Reflection

After the class today we managed to set a plan, We think it can go something as follows;

• Intro - Definishion of 'Virtual community' (E.g. it is very difficult to define community, as technology has changed and developed so has the term. - Inoder to define the term we are goin to use theorist such as Howard Rhiengold, David Bell, etc and also a vox pot of people around uni and what they think a virtual community is. (which Metta and I can work on)
• Communities within Groups (Metta researching into)
• Case study into Facebook (Jana/Kristina researching into)
• Identiy issue - its effects on virtual community (Judith S. Donath) / Deception online/ fake identities. (which I will work on)
• Conclusion

Obviously, the plan can change. We think it's central to outline the development and change in technology and the effacts on online communities and communications.

As a group we have arranged to meet up next week to work in our own time on the project. We don't need to work together but it would be useful to have each other's presents to put some solid pieces of work together.

Research

Ok, I am officially a mess. I haven't had the Internet at home for over a week, I can't work, I can't check my e-mails, i actually feel i can't communicate with people I need as easily. e.g. MSN, Emails, Facebook etc. I can't believe exactly how much we are dependant on the Internet.

Anyway so I'm in class and writing in my blog...

As we know my group has been struggling in focusing on a topic to write about. Nigel's help was to research and then come up with focus piont. I dnt no about others but I found that really hard because thats just not my way of working. I prefere to have a question and go into researching and exploreing around it, or maybe that's just the way I been used to working through all my other degree courses.

However i did try... I read and made notes of Howard Rhiegold's book 'The Virtual Community' and David Bell ' Introduction to Cyberculture' which was very good, learnt alot and I personally think now we should look at Online Life vs Real Life.
Im actually really stressing because there's just not one way to define the term 'community'. Each writer in the books have different opinions, and I don't no how to start.

By talking to some friends and family about there thoughs on the subject, I actually got some similar responses. I asked them questions like: Do you think we can form a 'community' online? and wheather they thought Facebook or Myspace for example were a form of a community? Most answered saying that, 'a community is very complex, it takes dedication and is an on going thing e.g. all community members attend meatings once a week to discuss issue they all are interested in and have in common. These communities usually have a large membership, over 100 people and all share a goal. Actally I even got from my father that 'a community is people from one country, a nation who share culture and traditions' this actually reminded me of something I read from David Bells book who I believe says something similar. I will research again and add it in the wiki if it's relevant. Also I got that, 'a community can not be online... because there is too many people in a community to get together at one place and one time and talk about whatever their issue is' I think this is was very interesting and I should ask for more people opinions.

Reflection 29th Oct 07

As a class Nigel got us thinking about defining the term 'community', because there is not just one explaination of it. We looked at aspects of what makes a community, the impact of language in including and excluding people from a community, locations, online presence, signs, symbols and representations etc.

To sum up generally, 'community' could be defined as:

'A social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists.'

Research - Identity & Virtual Communities

Some links to some research I have done on Identity and virtual communities.

http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html - by Judith S. Donath takes about Identity and Deception in Virtual Communities. She discusses the fact that one single human can create muiltiple electronic identity and the relationship between the self and the body.

http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/TGAME.html - A 1999 study about online identities. Researchers study human interaction online through game played in virtual community.

http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/teaching/hi-2/topic_7.html - Useful Links.

http://fragment.nl/mirror/Meyer/VirtualCommunity.htm - Human Identity in the Age of Computers 1997 by Chuck Meyer who talks about Howard Rheingold and computer mediated communications.

http://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006.html - Identity Production in a Networked Culture: in MySpace by Danah Boyd 2006.

http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/commwork.html - The Psychology of Cyberspace byJohn Suler's who talks about theorys/ second life and entering a virtual community.

Reflection 22th Oct07

Updates from Nigels class : 22nd Oct 2007

All the groups presented their ideas to Nigel and the class as he advised eveyone of what to think about, what direction to go in etc.

We talked about the idea about 'Flurkids' and Nigel liked it.
However some conplications...
- As it is a new developing group, it is hard to get much info on them apart from just reading their blogs to each other which most were writen in French.

So because of that, they couldn't be the main focus of our project. However this idea will definately be refered to in a paragraph or so but only used as an example of the deleopment of virtual communities and their devision into particual audiences and common interets.

During class we were discussing the website 'Second Life' which was very interesting and ties into all aspects of this project. It raises questions about identiy, reality, online deception, psychology, freedom of choice, technology etc. Our group took this idea into account. We decided to do some research into it and might use it in our project.

We left the class with set research homework for everyone. I was to research into 'Identity' on the internet and everyone else took a job like researching into 'virtual communities' and the meaning of a community etc. Metta researched into some books and theorist that talk about virtual communities which she will also reseach into such as: Imagined Communities Theory by Benedict Anderson and 'Communities' by Gerard Delanty.

1st Group Meeting / Ideas

Finally, I have some time to write in my blog... been so busy.

Well, the updates...
So far as a group we have meet up after going away and gathering some ideas.
Initially my peronsal ideas were:
- Exploring into why 'Virtual Communities' are so popular, what is the reason for the increase in websites developing like Hi 5, Windows Live, MySpace, Facebook, Blogs etc.
- Why does one have a 'MySpace' page or a 'Facebook'. (Personal and psychological reasons)
- Social Interaction issues: the effects of face to face vs online communication.
- The advantages and disadvantages of conline communications.
- Ownership and monopally capitalism issues.
- Identity, sucurity and critics. E.g. A case study of issues regarding paedophilia online etc.

However, after a small meeting sharing our ideas, Jana, presented us with a new mediated community that has developed. They are a French based community call 'Flurkids'. They are a group of young teenagers, very bright and active, into fashion and share the common interest of meeting up for big partys around the world.
By this meeting we dicided to focus our project on 'Flurkids' but still including and talking about the ideas I have memtioned above in regards to them.

Intro

Ok, this is really not my thing, 'writing blogs' i find it hard enough just checking my email.

After some negotiations and unsureness, we finally came to a decision that our group will include, myself Leda El-Lamaa, Kristina Benning, Jana Hladikova, and Mette Christiansen.

At this moment Mette is our Site / Project designer which is great because she seems like she knows what she's doing. However allocating individual roles each is difficult right now.
As a group we have agreed all to research into our Project Focus which is 'Virtual Communities'.
With some ideas each by next week we should narrow down and decide the content of our wiki.

In terms of working as a group, we've never worked together before, so this should be an interesting experience whilst at the same time exciting in preparing us for working with anyone and everyone in the future.
It could be a worry but i do think as mature and dedicated students we will over come any tensions and produce some good work.
We will not really be working with friends all our lives so best start getting used to it now.

Nigel make's the class very interesting for me, especially that personally I've never learnt about creating web pages etc, so i find myself intrigued and wanting to learn more and more.

I'm actually quite excited!!