Preview

Explore the Role of Digital Media, Particularly the World Wide Web, in the Formation of Online Communities and the New Forms of Social/Cultural Identities in Virtual Space. What Implications Do New Forms of Interactions

Best Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2401 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Explore the Role of Digital Media, Particularly the World Wide Web, in the Formation of Online Communities and the New Forms of Social/Cultural Identities in Virtual Space. What Implications Do New Forms of Interactions
Explore the role of digital media, particularly the World Wide Web, in the formation of online communities and the new forms of social/cultural identities in virtual space. What implications do new forms of interactions online have on our understanding of ‘community’ and ‘democracy’?

Digital media is responsible for the formation of online communities and creating a society and culture that merges societies and divisions, and thus this form of medium has become more real to humans than reality itself, and virtual reality has taken over human’s ideas of community and democracies.

This essay will discuss how online communities have been developed and how they have in turn created new societies and cultures found online; these new societies and cultures have created acceptance for many people for many different reasons. It will also be discussed how digital media and online communities our affecting our understanding of community and democracy and how this is will affect our local communities.

The most ideal way to define digital media is that it is the different platforms on which people communicate electronically. (Flanzraich par.3) Through digital media online communities are developed and established. Online communities are groups of people who use the World Wide Web to create Internet Web sites, chat rooms, newsgroups, emails, discussion boards and forums to interact with others who share the same interests, or simply to communicate with friends/family. (Owyang par.3)

Online communities could not exist without digital media in particular the World Wide Web. Mark Nunes explains how “The World Wide Web has created a hypertext that offers users the opportunity to connect to networks, computers and servers through a simple lived practice of clicking and pointing.”(Nunes 49). His idea that the virtual world is only possible through a network of interconnecting servers and potential for each user to reach this site from anywhere at any time through the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    40 Virtual or online communities have been around for a long time and predate the World Wide Web.…

    • 2839 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this essay, “Is There a There in Cyberspace” by, John Perry Barlow, often speaks and writes about computer communication and online communities and real life communities. He compares the differences of the non-intentional community that he lives in, with a different community that he later found, the online virtual commons for the deadheads.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The community they have developed, he believes, promotes activities that tear down not only our country, but human society. 3. To support his thesis, Gutfield points out that internet consumers become distracted from the importance of everyday life by unrelated – and at times severely demeaning and dividing – content they find online. He laments that “we’re really just numb nuts united by a thirst for anything that might divert attention from the stuff we should be thinking about” (203). For…

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Boca Raton Research Paper

    • 948 Words
    • 4 Pages

    During the height of the technological revolution of the 21st century, there has been increased controversy on the costs and benefits of a technology-driven society. While it is easy to point out the over-excessive amount of time the public spends online, many fail to see the much more favorable aspects provided through a more interconnected world. Technology is helping amalgamate the world. The use of elements such as the internet and social media grant access to a vast expanse of information, establishing both a local and a global community. The concept of community is being transformed from a physical group of people to a virtual network as people all over the world have increasingly more access to connect with one another.…

    • 948 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Attached by the Hoip

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Technology is the way people run today. Some people look at technology as the future of America. Others look at technology as a place to find old friends. Today Americans have fewer friends in the real world then they have online. William Deresiewicz’s essay Faux Friendship and G. Anthony Gorry’s essay Empathy In the Virtual World both look at technology as it is seen today. Deresiewicz and Gorry argue that people today get more attached to their technology.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Analytically describing digital technology, he says it has enabled a third and broader category of media. Apart form one-way public (broadcast) media like movies and two-way private (communication) media such as the telephone, civilization now has two-way media operating from private- to public- scale. The author insightfully describes digital as bridging broadcast media and communication media, enabling public to private information movement and vice-versa. Shirley then describes the new media as involving significant economic change. Because no one owns the Internet infrastructure, the Internet is just a set of agreements that bound data movement. With its contents easily accessible to all and the costs low, the Internet has enabled much social and creative behavior, says the…

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Rosen then makes the connection from online identity to online communities. She notes what characterizes these online communities, depends on a number of things. Age, demographics, location and, pastimes. She states that today’s social networking sites organize themselves around the “person,” how we define ourselves online with millions of individual profiles that list interests, hobbies and the things that are important to us. She also explains how these online communities have affected our relationships in the real world. She gives the example of two users who announced their engagement over Facebook and the repercussions both on and offline when they announced it was not going to happen.…

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    What is Community? What kind of impact can it have? These are questions that aren’t as easy to answer in today’s world, opposed to just a decade ago. The biggest change in that time, is the introduction of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. Many of the brightest minds are taking conflicting sides on the topic. Some will argue that we are more disconnected then we’ve ever been as a result of social media. On the other hand, people will swear that we have never been closer due to social media. Let me tell you, I know first-hand how much of a positive impact social media is having in our friendships and communities.…

    • 921 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Evgeny Morozov

    • 986 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Evgeny Morozov’s article, ‘Technology’s Role in Revolution’, was very attention-grabbing. Evgeny argued that many revolutions throughout history do not transpire through internet and technology, but in effect, are shaped by cultural factors. His term, cyber-utopianism, suggests that online interaction between individuals is emancipatory, and that the internet favours the oppressed, rather than the oppressor. He makes evident, that this belief is nieve and stubborn because it refuses to recognize its consequences. Evgeny argues against the certain ideas of what he refers to as internet centrism, and cyber-utopianism, and indeed points out that there is a dark side to internet freedom.…

    • 986 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    media

    • 2248 Words
    • 7 Pages

    References: Castells, Manuel. "The Culture of Real Virtuality: The Integration of Electronic Communication ." The rise of the network society. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. pp.220-255. Print.…

    • 2248 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The continuity and change of the mainstream media is triggered by the digital revolution as well as the rise of the internet. This change has been sudden for the most part. As a result, there have been developments owing to the evolution of the mass media; social networking cites have emerged thus increasing personal interaction between people of different cultural backgrounds.…

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the reading Cyber Racism, the interaction of people in the digital world of the internet is thoroughly examined. The digital world opens up another channel for people across the globe to connect with each other and communicate across networks that would normally be separated by physical distance. Even though internet interaction is not face to face as one would be in the real world, it still produces the same things that normal people deal with in society. Issues tackled in American history such as racism and blatant white supremacy movements surface themselves again online meeting little resistance. With this said it is clear in this reading that the elements of race,…

    • 1209 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Instagram provides a public platform for people to connect with others with similar social interests, forming virtual communities (van Dijk, 1997). As virtual communities operate online, it reduces the geographical and physical constraints of traditional communities, which is a new concept over the past few decades (Cristofari & Guitton, 2014). However, van Dijk (1997) argues that virtual communities are not replacing traditional communities, but are instead strengthening them by reducing these limitations. Reducing the barriers for communication and interaction among communities, both virtual and traditional, is enhancing the rapid globalisation of society. Thus, the platform Instagram provides for users to create virtual communities can be connected with larger sociological phenomenon, including rapid…

    • 725 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Much has been written about the erosion of the influence of traditional agents of socialisation like family, schools, and communities. etc in the era of late modernity. Many a reason has been ascribed to this phenomenon, among others the view that traditional agencies do not fulfill the needs of the new generation of youths in this era. Perhaps it is the degeneration of the values which used to hold these agencies, or perhaps it is the ability to replace these agencies, often viewed as archaic, with new influences. These traditional social structures and “canonized cultural orientations” (Glastra et al, 2004) no longer provide the individual with a place and purpose in life (Strain, 2000). In contemporary society individuals need to be able to re-create themselves (Bagnall, 2001) in order to cope with change (Fryer, 1997) so as to arrive at a place where they either feel at home or accept that they are different (Bauman, 2004). Since the advent of the Internet and the closing of world borders due to globalisation, any community in any part of the world is able to broadcast any form of message or ideas thus causing a fragmentation of societies everywhere (Putnam, 1995). However Anderson counters that access to different people and different cultures is "not fragmenting.. more, reforming along different dimensions (Anderson: 2006, 191) Responding to this more and more individuals are drawn to utilize the Web as a primary tool of social interaction and discourse. One such form of participation on the Internet is the online social networks, like, Friendster, MySpace, Bebo and lately, Facebook. These networks create an online community in which a person creates a profile and then connects to other users. The user generates this profile by offering up a range of personal information in a variety of media…

    • 3013 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Whenever you walk at the campus of the American University of Sharjah, you will definitely find the young Arab girls wear trendy Western dresses as well as the Arab boys wear stylish Western clothes. And even students with more conservative dresses seem more Western than Eastern. No matter how young Arab people wear or look like nowadays, they even tend to be different in the language they use in typing and communicating. There is a widespread linguistic phenomenon that tremendously encroaches their lives and ultimately leads them to write in an unusual language. This language is well-known nowadays among Arabs especially the youth as “Arabizi”. Arabizi, a slang term derived from the words arabi or Arabic and englizi or English, is used to describe the melding between Arabic and English (Yaghan, 2008). It is a common contemporary trend for typing that has largely spread among young Arabs who use Arabic numerals and Latin characters to communicate, i.e. “5alas”. Given the linguistic, cultural and social significance that Arabizi has in contemporary society, indeed it is extremely interesting and also important to deeply investigate this phenomenon in order to determine its dimensions, causes and possible consequences.…

    • 4917 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Powerful Essays