ARE VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES MORE FOCUSED AND EFFECTIVE?

By MASSAWE ARKADI

In his writing on virtual community Wellman has implied that people who find each other and converse on the internet will engage in encounters which are more focussed than those which take place in the physical world. To enter into cyberspace and to find a community of interest, he argues, takes studied thought and application, the result of which will be a more meaningful conversation. However this presupposes we share Wellman's understanding of which engagements convey meaning and significance. All sorts of meetings can be advantageous, enjoyable and rewarding, not only the previously arranged and managed.

Wellman ignores the potential benefits and also pleasures associated with informal contacts and chance encounters in shared physical spaces of neighbourhood and community. In physical space encounters are often unplanned and everyday life can be chaotic and disordered. Wellman's position suggests a degree of planning and design in social intercourse which is often not present, or desirable for many people whose time can be severely limited by the requirements of running work, household and social lives. In real life one meeting can serve numerous purposes and this can be a strength rather than a limitation. Time spent in any typical usenet newsgroup or chatroom will also reveal a far less than orderly and focussed conversation taking place.

Are virtual communities safe places?
Discrimination, oppression, prejudice and fear can certainly bar people from full involvement in social interaction and it has been suggested that those who are excluded in physical spaces can find a safe place to interact in virtual space. Slouka has argued, for example, that interaction in cyberspace offers humanity the opportunity to transcend the ideas which oppress and exclude others. He recounts:

I'd heard it said...that the disembodied nature of cyberspace was precisely its strongest suit, that because it was disembodied, it would teach us to value quickness of mind over beauty, wit over physical power, the content of our character over the colour of our skin…the violent would see the futility of their ways and the intolerant would come to understand that human beings are more alike than different (1995:48)
Wellman further suggests that as people later choose to reveal their physical characteristics to other members of their electronic communities, they can challenge stereotypes which might previously have held them back. In this way, he suggests, society as a whole, ICT-user and non-user alike, benefits as prejudice and stereotyping withers away. Yet this argument, by focusing on what cannot be perceived in internet communiqués, ignores so much of what makes up the distinctiveness between human beings and the culturally coded behaviours which we carry with us but which remain largely hidden from view. Bourdieu refers to class differences, for example, as an:'invisible reality that cannot be shown but which organizes agents' practices and representations'. (1998:10)

It is erroneous, therefore, to suggest that by merely discarding a physical presence we can leave behind so much more of our background, experiences and culture which help to distinguish us from others. Even purely text-based conversations can reveal a great deal about a person through the sender's levels of literacy, tastes, opinions, use of language and range of experience. It is more likely, then, that distinctions and patterns of exclusion encountered in physical space will transfer to the virtual. Exclusion may even be further intensified for those without the means to engage in electronic conversation in the first instance or for whom the electronic realm appears to be a forbidding or alien environment.