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).
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