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Online community, between people who have usually never met and share only select aspects of their lives, presumes inclusion and belonging through communicational modes that borrow from successful real-life intimacy. It prioritizes openness and transparency, encourages emotional response (albeit
in a limited way through, for example, Facebook’s ever-powerful ‘like’
button), and claims to promote consensus. This rhetoric of openness and
sharing—a presumption of egalitarian transparency—is inherent in the
corporate mantra of Google (‘Do no evil’), Facebook (‘making the Web more
social’), and Flickr-Yahoo (‘Share your pictures, watch the world’). Yet just as inner-city windows might present an illusion of togetherness in which isolation is actually the norm, this presumed openness of virtual
communities hides the fact that inclusion in social media can be fickle and conditional; digital citizenship hides multiple power dynamics and relations,not all of which are explicitly stated. Whereas there has been some discussion of the meanings of digital citizenship (to mean the accepted norms
of appropriate, responsible technology use), online ‘community’ is invoked
as a given. The Professor of Media Studies at Utrecht University, José van Dijck, refers in her discussion of social media’s history to ‘community function’ and ‘community character’; ‘community collectivism’ and
‘community utilization’; and to ‘community’ itself as being innovative, organizational, self-selecting, and open. But community, like citizenship, carries an enormous functional, symbolic, and practical weight.
What kinds of ‘community’ are being forged online, and how do they impact on self-esteem, a sense of belonging, and self-identity? How does online community differ from offline community, and how and why does loneliness result?
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