This week I am looking at communities. Traditionally a community is associated with a certain group of people often living in the same area. To me the word community often creates a sense of belonging. I am part of various communities both on and offline, for example communities such as CMDKIT and LFC(Liverpool football club) both of which are on and offline. When I'm on campus in dkit, instead of seeing myself as a student of dkit, I feel like I belong to the creative multimedia community instead. It is much more intimate and personal. You have a network of close friends and the lecturers are extremely supportive of everything their students do.
As I am an LFC fan, I am part of the football community.The great thing about being a football fan is no matter where you go around the world, the first person you will talk to in a room of strangers is the person wearing the same jersey as you. Supporting the same football team gives you anchor to engage with a fellow fan. Somebody you have never met before doesn't seem like a stranger when they share the same passion as you.
Historically/traditionally, a person's community would be their neighbourhood. Your neighbour would know everything about you and you would know everything about them. If you needed a favour, you'd go to your neighbour. You didn't chose your neighbours but often you would befriend them. Traditionally the neighbourhood was intimate and local.
Now however, online communities are thriving. There are many communities such as fan, gaming but perhaps the biggest community at the minute is the social website Facebook. Today you can go onto Facebook and see what your friends are up to. Instead of popping next door and having a gossip with your neighbour, you can now find that same information on Facebook. Facebook is only one example, there are other social websites such as twitter and previously bebo. All support McCluhan's theory of the global village.
Today teenagers are hanging out on websites such as Facebook rather than in shopping centres or park benches etc. There are great advantages to this. Parents know where their sons and daughters are. They mightn't know what they get up to online. Teenagers are known for getting in trouble for hanging around in public places and some often rebel and retaliate because of it. Teenagers also like to drink when they hang out offline. This is less likely to happen when online although it has to be said the majority of teenagers will still always drink together offline. For teenagers, the best thing about hanging out online, is the fact that there is no limit on when the can chose to do it. Shopping centres close, social sites don't. Staying out late leads to questions from concerned parents. Hanging out online in your bedroom does not.
However hanging around online eliminates a lot of those problems. Sure there are a lot of new risks that come with hanging around online such as getting involved with online predators but the majority of teenagers have common sense with todays technologies. Of course it has to be said teenagers still do hang out on park benches and in shopping centres but perhaps its not as frequent as it once was. The online alternative is just as popular.
In the past are community was entirely offline. However today it is a hybrid of offline face to face human interaction and online interaction.
That's enough culturing about for this week.
p.s
I forget
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