Last try at community

1. Community: Community is what is formed when individuals come together through face to face or facilitated interaction. It is based on a shared since of interest in the interaction and the exchange of something of value (knowledge, money, expression, etc.).
2. Is community possible online? Yes. While online interactions make community more difficult because of the clouded ideas of trust, reputation and identity, it is still possible.
3. Is online community part of the problem or the solution? I feel when it is used correctly and part of a balanced communication life it can help to overcome some of the gaps created in our society. For example, in my research project I found that there are needs in the grieving process that are difficult for young individuals to fulfill through traditional means of communication. I don't think online community is part of the problem, unless individuals are substituting actual real-world community for online community.
   

MySpace fixes

After browsing through MySpace, here are three improvements I would suggest:

1. Make setting your own privacy settings a mandatory action during the account setup process.
2. Offer an easy way to report spam or unsolicited messages.
3. Help people with their layouts. There are so many poor layout choices that make reading and navigation difficult. MySpace should offer to help you customize your page during the setup process.
   

Community (part II)

A community is an interconnected group of agents that come together for some common purpose (location, interest or survival.) Members of the community interact to obtain things that they want (goods, services, money, social status, knowledge), and the level of interaction is related to the level of trust between members.

Research Topic

I recently came upon something on Facebook that actually made me think for a while. I came across the profile of someone who had recently died, and saw how their wall had transformed from a simple message board to a public forum to eulogize the person. Facebook has now become so much a part of our lives that it is no longer a prerequisite to be physically alive to be virtually alive on Facebook. So, all of these thoughts and observations led me to come up with the following questions:

· What forms an online identity, and how can it continue after death?

· How do people use online communities to grieve for others?

· What are the ramifications of people using online community for this purpose, what legal and ethical problems arise?

While Facebook gave me the idea for this topic, I think MySpace would be a better community to observe and research. First, MySpace is a more open community, and I can have access more profiles. Also, as disturbing as it may be, there is a web page, MyDeathSpace, where news articles of deaths of young people are posted, along with links to their MySpace profiles. From just a few minutes on these sites, I found dozens of profiles for people who have passed away recently, or even years ago. Some of the profiles have been updated by family or others, while some still have the last posts by the deceased person. The profiles range from ordinary people who have died, to soldiers in Iraq, to celebrities and even to the extreme of memorializing Barbaro the racehorse.

While this issue fascinates me, I think it is also one that must be dealt with carefully. I don’t want to exploit the deaths of young people for a paper. I think the topic has the possibility of feeling very morbid or just plain depressing.

However, I think the benefits of researching this topic outweigh the risks. I think death is very much a part of life, and now it is becoming the same way with digital lives. I think it is important to look at the consequences both positive and negative of expressing grief in these ways.

How could I learn from this? It took me a while to see the connection from online grief to my major of public relations. One area of PR that I would be interested working in after college would be for a hospital. I have a feeling that issue will become a major obstacle for hospital PR as online communities continue to grow. I found the MySpace profiles of two young people who died after having cosmetic surgeries. How is the hospital effected by medical information posted on these sites? What about privacy laws and HIPPA? If the hospital cannot give media all of the information about a death, will they turn to MySpace to find out what went wrong? While I don’t intend to make this a case study for a hospital, I think researching this area will allow me to be more aware of it and understand some of the concerns that arise from it.

While my initial thoughts on this research topic are very broad in nature, I hope to condense them further into a workable topic. My basic question is, “How do people use online communities, like MySpace to grieve?”

As to the nature of the report, I would like to pursue a non-traditional paper option; perhaps, a website. My only hesitance in presenting the paper in a web format is that linked profiles of people who have died may be removed or restricted at any point, thus leaving broken links.

What is social capital?

According to Lin, social capital is made up of resources that are embedded in a social structure and that are accessed and or mobilized in purposive actions.

But, what does that mean? To me, social capital is everything that you don’t own, know, or posses, but could easily get your hands on after a few minutes on your cell phone or a simple message on facebook.

Some people are great at using and accessing social capital, yet others feel to shy or too undeserving, or simply feel like they have nothing to exchange in return to the person who helped them out. Having something to exchange or being capable of reciprocating the use of capital are unspoken rules of using social capital. Sometimes this reciprocation can be in allowing the person who loaned you access to their capital to use some of your similar capital. For example, I borrow a friend’s marketing book, but I let them use my notes from management. Another and less obvious type of reciprocation comes in recommendations. Asking a former employer to use some of their social ties to put in a good word for a job, possibly gives me a job. But what does the former boss get in return? I do not have the same social capital to give him a recommendation. But, by doing a good job at the place he recommended me to repays him the favor because it increases the degree that his acquaintance trusts him, because he recommended a good employee.

What is Community?

What is a community?

I think to be a community, you have to have these things:

• two or more individuals
  
• some form of interaction (face-to-face, on-line, smoke signals, whatever)
• there has to be some commonality that brings the people together (family ties, location, proffesion, hobby)
• there has to be some form of sharing going on (goods, services, ideas)
• it has to be sustained (all of the above qualifications have to be fairly current)

So, if I had to write a definition, I would say that community...
Can be found anytime two or more individuals coem together in common interest to share and interact in a sustained manner

I think one thing that is often mistaken for community is commonality. Just because there are a lot of people doing the same things does not neccesarrily mean that they are in a community together. For example, my accounting class is not a community. While we do share time together in class and we do listen to the same lecture, there is no interaction or sharing between students. This could change. If the class meets to study together for the first test, then we will have the beginnings of a community, but until then we are just students enrolled in the same class.