Virtual Communities

Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, defines virtual communities as:

"the social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace."

Other elements help define virtual communities. Virtual communities can exist within an electronic village, and often many virtual communities can help make up an electronic village, but virtual communities are more communication and people oriented, while electronic villages are hardware, organization and connection oriented. There are many elements that make up a community: births, deaths, fights, reconciliation and gossip. All of these are vital and needed parts of a virtual community as they are in a physical community. Sites that display these traits are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter & Tumblr, people become addicted to their online community and often stray away from their actual real friends. 

Since virtual communities exist through computers, they are dependent on computer networks. Without computer networks, virtual communities would be just like any other common civic, professional or hobby related group that meets on a regular basis. Virtual communities are groups of people with a shared interest in a hobby, profession, or a product who get and share ideas online. The sharing is done at the convenience of the participant. 
As with anything, virtual communities have both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

• The technology has the power to bring enormous leverage to ordinary people.
• Provides a forum for people to discuss topics of interest.
• Allows participation at the convenience of the participant.
• Text based.
• Allows participation by many different people from many different places.
• Hides race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc.
• Promotes interaction with others that can lead to physical meetings.
• Provides a sense of anonymity.
• Some arenas are moderated.
• Not a broadcast medium.
• Media is not "fixed".
• No built in opinion restraints.

Disadvantages

• Requires knowledge of reading and writing and typing.
• Discrimination is different, but not absent.
• No built in opinion restraints.
• Easy for a few to dominate discussion.
• Obtaining network access can be a problem.
• Must have a computer, or access to a computer.
• Takes time.
• Possibility of losing touch with reality.
• Difficult to navigate and find items of interest.
• Some arenas are moderated.
• Media is not "fixed".
• Text based.
• Provides a sense of anonymity.

The biggest advantage is that the technology that makes virtual communities possible has the potential to bring enormous intellectual, social, and commercial leverage as well as, most importantly, political leverage to ordinary citizens at relatively little cost. Although, there are many forms of identification on the networks, participating in virtual communities gives people a sense of anonymity. For people who are shy or have trouble making friends in their physical community, communicating on a network can give the confidence to make new friends. The "sense" of anonymity may be why the conversations in virtual communities are so vital. If you do not have to look at people, it is much easier to say certain things.In general, virtual communities, in their current incarnation, are beneficial to society because they provide a forum for discussion of topics that may otherwise not be discussed on such an open scale. They also allow people to meet each other and have discussions in a convenient way. Despite the benefits, there are problems such as access and discrimination that need to continually be addressed in a meaningful way by participants in the virtual communities and by policy makers. Virtual communities are fostering interaction between people that would never have taken place without computer mediated communication and the respective virtual community of choice.

What do you think? Are virtual communities dangerous? Or a good way of communication?