Studies of Community in Computer Mediated Communication
The studies presented in this section of this paper are provided to establish that interaction in virtual environments has been the subject study. I have not included them here to outline any theory of expectation, nor to imply any generalization or transferability of their findings.
Perhaps the most popular example of what is claimed to be a virtual community is known as “The Well” - an acronym for “Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link”, created in 1985 by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant. In its present form, The Well is comprised over 260 different categories of interest, or “villages”, if one is following the metaphor. The Well project has been extensively written about by both Jon Coate and Howard Rheingold. Both writers refer to Ray Oldenberg’s text, The Great Place, and his concept that there are three general places in life - work, home, and a third place that is mostly social in nature. It is this third place that both of these authors associate with the virtual worlds of the Internet.
In his article, "Innkeeping Online", Coate also outlines the dynamics and possibilities of electronic communication, and provides observational comments about the interaction he sees within The Well forum. Rheingold’s book about The Well and cyberlife in general is aptly titled, The Virtual Community, and is available in its entirety online (as is Coate’s work). While his personal experiences and anecdotal episodes may contribute to the idea of virtual community, the text does not provide any in-depth perspective on any specific aspect contributing to its formation. Nonetheless, more recent study of and participation in online interaction has led many researchers to assume that in some cases “virtual communities” of users have been created.
Laura Gurak (1997) has defined and conducted an in-depth analysis of two of these communities, and her findings are based on the distinctive patterns that emerged from the electronic messages their members exchanged. Making the case that all communication technologies, “beginning with the printed page, but especially evident with electronic communications” have facilitated the break of rhetorical activities from a set physical location (p.7), she sets the stage for the claim to be made that communities can exist independent of the traditional concepts of time and space contexts. Citing Stanley Fish’s concept of interpretive communities, which are less centered on a shared physical space and more on “the individual’s way of seeing the world”, Gurak further establishes that the idea of community has come to be one of “like-mindedness”. She also mentions that Thomas Kuhn’s definition of scientific communities emphasizes not physical proximity, but shared values and norms.
In regards to the shared values of the two electronic communities she has studied, for example, Gurak discovered common attitudes that included a strong concern for privacy, a sense of personal rights related to democracy, an element of arrogance concerning technical matters, and a underlying hostility toward control by either governmental agencies or corporations. As for common norms, it has already been observed in this paper that because most electronic communication, i.e. IRC, message board posting, e-mail, listervs, etc. are limited to expression mediated through the symbols on the keyboard, alternate communication conventions have emerged to replace non-verbal cues such as gestures and facial expressions. Although the frequency of their usage seems to vary among different electronic contexts, these conventions, most notably ASCII glyphs/emoticons and acronym/gestures, have been documented and archived in numerous sources.
Although Gurak supplies an exact theoretical framework for her claim that the
two cases in her study meet with the criteria for a community, both of them
formed around events which were over within a short span of time. As such,
while this work is a detailed analysis of the community ethos and how it was
formed in these situations, it is not definitive on the attitudes of the members
toward these communities, nor does it discuss if the communities endured
after their formative crisis was over. Further work on virtual community
building is necessary, and an undertaking I have hoped to explore with this
study.
Because most computer mediated communication is through a keyboard
interface, the majority of it is a hybrid between oral speech and composed
text. Transmission of meaning that is largely unfettered by outside factors
make electronic communication to be low context - the message itself is
usually the only source of information. Accordingly, studies of this hybrid
interaction tend to either include or focus on expression through language
choice.
Haya Bechar Israeli studied the selection of user names in computer mediated
communication. His study takes its title from one individual’s story of the
stages of shock and dismay he experienced when he learned that the nickname
or “handle” that he had chosen to represent himself in electronic
communication was also used as an identity marker for a racist group.
Because the communication was limited to text-based speech, the
representation of self through his choice of a handle was intensified for this
individual, a feeling that Bechar-Israeli found to be common as he worked with
other users.
Expanding the concept of identity in her work, Sherry Turkle concluded that many users invest so deeply in choosing their user name because they attach it to a different persona, which they assume while communicating electronically. Role-playing within that persona becomes so involved that for some of these users the virtual world and their virtual identity may become indistinguishable from the non-virtual reality. Her studies of IRC and MOO/MUD users indicate a psychological phenomenon wherein participants first enter the virtual reality, then become lost in it. As one user is quoted as saying, “ I feel like I have more stuff in the (virtual environment) than I do off of it” (p.240).Shifting into electronic communication is perhaps facilitated by the use of specialized communication conventions.
Lee-Ellen Marvin studied the uses of four slang terms that emerged in relation to electronic communication - “spoof”, “spam”, “lurk”, and “lag”. All four terms have negative connotations, and are used to refer to communication-related events that were deemed out abnormal by the message sender. “Spoof” refers to communicate that is not attributed to a specific users, but just appears in the discussion, “spam” is too much information coming from a single source all at once. The term “lurk” is used to represent someone who has logged a discussion area and is thought to be observing but not contributing, and “lag” refers to a delay in the transmission of information due to a mechanical glitch.
Although all four of these terms are original and specific to the medium of computer-mediated communication, Marvin observed that many of the participants she was observing also used them to “metaphorically describe social, cognitive, and emotional experiences”(p.2). This finding seems to support her theory that virtual environments are so real to some users that they “collectively shape all other levels of communication” (p.2) and that knowledge and use of such markers can be tied to “feelings of belonging” in the formation of virtual communities.
The formation of group solidarity and identity both in and out of the group is explored by Nancy K.Baym in her study, "The Performance of Humor in Computer-Mediated Communication" . Her context for study was an electronic message board that was designed around the theme of popular soap operas. By analyzing posted messages and responses on this board, Baym was able to identify different threads in the conversations, which she then categorized and analyzed in terms of their relation to humor. She also supplemented her analyses with interviews when possible.
Baym’s findings indicate that while participants drew on a shared knowledge of the episodes of the soap opera, their personal traits combined with the parameters of the group’s communication patterns, allowing for a brand of humor that was unique in that any of these three elements were subjects for humor. In such a way, humor was defined by the specificity of the context of the virtual environment itself, and emerged as it did because of the precise combination of the group members and their perceptions of the soap opera.
Of the work done on virtual community building, what I have attempted to accomplish in this study is most closely mirrored in Baym’s work. While it was not my intent to replicate her study or her findings, I did observe that my project design appeared to be emerging along similar lines. Accordingly, my expectations were that I would find patterns in my data that might resemble those in her study. However, this expectation proved only to be a surface one, as her study had humor as its focus, and my exploration was more related to the formation of community and how participants felt about both the site of physical interface and what affective attachments, if any, were present in their perceptions.