The truth about communities
There’s this certain thing about communities. Maybe it’s because of work.
I am currently working on my Communication Revolutions essay, in which I will be examining and describing the Internet, with a special focus on the use of social softwares and community sites such as Friendster, MySpace, Face Book etc.. I got drawn into the thought of looking of the masses as communities, and how these are working in shaping the Internet and how it is, or is not, comprising ‘communication revolutions’. That in itself is not easy as it seems. Being the ill-disciplined thinker as I am, I jump onto new ideas VERY quickly, and get excited with these new thoughts. And then I think about it alot, juggling it between notions of right and wrong (or rather, how I would argue it). Communities, are they something that the Internet has made visible (read: Imagined Communities)? or are social softwares a new sort of community all together?
And then there is the Transient Spaces online documentary, which I would actually love to take it a step further if we were given much more time to work on the content. A long-term observation, if you would like to call it, but I would say that being more involved with the communities (like participating, getting to know the people) would some how yield a different end product to what most of us are thinking, structuring and producing by deadline. I can’t really tell which role is better to undertake, that of the participant (more involved, and probably more biased); or that of the observer (neutral but lacking in understanding).
So which role are YOU taking? tell me about it.
I have a meeting set up with the representative of the City of Yarra Council on Wednesday morning at Fitzroy Town Hall. Wish me luck 
K.
Filed under: Rantings, Transient Spaces | 1 Comment
re: Transient Spaces. It’s a good point you’re raising about how active we are as participants in the community we are exploring. I’m both an observer and participant. The community I’m looking at is learning communities. I’m a student and a teacher so I’ve got experience as an active participant in real-life learning communities (and possibly a bias). I’m not a participant within a virtual learning community so I’ve had to be more of an observer and rely on research and interviews. A difficulty in analysing the behaviour of virtual learning communities is that their “interaction” occurs within password-protected areas online that I do not have access to. Their learning process is not transparent.