The Fragility of Social Networks

WingmanX submitted an interesting article:

The Fragility of Social Networking
Sure, maybe you actually do get to know a few people, and it's certainly true that people do meet through online chats and even get married. I know at least four couples personally who met online and got married. But hooking up is not a community. I'm of the opinion that there is no such thing as a real community online. It's a "pretend" community that we like to feel we're a part of, but it's composed of users who could jump ship at any moment, and often do.  A good online community, whether it's Second Life, Twitter, or something new, is indeed fun to belong to if you have the time or inclination. But please do not take it seriously, and never believe that you're part of a true community. Get out of your house, and you'll find the community out there in the street. That's real.   CONTINUED

And From the comments on WingmanX's site:   I think of social networking sites as gigantic, highly-detailed phone books at best. They are for finding people, and then initiating interaction with them, which can lead to the creation of a community. They can be used to maintain communities, but they mainly serve as a means of communicating between members of a community, albeit a highly inefficient means of communication.  CONTINUED

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The research I'm conducting indicates a significant difference between textual and avatar-based communication.  The user is ultimately anonymous within both mediums (sharing of profile info aside), but it's harder to build trust within textual communities.  Without trust, it's easier to jump ship.

On the other hand, avatar-based communities result in "presence," or the projection of the real self onto the graphical self.  Sure, you can still role play other identities, but people tend to project their own morals onto avatars and furthermore interact with other avatars as they would with a real being.  That's why I assess the conditions for the development of Tocquevillian associations are greater in virtual worlds than textual ones.

But as the comment on Wingman News Wire points out, sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow users to share a wealth of personal information (for good or ill), which breaks down textual barriers.  The more info someone shares the greater the trust they can build with someone of like interests (let alone attracting others with dissimilar interests).  In short, there's hope for community online. 

Of course, both Tocqueville and Putnam favor real, personal contact within the local community to maintain positive social capital, but I don't think we can discount "virtual" capital shared amongst a wider distributed community.  Sure, I'd rather meet neighbors face-to-face over a beer, but blogging has introduced me to folks I otherwise would never meet.  I worry more for people who can no longer establish or maintain healthy face-to-face relationships and chose to live in distributed societies, not those who balance both.   

Comments

[WingmanX]

"The more info someone shares the greater the trust they can build..."

I haven't done your research, of course, but this seems to me to be the key. Mr. C-., USAFA prof, was the first to share with me the idea of community systems--especially online--as an economy of trust. This, too provides an explanation for the breakdown of the prototype community Dvorak mentioned--trust was betrayed.

Only because you brought up the distinction between graphical and textual interfaces--have you compared moral-mapping between the old MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHs and the new MMOs? Does moral-mapping truly depend on the sense used to experience? Or is it a function of having an external _character_ to provide an idealized form?

Oooh, now there's a fun idea to play around with. Digital Space as the philosophical world of ideal forms.

WMX

[MOGS]

Hmmm the prototype? Is that Lucasarts' "Habitat" by any chance? There's an interesting paper on that online someplace...

[The Mad Pigeon]

Not sure about the early MUDs, although I briefly discussed them in my paper to lay the groundwork for later graphical worlds. BUT, within graphical worlds users can project themselves onto any graphical avatar, to include ASCII characters.

However, I assess textual goal oriented worlds can induce presence as well, since they encourage user cooperation to complete objectives.

As for the "Habitat" article, here it is (a great read):

http://www.scara.com/~ole/literatur/LessonsOfHabitat.html