1. Introduction to NET204: Internet Communities &
Social Networks
Kate Raynes-Goldie

2. What is this unit all about?

3. What is an online conference?

4. Why is this so awesome?
• Experiential learning
• Real world experience
• Contribution to real knowledge (Google Scholar!)
• Famous people

5. Networking with other students
• External and internal Curtin students, Open Universities Australia (OUA),
Charles Telfair Institute (CTI) in Mauritius
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Blackboard
• Conference blog

6. Moving forward
• Start networking!
• Begin thinking about your stream for the conference and your paper
• Lectures will be replaced with discussion and planning sessions

7. Key Issues in Internet Communities & Social
Networks

8. What is the relationship between the individual and
the group to which she/he belongs?

9. Virtual & Online
Communities
• The WELL
• MUDs and MOOs
• IRC
• Usenet
• Email listservs
• Second Life
• Personal homepages

10. Social Media, Social
Networks & Web 2.0
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Wikipedia
• Last.fm
• Blogs, wikis

11. Why participate?
• Ridings & Gefen (2004)
• Information exchange
• Social support
• Friendship
• Recreation

12. Brave new world?
• Wellman & Guila (1997)
• Dystopian versus utopian
• Disconnection and loss of
community or global village?
• Freedom from race, gender,
sexual orientation or alienation
and escapism?

13. What is community (virtual or otherwise)?
• Katz et al. (2004)
• Physical or “real” communities versus online or virtual communities
• Loss of idealised or utopian community
• Formed from Classical, philosophical (nostalgic!) conceptions
• Focus on the individual, death of the public sphere (Habermas, Puntnam)
• Along axes of individual/group, local and physical/global and mediated

14. Theories of community
• Traditional community (local, physical, supportive/reciprocal, trust, intimacy,
fostering democracy)
• Social network (before Facebook! Common definition used by internet
theorists, such as Wellman... networked individualism, community in the
private sphere)
• Pseudo-community (Traditional community, without requirement for
physicality. Eg Rheingold’s virtual community, which transcends boundaries)
• Imaginary community (communities rooted in geographical boundaries but
with virtual elements... groups connected by race or cultural background but
geographically dispersed because of globalisation)

15. What does CMC do to theories of community?
• Rethinking definitions based on somewhat false dichotomies (real/imagined,
offline/online, physical/virtual) in favour of “mediated communication”
• Social capital as yardstick (social contact, civic engagement, sense of
community)

16. Something in between
• Not entirely harmful, not entirely beneficial or revolutionary
• Continuation of existing processes or trends
• Emphasis or exaggeration
• Many social, cultural, economic factors... not just technology

17. Also...
• Merging or overlapping of online and offline spheres
• Real (Facebook, a cafe) and virtual (World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons)
• Being together!

18. For example...
• Ridings & Gefen (2004)
• Virtual community as “groups of people with common interests and practices
that communicate regularly and for some duration in an organized way over
the Internet through a common location or mechanism”
• Fills social gap created by decline of physical communities

19. Discussion
• Why might we idealise the physical world as better or more real?
• Is technology the sole driver of both positive and negative change in society?
• What is missing from the Wikipedia article on virtual community?
• Does the Wellman & Guila article still hold up today (almost 16 years later)?