Thursday, January 24, 2013
Community
In class the other day, we discussed how tech gadgets, such as laptops, iPads, etc. can either create or destroy a sense of community. The focus was on iPads and how individuals can customize them while simultaneously becoming part of a community. i.e. sharing photos, uploading religious texts, partaking in chat rooms and commenting on sites. By assuming that technology can either help or hinder the sense of community, we first need to think about what community is.
It's easy enough to pinpoint the neighborhood we come from, the schools we've attended, sports teams or music ensembles we belong to but TV, internet, SMS, and cellphones are based on a broader sense of community. A pertinent article is "Imagined Communities" by Benedict Anderson. In his article, he discuses the idea of nationalism and nation. He argues that media has propagated this idea of a massive community, regardless of physical distance or contact. Community in a national sense is something in our imagination - we haven't met every single fellow American and we never will.
The same goes for online communities. Gamers create friendships with one another through the game but rarely ever meet in person. Alumni pages on facebook are united through a sense of having lived and studied in the same academic community but they don't all know each other. This sense of community is imagined through shared interests and experiences. We readily buy into the "imagined community" because it is something that serves us, gives us a sense of comradery.
* Side note *
I noticed that, when going on to Netflix's webpage, that all the depictions are of people on Apple products. A lady watching Netflix on her Mac, a boy watching it on an iPhone, and a girl and her dad watching it on their iPad.
Does anyone know why this is?
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Anna, I like this idea. There is an interesting body of research in psychology about relationships built online versus offline. For example: compare meeting someone first in a chat room and then in person, to meeting first in person and then second in person also. People feel more intimate/better connected at the end of the second meeting in the first of the two conditions. So, that's an example of how talking over the Internet seemingly aids to process of getting to know someone (also, on the negative side, maybe this is ideal for seduction by ill-intentioned predators).
ReplyDeleteAn important part of that finding is that the Internet affects real-life feelings. That's a broad assertion that informs arguments about "imagined communities." Can we still say they are imagined if they affect people's emotions (validation, felt intimacy) in a way that carries over into the real world?
Your last sentence's "sense of camaraderie" isn't trivial, psychologically speaking. But we also feel camaraderie when we get drunk, and that doesn't usually last the next day. The same goes on in middle school when you talk to someone on AIM but never in person. Lots of people stand by drunken nights as worthwhile. I certainly stand by my use of AIM as worthwhile: it's a skill to keep conversations going for hours, even if it's not about much.
Anna I really enjoyed the article you obtained some further research from and couldn't agree more with you about your observations in the "imagined community bring a sense of camaraderie." I think even though this imagined community might exist where we may not know the other person in real life, directly shows how our life can be self-fulfilled by maintaining a connection with someone out there who shares passion in the same things that we might ourselves.
ReplyDeleteGreat to bring the book Imagined Communities into our discussion. Anderson is mostly interested in our sense of nationalism as fostered by communities of readers. You are interested, it seems, in the sub communities that thrive on the Web and the way they seem lively and actually existent to us as we participate.
ReplyDeleteAnd my guess on Netflix is that they have good data that x-percentage of their subscribers use Apple products.. or maybe they just see it as cooler than other brands? Or maybe Apple is advertising through them?