Hello everyone, I'm Danny. I'm going to have presentation on thursday.
the topic is online communities. Here is the agenda.
1. Summary of the reading
“The Virtual Community”
2. Definition of online community
3. Reasons of growth
4. Example of online community
5. Impact on society
6. Discussion
here are the dicsussion questions :
Q1
Does this suggest that people are turning the virtual community into a social entity, beyond its original informational purposes?
Q2
As virtual communities become more “real” nowadays, since there are some extent of concretization and formalization, new question emerge, are virtual communities still virtual?
What is “virtual” and “real” ?
What is the boundary?
How to define?
Q3
Example :
http://news.chinatimes.com/tech/12050903/122011041000248.html
Should the websites (online communities and SNSs )bear the responsibilities of the “wrong” summary declared by member, in terms of different political or religious standpoint?
Then , should the websites create rules and restriction, or remain open and fair to all ideas?
Q4 (a typical question but not yet discussed in class)
If people has serious addiction to online community and this is further developed progressively in the future, is this good or bad?
Are there any problems to the society?
If yes, do you have any suggestion?
thank you for all of your meaningful opinion and various disctinive ideas in class and here =)
Thank you for your presentation today, which the discussion questions are very long… but meaningful.
ReplyDeleteAnd here are some of my comments:
Nowadays, the numbers of online communities increase sharply is the truth. But I don’t think it is something not real. Base on your presentation, the examples of online communities have Facebook, Twitter etc. So, what is the purpose of these kinds of online communities? From my point of view, I think community needs communication, also for making friends, maintain relationship. Online community provides us a “way”, to use it as a “tool” to do these things. People are “truly” having communication with their friends; they are “truly” making friend; they are “truly” maintaining their relationship. The difference is only how: face-to-face? Or virtual? But the means is not relate to the result.
Another discussion question that about the online freedom, as I mentioned in class, the standards of “what is wrong / the limit” is people cannot hurt the others. I think it is not the problem of law or something, is because people CANNOT do that essentially, no matter virtual or real life.
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteI would like to comment on the existence of 'law' in online communities.
Some students suggest that it is rather different to implement law in virtual community the same as real community, although there are some exceptions. I first feel the same thing because I also agree that it seems different in the environment, online community is 'unseen', no exact people can be seen and therefore hard to be compared with 'real society'
However, I think it is technology of vitual community that changes this sitiuation. Webcam enables everyone to see the real face through web. Is it true to say that technology bring virtual community back to real society?
If onliner users can see each other through Webcam, then what they do may have a very close effect as real society. Users can now see 'face-to-face', people actions like bullying and accusations online can be seen. Then the sufferer can trace the user based on the appearance on Web. From this, I think 'real law' can be used because the 'real object' has been traced.
Therefore,the implementation of law may first be difficult to be imposed online. However, when the virtual world is more 'real-like' especially when Webcam is imposed, 'real law' can be used.
What do all of you think? Feel free to join the discussion
Hi Danny
ReplyDeleteThanks for your presentation and you always make audience feel happy =P
Regarding Q2, I did find something interesting about the word "Virtual". According to yourdictiionary.com, 'virtual' is noted as below:
"When it was first introduced in the computational sense, it applied to things simulated by the computer, like virtual memory—that is, memory that is not actually built into the processor. Over time, though, the adjective has been applied to things that really exist and are created or carried on by means of computers."
It seems that the original word 'virtual' could not even make the boundary Real/Not Real clear. =) So, what do you guys think? (I really found this argument interesting, LOL)
Hi Danny,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your presentation this afternoon. The contents of the reading were substantial and detail. Meanwhile, I suggest you can lay more emphasis on those online communities by categorizing them into different types and discern their functions or aims accordingly. It is also more preferable to deliver a simple conclusion at the end.
In respond to your presentation, I think that there is no clear boundary between the real lives and the online communities. This is because the online communities have inevitably dissolved into our everyday lives. One good demonstration is many computer users routinely surf the Internet for various reasons on daily basis. For instance, we login the Facebook to communicate with friends or get updated with the latest situations; we also give comments to the affairs that we feel interested in the forum. We cannot blindly describe such online activities are fake or merely virtual just because we do not talk to the real people in person. The friends on Facebook are real mates of oneself that can be met if deliberately arranged so as the forum members one chats with in any forum. Most activities we do on the online communities are at least indirectly conjunctive to our daily lives. It is foolish and reckless to disregard their authenticity to real life for the mere reason that they do not involve tangible and physical correspondence.
Indeed, I am more than convinced that it such virtual social interaction is harmful if people are obsessed to them. Internet junkies may well lose their edges to physically communicate with people. Besides, there are renowned examples where people tend to falsely habituate the use of improper Internet Language in daily life.
The above are my comments on your presentation. If there is/are any concept(s) that I have misunderstood, kindly correct it/them as you think fit. Thank you.
I agree with what Karen said. No one should do anything that hurts other people, no matter in the so-called "real" world or the "virtual" community. So I think there should be rules or regulations for the participants of online communities to obey. Of course the rules should not be too strict or harsh.
ReplyDeleteI should only serve the purpose of preventing any humiliation, harassment and threat online. I won't see such kind of rules as a violation of the freedom of speech. It is just a mean to remain basic respect for other people.
Regarding Q4, I think any kind of addiction is definitely not a good thing. One negative consequence I can think of now is the decline of productivity of society as people may spend their work time on online communities instead of finishing their job duties. I believe addiction is somehow a psychological illness so a consultation with a therapist would be one of the solution of the problem. Education (yea...education again!) can also help increase our awareness of the addiction so that we will not get addicted to the online communities. (or raise the addicts' awareness of their addiction so that the could seek help as soon as possible)
Hi Danny,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your presentation today. We all had a wonderful time. =]
With regard to Q4, I think it is likely that if there are more people addicted in indulging the online community, it will have huge impact to the society.
Often, we hear that nowadays young people are lack of communication skills in workplace or in school. I was thinking about the phenomenon of "Otaku" which might have caused by the overuse of social networking. These people can definitely communicate but only being expressive on the internet. Without the actual 'real' experience of face-to-face interaction, their "real life" communication is more likely to experience difficulties.
Concerning groups like parents, employers, teachers and social workers think that people like otaku should sharpen their face-to-face communication skills. But funny thing is, at the same time people use technologies to communicate with each other like msn,facebook, twitter...etc. Looking at the society, there are distance learning courses and degree programmes (usually Masters Degrees) offered by well-known institutions. E.g. MBA (Liverpool University, UK).
We might have heard that our world has become more "digitalised". Technologies do help us in our daily lives, in this case, communication too when the internet provides the speed and convenience. We need to strike a balance of communicating effectively in the online world as well as in the real face-to-face world.
After all, I think we as "human beings" should know how to "speak up" orally every day in real life, right?
What do you think about this issue? I hope I get my point across. Please feel free to discuss my opinions shared here and I hope we'll have a good discussion yet again. =] Thank you.
___________________
NB: You might notice that I tried to avoid the word "virtual" to define the world in the internet as the word "virtual". According to Collins Advanced Learner's English Dictionary, "You use virtual to indicate that something is so nearly true that for most purposes it can be regarded as true" Also, as seen from Sue's comment on defining what is "virtual"...
Hi Danny
ReplyDeleteThank you for your well presentation. I want to respond Q2. What I am define “virtual” and “real” in virtual communities. I will depend on the situation and from the different perspective to answer the question. For example, if we meet the friends on the internet and we don’t know the “Friends” background so I don’t avoid some sensitive questions and we can always ask talk some interesting events. Because of have not real relationships so we are enjoy talking to the “friends”. But in real situation, you need to avoid the sensitive questions because you won’t to heart the friends and you will always deliberate to talk friends, worry affects to friend’s relationship. Therefore, based on this example, we need to define what friend’s definition is. For me, I think in virtual communities boundary is very blur but I will from different perspective to answer the questions.