Week Seven Summary (2): Community and our Ethnographies

arthurh — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:13:20 +0000

I want to focus on the types of virtual association I have observed with 10 of the 12 mini-ethnographies read by me so far. For me the breakdown appears broadly like this:
Caroline’s Bankeyfields is an online community grafted on to a real community and concerns itself with real life issues therefore exhibits online essentially all the aspects of local communities. Its focus is local interest.
Tracy’s Forest of the Moon and Northlands communities share all the major aspects of community with the addition of the creative-imaginative role-playing skills but mostly outside the non-online community world. Its focus is role play.
Eneas’ Dublin virtual community acts and reacts as a non-online community with the exception that real persona’s are mostly concealed. It is a masked community. Its focus is events and pleasure.
John’s The Session, community is predominantly online yet replicates the non-online community world due to the kinship, affection and well-tempered advice of its members towards one another. Its focus is all aspects of Irish Music.
Sarah’s quilting group underpins its identity as a community by sharing family details and pictures with one another. Its primary focus is all aspects of quilting.
Andy’s Steelmen is an online community grafted onto a non-online community. The entry qualification is a passionate interest in gossip about a football club which is its sole focus.
Now I come to Henry’s term ‘online specialist focus group‘ which I like very much.
Henry’s Ning groups appear to have a shared interest but the warmth of community interaction remains largely absent.The focus is practical teaching and events.
Sibylle’s Sleeping Cats group lack the warmth and concern about which John wrote so they remain a narrow online specialist cat sleep focus group.
Maz’ mscdystopia is also a relatively narrow online specialist focus group but there is nothing in its rules or behaviour to prevent it developing into a community.
Arthur’s flickr and Yeats group is extremely narrowly defined as a double narrow filtered specialist online group which lets its focus on Yeats and the visual speak for itself and sees no need of other interaction.
I wrote this for others to comment upon and amend as well but it has helped me clarify in my own mind the spectrum between an alliance for a particular purpose and a true online community.

Arthur's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog » Sibylle

Week Seven Summary (2): Community and our Ethnographies