Community Take 2 March 5, 2007

As I think of a new definition of community all that comes to mind is niches. I believe community is built off of common interest. People that share common likes, dislikes and beliefs tend to flock together. Therefore, thousands of communities exist within society.  Not only does a community share common interest but together they discover new interest. For example one member of a community discovers a new band and then introduces this band to the rest of the community.  The community then rejects or embraces the new found interest. Members of a community also bond together to fight for what they believe is right and to work for the greater good of the community in order to maintain as well as keep their status.   

 

With that being said I begin to think about how many different communities a person belongs to? Is it even possible to be a member of more than one community? How does a person maintain status in more than one community? How are bridges built across different communities? Are people even aware of the different communities they belong to?

Narrow Research Topic February 15, 2007

As I try to narrow down my research questions I find myself wondering how I am actually going to research everything? Have people actually written about this before? I must admit I am a little concerned. I said that for my research I wanted to focus on online dating services like Match.com but I don’t even have a membership to one so this might cause a problem or two. However, I have chosen three questions I would like to focus on for my research. I tried to pick three questions that deal primarily with the aspect of trust and distrust within Match.com and other online dating services.    

1.) How do people express feelings of camaraderie, empathy, support or love within Match.com? It seems important to be able to express these things since you are trying to meet your match. Yet how do you know if a person really feels that since the only way to express him or herself is through words on a computer screen? How can you tell if a person is sincere with what they are actually saying?

2.) Does harassment within an online community  exist?  If so what form does it exist in and how does one deal with online harassment? 

3.) What makes a person decide that he or she can trust a person he or she has met on Match.com? How do you know a person is not just lying? In real life situations we are often able to depict when someone is lying by looking at their facial expressions and listening to their tone of voice but this can not be done on a computer so how does one decide when another is or is not lying?  At what point do you trust someone so much that you will meet up with them at a restaurant or movie theater?

Research Paper February 5, 2007

      When thinking about an on-line community to focus my research on I
thought about the few that have been mentioned in class; MySpace, Facebook, Zanga and other blogs. I decided that I wanted to be different and focus on a community nobody has mentioned. The community I have chosen is Match.com. Some people may say that Match.com is not a community but I feel as though it is because people are meeting one another and talking to one another based on shared interests and social status. A person can build social capital on Match.com just like that of any on-line community. The social capital on Match.com is based off of how one looks and how many times a person has been winked at or e-mailed by other members. My main question is how do people learn to trust or distrust people within the Match.com community and what happens when conflict occurs? 

Different on-line communities have different levels of interaction and participation among members; for example, on Facebook if one member likes another he or she can poke him or her, send him or her a message or write on his or her wall. Whereas on MySpace if one member likes another they can either send an e-mail or post a message. Normally on Facebook and MySpace people are friends with people they know in “real life” or people they have some sort of connection to through a network of friends. However, Match.com is a different story. On Match.com if a member likes another member it takes on a whole new meaning. It means one member sees potential in dating or hooking up with the other member. On Match.com in order to show interest in another member one can either send him or her a e-mail or “wink” at him or her. On Facebook and MySpace a person can gauge when to trust or distrust someone based off of who there friends are and what messages people have posted. Also on Facebook or Myspace if a person finds him or herself not trusting another member they can simply delete them as a friend and set privacy settings to where that person does not have access to him or her. However on Match.com a member seems to post so much information about him or herself that if they find himself or herself not trusting another member its hard to just block that member because the member already has enough personal information about him or her to where they could potentially track that person down in the real world. When I hear of Match.com I wonder how safe it must be.

Below are some questions that would help me with my research on the trust vs. distrust and conflict of people within Match.com:

1.) How is community built within Match.com since people are constantly coming and going based on whether or not they find themselves a match?     

2.) How do people express feelings of camaraderie, empathy, support or love withing Match.com? It seems important to be able to express these things since you are trying to meet your match. Yet how do you know if a person really feels that since the only way to express him or herself is through words on a computer screen?

3.) What defines harassment within an on-line community and how do people avoid harassment within Match.com?

4.) What makes a person decide that he or she can trust another person? At what point do you trust someone so much that you will meet up with them at a restaurant or movie theater?

5.) How does relationships on Match.com effect relationships in real-life?

6.) Are there signs to look for that tell you a person is lying about who they are? If so how do you know what these signs are and are these signs the same for everyone?

7.) There must be a particular set of norms within Match.com so how are these norms defined and what happens if these norms are violated?

8.) If several people on Match.com like the same person then does conflict arise and if so how is it solved?

For some reason dating services on-line intrigue me I think it is because I find them dangerous and “un-real” I mean how can you really know that someone is who they say they are?  I do not know if there is a real answer to that but it is something I would like to research. If I can not apply my trust vs. distrust and conflict topic to Match.com I would like to apply it to another on-line community such as Facebook.

What is social capital? January 24, 2007

After reading part one of Social Capital it is evident that the term social capital is rather complex. I am going to try and describe what I think social capital is based off what I gathered from the readings.

Social capital is when people invest in relationships and engage in social interactions because they believe it will benefit them in the marketplace. There are two ways a person can gain social capital. They are either born with it (ascribed) or they gain it through an education or job (acquired).  Once a person has established social capital he or she then has access to resources within the networks he or she is a member of.  An increase in social capital will lead to a better job and thus anincrease in income.  There are two things that determine the success of social capital. Those two things are the number of people in a network and how strong relationships are within the network.  Once social capital is understood strength and weak ties are established through and across networks.     

What is a community? January 24, 2007

As I think about what a community is I realize that I have been involved in a number of different communities throughout life; such as, church groups, Facebook, MySpace, school clubs, social groups and sporting teams to name a few. The one thing I notice about these different communities is that all  the people within the community seem to share the same interests or goals. I also realized that each member of a community brings his or her talents to that community and then based off the different talents represented the community will succeed or fail.

 Within communities there are smaller communities. For example within the community of my Church there is the Church body as a whole but then there are smaller communities such as the youth, college students, women’s club, men’s club and so on.  Each one of these smaller communities have formed based off of common interests.

After much thought I have come up with the following definition of a community. A community is formed when a group of people recognize that they share the same interests and that their different strength’s and weaknesses can be combined and used to benefit the greater good of themselves as well as those outside the community.