THE PROMISE OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

By BIHONGOYE ERICA

Vibrant virtual communities are apparent on the internet and take many forms, however many of the claims made as to their superior character are overstated. They seem to hold out the promise of safe and inclusive communication but in reality, many of the problems which plague physical community are present in their virtual counterparts. This is hardly surprising given that virtual communities are forged and maintained by people living in the material world and that their users will bring problems, prejudices and limitations experienced in the physical world into their cyber-communities.

Despite the tendency for many to herald new technologies as the saviours of society our future is forged from our past. Neither Wellman's 'networked individual', nor the discerning and enlightened virtual communicator form the social majority, nor may they ever.

Most people still find their sources of community in neighbourhood, kinship and contacts forged in physical spaces, while they may also experiment building social networks and friendships across cyberspace virtual communities have not yet replaced traditional means of building and maintaining community - however flawed these might be.

Are virtual communities liberating for their users?
Wellman argues that virtual communities grant their members greater freedom because their users are not tied to physical locations. Virtual encounters can be managed from anywhere in the world as long as the user has access to the requisite technology. In addition the lack of a fixed location for these communities to engage means it is not necessary to travel long distances to meet at stated times and places. Virtual communities afford their members greater freedom of action, he suggests, because they disengage people from the often rigid roles which are associated with ideas of household, neighbourhood, region or nation. So internet users benefit from communicating in a freer electronic realm, a medium where strictly imposed codes are irrelevant.

However previous communication technologies have also worked in similar ways - communication via the telephone and post have been utilised for long-distance communication for some time and access to these systems is far more widely spread across the world's populace. Mobile phones have offered even greater freedom of movement, so how is communication via the internet fundamentally different. Granted the internet affords a faster means of communication and appears to offer greater flexibility, especially to the person on the move, however, it is another thing to suggest that social relationships which have been forged through this medium will prove to be fundamentally different from those which have not or that existing cultural values and power relations in society will lose significance as a result.