band together into conglomerates or work together on collaborative blogs. Many blogs that allow comments are open to the general public creating a liminal space in which participation is not restricted to an elite few. Furthermore, visitors are not merely passive receivers of information but are encouraged to actively engage both their authors and other audience members. The inherent egalitarianism of the technology is conducive to the building of communitas. Still communitas may not be sustainable especially as the blog readership grows to an unwieldy size. Turner (1995) states that when communitas falters the previously existing social structure is reaffirmed and revitalized. For example, a large blog such as instapundit.com has removed the comment feature in effect killing the community that once surrounded it. However, it still has a substantial readership. It has cycled through the stages of communitas and has reemerged resembling the one to many nature of traditional news publications.
Towards Future Research
If one considers online communities to be primarily communities of interest where only a single or few elements are salient, then interaction in a wider context may have significant effects on the relationship. Specifically, communitas in online communities should be explored in the context of networked communities. Networked communities differ from many “virtual” communities because individuals first get to know one another within a geographically based community and subsequently interact online. Those who do not meet prior to interacting online at least have a reasonable expectation of encountering one another face to face (Kavanaugh, Carroll, Rosson, Zin, & Reese, 2005). Furthermore, online communities often turn to offline community rules and roles to guide their interactions (Preece & Maloney-Krichmar, 2003). Although the internet provides a liminal space in which offline communities can develop communitas, simply moving geographical communities online likely is not sufficient encouragement to develop communitas. Anticipated future face-to-face interaction along with status differences brought to the online environment may stifle the potential for communitas. Groups that exhibit large differentials in social status or have strict offline hierarchies would be less likely to experience communitas online. For example, local book club, in which status and hierarchies plays less of a role, is more likely to experience communitas online than hierarchically organized work teams within a corporation. Other variables likely to effect the development of communitas for networked communities include the proportion of offline to online interaction and homogeneity of participants. Research should be conducted evaluating offline community/group structure, offline patterns of interaction, and offline community statuses role on inhibiting or promoting communitas in networked communities.
Research should also be conducted on the effect of face to face interaction on virtual communities. Rheingold (1993) paints a relatively positive picture of the offline interaction of online communities with his description of WELL parties. However, offline interaction provides the potential for previously unknown status cues such as socio-economic class, age, sex, and race to become salient in interaction. Research should consider the frequency of offline interactions and the level of group homogeneity on the development of communitas in online groups. This is an important area of study given that as community members form interpersonal ties and grow closer they are likely to communicate using more forms of media (Wellman, 2001).
Form and interaction in online communities is heavily shaped by the communication medium they employ. Blogs, wikis, and bulletin board systems all have unique histories and properties that influence subsequent communities. One direction for future research is to examine how these online communities react when asked to interact face-to-face. Additionally, the factors that contribute to communitas in networked communities should be explored as they move online. In conclusion, the internet provides a liminal space that is conducive for the development of communitas. However, online community’s interactions may be determined by both the medium and the individual attributes of participants.
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