When most people look at online communities and social networks, they see them from the point of view of Gemeinschaft, or Gesellschaft. The Gemeinschaft, or “community,” is based on strong ties, shared focus, and common language. The Gesellschaft, or “society,” is comprised of those who live together but lack connection and have no shared purpose or concern. The community I would like to look at is an online high school soccer community which certainly falls into the Gemeinschaft description.
Caroline Haythornthwaite looks at the components of community and defines the members of the community as “actors” and the bonds they create as “ties. The “actors” in this network are past, current, and future soccer players but also numerous fans and other members of the community are part of the forum. According to SNA attributes, when actors exchange information, or advice etc, they have formed a relation which connects the actors. This connection between actors is called a tie. The ties between the members of captialregionsoccer.com are very weak. Weak ties are, “When little is shared and interaction is infrequent…Those with whom we have weaker ties tend to be different from us and operate in different social circles from us.” However, these ties can grow and become stronger as members of the community begin to gain more understanding and common ground.
When I came to Cornell last year, I was extremely excited to be moving on to a different part of my life; however, at the same time, I was a little reluctant to leave my hometown. I had a great time in high school, and I was a big fan of high school sports. Cornell was slightly unsettling to me because I was afraid that I would lose touch with my high school soccer team. Luckily, I found a community that allowed me to keep in contact with my team and all of the other teams in my area. www.captialregionsoccer.com is a forum where people from the capital district of New York gather to talk about high school soccer.
The community ties within the forum are maintained by members of the group, who all happen to share the common love for high school soccer. This common ground is essential for the community to thrive as people in the forums understand that posts should be mainly about games and feelings about different teams, and other side chatter should be kept to a minimum. Furthermore, more involved members in the forums take the role of moderator, assuring that all posts are acceptable to post. Since there is discussion about high school students, inappropriate posts are not tolerable and if there were allowed to be posted, would destroy the community fairly quickly. Finally, a culture of reciprocity exists as members of the community reinforce each others actions in responding to posts and using the same language throughout posts.
The capital region soccer community has strong bonds. This doesn’t come to much surprise looking at Etzioni and Etzioni who suggests that “communities that combine both f2f and CMC systems would be able to bond better and share values more effectively than communities that rely upon only one or the other mode of communication.” The synergies between the online, and the offline community, intersect in the forums and create an even stronger sense of community. People who meet and watch games f2f create bonds with each other, and bring these ties back to the forums where those with weaker ties communicate and build stronger bonds off of those first hand experiences with the game. This cycle continues endlessly in the forum building up the ties between members making them stronger. This is an interesting point to notice because it shows weak ties, as mentioned earlier, interacting with stronger ones, and becoming more involved in the community, building stronger ties. Haythornthwaite doesn’t really discuss this phenomenon, but it seems to follow almost a hyper personal model in which there is an intensification cycle of strengthening ties.
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http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/cornell-racing-more-properly-known-as.html
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/question-7-option-1.html
2 comments:
Benjamin,
Good job! Your post really grabbed my attention because I had never heard of capitalregionsoccer.com and was quite surprised that such a site exists! One thing that struck me as particularly odd is your statement, “The capital region soccer community has strong bonds”. I am curious to know if you mean that the community mainly consists of strong bonds, or rather, there are some strong bonds amidst a greater number of weaker bonds. I would expect that latter to be true, due to the fact that the target community is quite large and therefore many of its members have probably never interacted with each other. On a different note, I really liked the fact that you referred to the synergy between online and offline communication as an endless cycle. I agree that in most online communities strong bonds due develop in a cyclical manner. By connecting this idea to the Hyperpersonal Theory was very thoughtful as well. Really good work!
Hi you!
Great post! I really enjoyed reading it, and it is something I can most definitely relate to. Throughout my entire life, I was heavily involved in sports; I was on multiple sports teams, and before I came to Cornell, I could not imagine my life without not only a sport to play every afternoon, but being part of a team. While I filled this void by joining intramural and club teams, the way you filled your void is so interesting! I never knew something like this existed, and it is most definitely a great way to keep in touch with a community you left behind.
It is interesting that you described your bonds with members of this forum as strong even though anonymity is present. Prior to reading your post, I would have considered these ties to be weak, yet your description of your CMC relationships accurately reflects what Haythornthwaite describes as strong ties. She says that a tie is strong when actors maintain many relations, particularly when those relations include social and emotional support and intimacy or self-disclosure, and your ties accurately reflect this definition. Your post did an excellent job illustrating to me that a tie can be strong even if anonymity exists in a situation, and I thank you for that!
Overall, great post! I look forward to reading more!
lauren
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