Week 10 Tutorial Presentation -The Virtual Community: Reading Digital Culture

Hey guys, three weeks to go! Yippee, here’s my tutorial presentation for The Virtual Community: Reading Digital Culture

Since the summer of 1985 Howard Rheingold has been a member of the virtual community WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), progressively seeing it grow from consisting of a few hundred members to consisting of a few thousand members. Rheingold defines virtual communities as “social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace”. Becoming interested in the impact of virtual communities, Rheingold wishes to “inform the wider population about the online and offline importance of cyberspace to political liberties and the way virtual communities are likely to change our experience of the real world as individuals and communities”.

Kicking off this article, Rheingold explains his own involvement with WELL, colouring a picture of what it is like with his own personal experiences in the virtual community where his ‘online’ life with his ‘online’ communities and his ‘online’ friends transcend IRL (“in[to] real life” as Rheingold explains).

His own experiences illustrate the very expansive capabilities of online virtual communities where Rheingold highlights the number of intercontinental sub-communities he became a part of, and the different realms of information he was able to access because of the various branches of the network he belonged to. Furthermore, Rheingold points out that what happens in virtual communities is, in essence, exactly the same to real life interaction minus our bodies. Adding to this, Rheingold discusses people’s uses for virtual communities, where some use virtual communities as a form of psychotherapy and others to pretend to be someone else away from their real life.

Do you agree that what happens in virtual communities is in essence, the same as what happens in real life interaction, minus our physical presence?

Rheingold’s illustration of his time spent on WELL made me think about my own experiences online and in virtual communities and I found that his ideas rang very true with my own experiences. One of my experiences in particular seemed to have fit the cookie cutter shape of what virtual communities provide in terms of personal fulfilment and the effects on real life.

Are you a part of a virtual online community or have you ever been? (MySpace, Forums, Facebook, Bebo, Freindster, Hi-5) If so, what have been your experiences in terms of the transcendence from offline to online, your purpose in being part of that virtual community and how this use could have effectively changed your real life experiences?

Continuing Rheingold points out the new interconnectedness of technology and the ease at which we connect “two previously independent, mature, highly decentralizes technologies”. This is at most to allow us to gain perspective on the ways technology has changed and affected our real life experiences. Rheingold continues to argue that because of this change in people’s lives due to technology, social experiments arise at the prospect of new technologies because wherever CMC (computer mediated communication) becomes available people build virtual communities within it. Rheingold suggests that the reason for this comes from the break down of community in the real world, while our hunger for community grows.

Rheingold gives the example of APRANET, the first computer network created in the 1970s so that the Department of Defence sponsored researchers could exchange information from computer to computer from which followed the emergence of computer conferencing to build social relationships across space and time. From the emergence of APRANET came computer conferencing which saw the rise of Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) where information could be sent over many alternate nodes over the Net and it’s loosely interconnected computer networks. Rheingold explains that such information and communication that was being passed around a distributed resource with no central control saw the birth of anarchic conversation that takes advantage of the Net’s grassroots system where information can pass any of its obstacles on an alternate route.

How do you think Bulletin Board Systems and computer conferencing has changed since the years of APRANET? What are this significant differences between an online community then and an online community now? Do you think the users have changed? In what way? The purpose of BBSs?

So anyone also doing the Communications unit this semester will understand that the Net’s grassroots system is the system where by everything becomes connected, and not from one central location. Like Rheingold explains, from one grass seed grows multiple grass roots, from those roots, grow more adjacent roots and so on and so forth, eventually building into an interconnected tree from which information can be passed around and received.

Rheingold’s purpose in demonstrating this grass root system on the Net and in BBSs is to draw comparisons with the grass root system that connect continents and people, making space and time almost fluid, illustrating the convergence of the Net and computer conferencing systems. Rheingold again draws upon his experience with the WELL where the WELL community went form a contained , small virtual community to one that opens up onto the Net’s worldwide network.

What are some grass-roots connections you can make?
(e.g., My MySpace (virtual community #1) links to Deviantart.com (virtual community #2) which links to a person’s artwork, that is ‘favourited’ by some other user who has artwork ‘favourited’ by other artists who link to their personal artwork sites that are accessed by their friends, family etc, which can all be led back to my MySpace page)

Rheingold concludes acknowledging that he, himself has been colonised because of his involvement with the virtual communities which saw change in his own life. Rheingold talks about his friends all over the world and the fact that his life has been changed by the transcendence of the online into the offline.

Sorry about this blog entry’s length. There were a few technical join-the-dots in this article!

Rheingold, Howard. "The Virtual Community." Reading Digital Culture. Ed. David Trend. Malden, Mass.; Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, pp. 272-80

Week 10 Presentation: Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life

boyd, danah. (2007) “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning-Youth, Identity and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

danah boyd’s article investigates the function of social network sites in teenage social life. This article reflects arguments she has formed based on a two year study the way United States youth engage with the social network site, MySpace. <--- Click here if you aren't familiar with this site.

In the first part of this article she examines the demographics of MySpace users. She writes of a study conducted in late 2006 which found that “55% of online teens aged 12-17 have created profiles on social network sites, with 64% of teens 15-17” (p.3). She also speaks about the two types of non-participations: disenfranchised teens and conscientious objectors, with her analysis of this being very interesting.

For my first question, I wondered what the demographics were for this blog. How many of you have a profile on myspace and at what age did you join? For those who are “non-participants” on myspace, why is this? Can you place yourself within one of the two groups suggested by boyd- either disenfranchised teens or conscientious objectors?

boyd also comments on how insignificant the role that race and social class is, in terms of access to MySpace. Rather, “when it comes to social network sites, there appears to be a far greater participatory divide than an access divide” (p.3). In this demographics section, boyd also analyses how gender effects involvement on social network sites.

Boyd then goes onto write about the formation of social network sites, such as when MySpace was first launched (in the autumn of 2003) as a social network site who welcomed bands to join and create profiles, attracting music-loving fans to also join and follow their favorite bands. By mid-2005, MySpace had become a popular place for all types of American high school students (not just those with a music interest).

Boyd then describes how MySpace profiles are created, how friends are added and organized, and how the purpose of comments has changed over time.
Boyd then discusses the topic of the public. She writes “Social network sites allow publics to gather. At the same time, by serving as a space where speech takes place, they are also publics themselves.” (p.8). This follows with boyd suggesting four properties that “separate unmediated publics from networked publics” (p.9). These are:

1. Persistence: Social network sites enable asynchronous communication and extend the life of any speech act.
2. Searchability: Finding someone’s “digital body online” is as easy as a few keystrokes.
3. Replicability: Things can be copied easily online, so it is hard to distinguish an “original” “networked public expression” from a “copy”.
4. Invisible Audiences: We cannot tell just how many people will witness our expressions on social network sites. Offline, it is normally quite clear who is able to listen to our speech.
-can find this list on page 9 of the article

Does this list of four points alarm you about social networking sites? Or as a social networking site user, is this what you enjoy about social networking sites that you can’t experience anywhere else?

boyd also writes, “in short, a mediated public (and especially a networked public) could consist of all people across all space and all time. (p.9)While this is probably not going to happen at this time, this is an interesting point to think about!

Boyd then touches on the subject of participation. She believes that “teens often turn to sites like MySpace for entertainment; social voyeurism passes time while providing insight into society at large (p.10).

Can you think of any other reasons why teens might join Myspace and other social networking sites? What parts of a teen’s character lend themselves to be major participants in this type of culture?

Boyd then investigates how MySpace profiles are created, and how this act, is seen as an initiation process after first joining the site.

The article then goes onto speak about how identities are created online. Boyd writes “because of this direct link between offline and online identities, teens are inclined to present the side of them that they believe will be well received by these peers” (p. 13)

Does this suggest that social networking sites aren’t really liberating, but that teens are forced to act the same way as they do in the playground, online? Is this one of the flaws of social networking sites? Should they instead be a place for personal expression, where teens shouldn’t have to worry about who is acting ‘cool’, or not?

Boyd then discusses issues of privacy in regards to social network sites. She talks about the ability to change your profile to a ‘private’ setting, and the two common solutions teens undertake to avoid the watchful, concerned eyes of their parents.

Boyd concludes the topic of the private and public, with the following thought provoking sentences. “While the jury is still out on whether or not the Internet is democratizing, online access provides a whole new social realm for youth. Earlier mediated communication devices- landline, pager, mobile- allowed friends to connect with friend even when located in adult-regulated physical spaces. What is unique about the Internet is that it allows teens to participate in unregulated publics while located in adult-regulated physical spaces such as homes and schools. Of course, this is what makes it controversial” (p. 21).

What are your thoughts on the public nature of social networking sites? Is it the perfect place for paedophiles and the like, and therefore dangerous, and unsuitable for young people? Or does it give teens some sort of freedom while still being within adult-regulated spaces?

Boyd finishes the article by seeing the infatuation with social network sites such as MySpace by America’s youth as being linked to the way America’s culture is largely focused on celebrity worship. Boyd sees reality TV and popular dramas as a “magnified (and idealized) version of the networked publics that teens are experiencing, complete with surveillance and misinterpretation.” (p.22)

Do you think this is a compelling explanation for why teens are drawn to social network sites? Do you think teens enjoy networked publics, surveillance and misinterpretation? Or rather, they enjoy the social factor and convenience of social networking sites and have just have to work around the more undesirable features?

Hope those questions inspire some discussion amongst you, that’s all from me :)

"A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell

LambdaMOO is a virtual reality game or a multi-user dimension, i.e. MUD. This means that the game is a database especially designed to give users the vivid impression of moving through a physical space that in reality exists only as a descriptive data filed away on a hard drive.

Q.1 Are you a member of a MUD community? If yes, do you find yourself reflecting the events in virtual reality with real life?

“A virtual "rape", also known as "MOOrape", is defined within LambdaMOO as a sexually related act of a violent, acutely debasing, or profoundly humiliating nature against a character who has not explicitly consented to the interaction. Any act which explicitly references the non-consensual, involuntary exposure, manipulation, or touching of sexual organs of or by a character is considered an act of this nature.” [1]

On a Monday night, tens of regular Lambda users gather in the Lambda chateau’s cosy living room to chat and meet friends just like almost every other night. However, that night something strange happens. A hideous clown starts abusing two of his fellow players by using a voodoo doll, which gives him the power to use his victims sexually. That night, ‘Mr. Bungle’ raped ‘Starsinger’ and ‘legba’. To someone, who has never stepped into the world of virtual, these events might sound rather absurd. How could have someone possibly be raped in virtual reality, when no bodies were touched and no one got hurt? Julian Dibbell, or ‘Dr. Bombay’ the author of this article, and a Lambda player himself, states that every set of facts in virtual reality is shadowed by a second, complicated set: the “real life” facts. By this, he tries to explain that especially in the ‘Bungle affair’ real life and the virtual reality seem to integrate, as the rape violates the victim’s personal space and affects them beyond the game environment.

Q.2 Do you think that the rape in cyberspace is a crime against the mind? What are the implications of this to the freedom of speech?

The event sparked an outrage among the Lambda users. In fact, it provoked strong, emotional feelings, which according to Dibbell suggests that “the MUD experiences are neither exactly real or exactly make-believe, but profoundly, compellingly and emotionally meaningful.” Soon, a fierce debate filled the Lambard *social, where tens of players shared their thoughts on the issues of law, civility, ethics and crime inside their community. Indeed, for the first time, the players inside the cyberspace acted as a community, defining themselves politically as they were demanding a punishment for Mr. Bungle. Dibbell found that during the debate groups were formed taking different standpoints on the matter. Issues such as could Mr Bungle’s virtual existence be deleted or could he possibly be punished in real life for committing a sexual offence were raised and discussed extensively. However, Dibbel notes that even if the community had unified under this matter, the conversation seemed to go nowhere, as the decisive authority and the ultimate power, in this case the wizard, was missing.

Q.3 Why was the community formed so effectively during the ‘Bungle-Affair? Why could it not govern itself?

It is very interesting how the real life and the virtual reality moralities and conventions were juxtaposed in the debate that evolved around the Affair. Dibbell suggests that “when it comes to sex, perhaps the body in question is not the physical one at all, but its physic double, the body-like self expression we carry around in our heads.” This idea could also be demonstrated clearly in the *social’s discussion board; “where does the body end and the mind begin?” ‘Quastro’ asked. ‘HerkieCosmo’ replied: “in MOO, body IS the mind.”

Q.4 Do you think the fact that Dibbell was himself part of this community affects his writing and point of view? What does he mean by saying ‘…something truer and more elegant that could be found on LambdaMOO…’ ?
(This is what he says in the last paragraph. I thought it was mystic.)




cheers, Maija

[1] http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html