"Where everybody knows your (screen) name", "Is there a 'space' in cyberspace?", and "Small town gossip goes online"

One of the reasons for my great interest in this class is my personal experience with forums and EMC (an experience that many of my 'irl' friends share).  I haven't been everywhere there is to be online, and I'm certainly not an expert, but I feel I've spent sufficient time in various online haunts to have a basic feeling of what a typical online environment feels like (to whatever extent a 'typical' online environment exists, which is extremely debatable).  Only problem is, it's a feeling, not a thought, and my attempts to put it into words in blog entries, response papers, and Moodle posts have fallen consistently short.  It is a thought Steinkuhler and Williams' article, based on post-positivist research, gets at more accurately and quickly than I would ever be capable of.

Let me preclude this by saying: I don't play MMORPGs.  I've thought about joining one, but my pocketbook has voiced continuous and loud objections to the matter, so these games remain un-downloaded.  I like video games, but I'm very much a casual gamer, into specific series (mostly big-name action-adventure games) and not much else, and I definitely don't play online, whether in a large-scale fantasy MMORPG like World of Warcraft or on an FPS (first person shooter) via XBox Live.  This being stated, the description given by Steinkuhler and Williams of MMORPGs as a type of 'third space', a new non-physical gathering place to form community, where social disparities are leveled, is almost exactly in line with my experience with communities in other online communication channels.  The presence of 'regulars' alongside new members, the overall playful tone of conversation, the feeling of a 'home away from home' online, and the very common formation of bridging social capital with the occasional addition of bonding social capital (especially in long-term, 'committed' online relationships) are all phenomena that sound familiar to me.  In the play-by-post roleplaying forums where I used to hang out, the affordances and limitations of the site(s) were very different from those present in an MMO.  But the experience of those forums as a 'third space' is a point of definite commonality.  In particular, Gaia online (a site for teens which used to be the primary place in which I would role-play) allows for the creation of sub-forums for people with specific interests to come together and hang out, creating social capital with more of a capacity for bonding (considering the common interest which brought them together to the forum in the first place).  I bring this up because these sub-forums were actually called guilds, explicitly invoking the long-term groups that MMO players often bond into.  This is far from to say that most of the communication and social capital formed in these groups was bonding - most of us knew each other well enough to know something about each others' (very disparate) lives, to have familiarity with what nicknames based on our usernames we preferred to go by online, and to be basically concerned about one another's well being: when someone was feeling down we would do our best to cheer them up - but not well enough to offer genuine, close comfort when the chips were down.  Certain of us did have close friendships with each other, both exclusively online and not, but this was not the norm, although many of my fellow guild mates chose to meet in person or exchange contact info including mailing addresses, personal email, and phone.  Yet this never stopped me from feeling these forums were a community, a home away from home, where I could know people and be known without concern for the fact that they were almost all older than I, where I could show the best side of myself and be as witty as I wanted by thinking before I clicked 'publish post.'  It is this phenomenon, I think, that many folks writing about EMC without experiencing it fail to acknowledge.  The fact that I would have turned to my 'irl' friends rather than my guild mates in a crisis does not mean that my guild mates were not important to me, nor that I was not important to them.  In fact, judging by the article about small-town gossip, our tendency towards bridging capital and lack of geographic proximity may have been vital to our function as a community at all!  At home, 'irl' connections and bonding social capital are vital to our lives, but bridging social capital has its place as well, and with the decline of the brick-and-mortar third space, the emergence of the online one is an important step to rebuilding these connections in our lives.

There is one other point from the small-town gossip article that struck me: the story of the woman from Indiana who had killed herself and her three children when her divorce was being discussed in a public forum for the whole town to see.  Hours earlier, she had posted a comment on that selfsame forum that "Now it's time to take the pain away."  This struck me because, had this woman been posting in an online community she felt a part of (whether an MMO, a forum, or some other anonymous online communication channel), this message would have sent out warning flags straight off!  Even if she had posted it in a new thread on an open public forum where no one really knew her at all, rather than on a board where she had bridging social capital with some of the other members there, I am almost certain that this response would have merited some action on the part of other observers.  The more private a message like this, the more unlikely that it will receive attention, as far as my awareness of these online dramas goes.  If you send a private message, or an ask, or make your blog private, or don't tag your post with anything, no one will see, and no one will help.  But I have seen time and time again complete and total strangers on the Internet banding together to help another complete and total stranger when the latter individual has posted a message with even the vaguest threat of suicide.  Calls go out to see if anyone know the individual in question in person, calls go out to see if someone knows their address and can call 911, and hundreds or thousands of responses go out - however brief - begging the individual to think things through, trying to offer comfort, offering helpline numbers, offering anything that they think might help.  Users may be anonymous, with no definitive ties or responsibilities to each other, but they are still human, and most humans, seeing someone in desperate pain in need of help, will try and alleviate that pain whether or not they get something in return.  It's a trend that's easier than ever when all it takes is a two-minute post, and although one of these might mean next to nothing, sometimes, hundreds upon thousands of them do, in fact, make a very important difference.

P.S. I attempted to access the annotated version of the Steinkuhler and Williams article, but neither highlighting nor notes showed up!  I am using Safari, which sometimes doesn't work like other browsers do - could this be contributing or does anyone know another solution I could seek?  (I don't have a problem changing browsers - I have been thinking I ought to switch to Firefox or Google Chrome for a while now.)

Baym 4, Williams, and PEW report

Although I have almost always found myself interested in readings for this class, this week I found myself particularly interested, because of the subject matter (online communities) at hand.  It has been a while since I was heavily involved in 'net communities, but in middle and high school, as I mentioned last week, I did a lot of posting in online play-by-post roleplaying forums.  Although I no longer participate, the experience was never less than pleasant for me, and had a genuine effect on my personality which lasts to this day.  I connected with people of many different ethnic, economic, gender, and regional backgrounds over a common interest - but it's also my concern, based on what I've seen online in other places, that interaction doesn't always work like that, that by forming online communities we can indeed gravitate towards people whose opinions we like and agree with and phase out all the rest.  This trend, to me, represents something very dangerous.  I'm steadfast in my opinions myself, but I am always interested in hearing how others feel, if only because by understanding their viewpoints, I think I can perhaps understand the people themselves better.  This is not always successful, or possible - but it's a worthwhile goal just the same.  Baym doesn't seem to have very many answers to offer on this subject, nor do Williams or the PEW report, other than to say that those who use the 'net are more likely to be politically involved (regardless of what side of the aisle they stand on).  For my part, it's my instinct that the capacity to isolate yourself from different viewpoints is increased by the Internet, but it's an instinct that is present even without the medium there - my father barely uses the Internet/tech, but still tends to either isolate himself from hearing non-liberal opinions or ignore them when he hears them entirely.  (It was because of this that I was so surprised to see in the PEW report that MySpace users tend to be more open to others' points of view.  I never used MySpace, and I don't know what the specific customs of that online space are that might lead to that trend, but I'd be very curious to learn what they are.)

Social customs in online spaces are another thing that holds serious interest to me.  I move between sites and fan communities online a lot - that's practically everything I do online really.  And almost every time I find and start hanging out on a new site, I find myself going to urbandictionary.com to decode a term that I find there over and over again and do not recognize.  Some of these memes (lolcats being the most prominent example) transcend sites and places on the Internet and can be recognized by almost any one who spends enough time online.  But especially in fan communities, some cannot be understood by any one who is not already involved in the fan community (or one who follows the media series in question).  I have found myself accidentally referencing these memes and quotes, from various sources, in company that I consciously know won't understand them - but subconsciously I'm so used to it that I don't think to stop myself!  It's usually the more humorous trends that take off, but generally I'm not sure what makes one small fan-generated joke become more popular than others to a point where it becomes large-scale.  I can say that for my own part, the reason I partake in these customs is not only social acceptance - it's that having an 'in-joke' increases by a large amount the feeling of community invoked when I see someone else knowing and being into something that I am also into.  (Especially 'irl', it's always a pleasant surprise when I realize someone I know is into a fandom that I normally only interact with members of online.)

The topic I was least familiar with was bridging social capital vs. bonding social capital, this being obviously an academic theory rather than a phenomenon one who uses the 'net might encounter.  The theory seems to make sense to me, based on the social bonds I have made on and offline.  However it seems to me likely that these categories aren't entirely exclusive, or at least that bonds/social capital can move from bridging to bonding or vice-versa in certain circumstances.  Obviously the bond would change, and in going from bridging to bonding capital the number of people in the community would decrease, but I've definitely seen instances of people who know each other in a bridging capacity coming to be close in a tighter-knit bonding capacity as time goes on.  As far as which kind is more likely to occur online, I'd generally agree that bridging social capital is more likely to occur - but I also think it depends on the relative 'size' of the online space in which the social capital is being created/exchanged.  In forums, I've found, people tend to make bonding capital more often, because most forum communities have a smaller quantity of members.  Very popular social networking sites or general-purpose sites like Youtube or Facebook however are probably more likely to facilitate creation and exchange of bridging social capital, since there are many more members to these sites, and the method in which they exchange messages is less centralized between-all-users (in other words, on a forum,  it's more likely that almost all the forum members see the post, whereas on a larger-scale website most users will not see any individual post).

Political cartoon - Facebook friends

Before I blog about Wednesday's reading, I thought I'd put this up - a political cartoon I saw get linked to on (funnily enough) Facebook.  Reminded me of some of what we've read in Turkle and Baym.  I don't really find it funny myself, but it's definitely relevant to the subject!

Baym Ch. 3 and Baxter & Braithwaite Ch. 29

Chapter three of Baym's book, on communication in digital spaces, and chapter 29 of Baxter & Braithwaite, on Social Information Processing Theory, are the first readings of this class that I have immediately and unquestioningly found myself agreeing with, almost completely.  I am a long time 'netizen', in the words of some digital communication scholars.  I first started exploring the Internet when I was about 9 or 10, back in elementary school.  Over time, my patterns of use, and amount of use, have waxed and waned depending on a variety of independent factors.  At this point, I am less engrossed in exclusively-online social situations than I have been before, but I still spend a lot more time on the internet than most of my peers.  The exact number of hours per day (at least ones that are not devoted to online schoolwork) is hard to determine and varies from day to day, but usually during school it's around 2-3 hours per day on weekdays, about 5 on weekends, and a truly incredible amount during vacations when I have no work - sometimes as many as 8 or 10.  I read webcomics, I watch media, I read blogs, I post on Facebook, I read and look at fan works (both art and fiction) for the media I'm interested in, and many more things I am not quite sure how to describe.  What I don't do very often right now is post on online forums, but I used to, mostly creative play-by-post role playing (a type of communal story-creating where each person controls one character and their interactions drive the plot).  But I used to, and it was usually with people I didn't know in person in the least, people in Florida, New England, the UK, Texas - people years older than me, people from different social classes than me, people I never would have met without the Internet.  And though I had friends 'irl' as well, the relationships I had with my writing partners online were many of them very close.  We shared photos of ourselves, personal information, and at times had serious, genuine emotional discourse.  After a while, I ceased having time for such activity, and I haven't contacted them much since then, but I know that the group I was part of stays in online contact.  They have each other's phone numbers, they consult each other in crisis, and they've even met in person a few times.  Their relationship, conducted via the Internet across borders of state and even country, was as close as those of any friends who might have met in person.  They trusted each other.  So I can say without question that I believe in the power of digital communication to bring people together in a genuine way, rather than pushing them apart - I've witnessed it, and even experienced it, myself.

The other point that intrigued me, showing up mostly in Baym, was the idea of reproducing verbal/nonverbal cues through an exclusively textual setting by playing with font, effect, color, html, and even grammar, as exemplified in lolcats, among other memes.  Baym suggests that this activity may help create immediacy in SMS and IM conversations, rather than being merely a symptom of sloth or lack of grammatical knowledge on the part of the communicators.  Initially when I started using the Internet, texting, etc., I was obsessed in my pursuit of correct grammar and spelling in all my posts and interactions online.  However, as time has passed, I've found myself more and more slipping on this - not using periods, capitalization, sometimes abbreviating words arbitrarily, etc.  I use emoticons to express feelings when my actual facial expression can't, and I use italics, bold, and caps lock to indicate tone of voice where there is none.  The use of these tricks to create artificial immediacy and flow, and to display personality, is something I really enjoy doing.  Outside of chat, I've even seen it done in webcomics.  One comic I read in particular uses these tricks to great effect.  The main characters spend much of the plot physically separate from one another, communicating solely through instant messaging chat clients.  To tell them apart, in long conversations shown solely through chat logs, each character types using a distinct style and color - some with punctuation, some without, some with capitalization, some without, some always typing in caps, etc.  The individual style in which each character types not only distinguishes them from one another, it also conveys distinct personality styles and vocal qualities where there are none (for example, a character with a lisp who replaces his 's's with '2's when he types).  The idea that these quirks can be used to express immediacy and personality, rather than laziness, is something I'd been trying to put words to for some time, and reading these Baym and B&B chapters was very helpful for me in this way.