Assignment: Join an internet community for at least two weeks (you should join the community early in the term). This can be a discussion group, listserv, or other virtual community. However, social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook don’t count. This group should be outside the university setting and should be a group new to you. You can find such a group by typing in a subject you’re interested in followed by discussion board. For example, “Pittsburgh Penguin discussion board.” Discuss how you assimilate into the group. How are you accepted and how do you know you are accepted? How are agreements and disagreements expressed and resolved.
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For this assignment I joined the BSG (Battlestar Galactica) internet community. I was a really big fan of the show and thought that it would be interesting talking to other people about it. Joining this type of group was new to me because I have only been a part of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.
At first I had to become a member so that I could contribute to the forums and discussions. Secondarily, I had to learn to navigate the hundreds of threads posted to figure out which ones I wanted to ‘grace with my presence.’ I decided to stick to contributing to two of the thread topics so that I could observe all the small nuances in great detail.
The first thing I learned from joining this forum was that people in this community EXPECT you to post to the correct thread. For instance, one of my discussion topics was about the last episode of BSG. All appropriate posts must focus on this one idea. If I was to post a thread about Kara and Lee’s relationship (two of the shows main characters) I would get chided by this community and then I would get “BUMPED.” That is a cue to move this topic to the right discussion thread. I was amazed at how I felt after being bumped…I actually felt hurt. This could be what Wood and Smith define the word flaming, “as a message that is intended to be and/or interpreted to be hostile in nature,” (91). I definitely took it as hostile and wanted to ‘bump’ someone back. Haha. It was interesting to think about why I felt this way…I mean after all this was just a social/academic experiment. Looking back it is funny, but it was not at the time it happened. In this case I guess I did not feel fully accepted.
I felt accepted by this group when they validated my theories on the show or when someone took the time to reply to my post in a positive way. This did not mean that they necessarily agreed with everything I had to say, but the fact that they responded help me to feel a part of the group at large.
For the most part it seemed as though people were civil to each other. I have seen other forums and chat rooms where there are curse words flying back and forth, but this seemed to be more thought through. Maybe it is because the site is monitored, or maybe it is because most of the people taking part in the discussion are older?? I do not know this for certain.
I learned that people really invest a lot of time in giving their opinions. My question going in to this particular assignment was why would people want to join a ‘virtual’ community. I learned that it is easier to connect with a lot of people who share a similar interests. I wonder however if these virtual communities take the place of ‘real-life’ community. Society wants to be heard, that is what I learned through this. Maybe we do not have a lot of people listening to us in our homes, places of work, school…maybe we feel people in our lives do not take real interest in our passions so we join a community like the BSG forum to be heard. Anyways, this was a good assignment and I am actually thinking about staying connected to my “community.”
