“When people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal feeling” (Rheingold, 1993)
First of all, looking at the Bankeyfields site overall it markets itself as “Tunstalls community website”. It has the aim of inviting local people to discuss neighbourhood issues, blog, post or read crime alerts and contribute to a local directory. It also informs residents of neighbourhood watch meetings. You get a sense of community spirit from the users of this site as they share what Bell (2001) refers to as a “shared interest”. Each of these people have set up accounts on the Bankeyfields site as they feel it will allow them to contribute to local cohesion and will bring them together with like minded people. Bankeyfields has been set up as a means of supporting the sense of physical community already in place. Many have argued the value of virtual spaces as a means of developing online communities. Many support online communities as a way of creating a true sense of community. For example Kollock $ Smith (1999) believe,
“Not only are online communities real, but also that they have the potential to support face to face communication and helphold local communities together”
This is very much the case with Bankeyfields. The online users are there to support the physical community.
Looking at the particular forum thread I have decided to focus upon (http://www.bankeyfields.co.uk/forum/beware-trick-or-treat-threat-bankeyfields-neighbourhood-watch) it is apparent that the users share an online community spirit or a shared interest as discussed earlier. The Timeline, located here http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/27969 gives an indication of the frequency of the postings. Many of the forums and blogs on this site have a similar amount of actual written responces although they have a significantly larger amount of people who viewed the thread or posting. The forum tile I am focusing upon is “Beware- Trick or Treat threat” so far there have been six postings and I am expecting (hoping) there may be additional posts to come. Reverting back to the research question fo this section “Does this forum show evidence of there being a virtual community”? I would have to answer that with a resounding yes. Whay have I reached this conclusion? Well, it is apparent from the first blog posting that the users support one another. The first post has been written to advise and warn fellow users and those who share the same physical community about a bunch of rogue trick or treaters acting in the area. This shows a shared interest in keeping the area safe. The threads then go on to share similar expreiences of this incident, reinforcing a shared experience. There fore it is evident that the users of Bankeyfields act as a community on as well as offline.
Tags: Ethnography mini project
Great posts – but I cant seem to view the Timeline – it says I need a password. I registered as a user just in case, but it still wont show it to me. It says I dont have the credentials.