"Virtual Communities as Communities"

I have been reading a book called "Communities in Cyberspace." It is, as the title suggests, a collection of essays about the different aspects of online communities. In it there is an interesting, although a bit old (1996), piece called "Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities". The ideas in the essay may not seem all that revolutionary anymore but the authors open up a still-relevant discussion of the different types of discourse that the Internet facilitates and how it affects individuals on and off screen.

Wellman and Gulia are trying to dispel the myth that people who spend a lot of time on the Internet are isolating themselves, declining to participate and work on relationships in the real world. The authors first point that these critics "...treat community as a zero-sum game, assuming that if people spend more time interacting online they will spend less time interacting in 'real life.'" In addition to creating important relationships online, they make the point that our identities and actions online can supplement our relationships in everyday life, offline.

The give the example of office workers who, while looking like they are hard at work in their cubicles, can e-mail or instant message one another. In this way, an online alias can provide a sort of inner dialogue in the course of everyday life. It facilitates a discourse that, without computers, would be difficult if not impossible. We are thus able to express an aspect of our identity that would be left without expression during certain times and in certain areas of our life. It then becomes the case that our offline identities inform our online identities and, perhaps more interesting, vice versa.

Again, this may not be revolutionary but the fact that the offline and online identities inform one another points out a continuum of identity ranging from localized fragments of identity (presented in specific online forums) to the "fuller, real-world" person.