VIRTUAL COMMUNITY

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services.

Virtual communities all encourage interaction, sometimes focusing around a particular interest or just to communicate. Some virtual communities do both. Community members are allowed to interact over a shared passion through various means: message boards, chat rooms, social networking sites, or virtual worlds.^[1]

Introduction

The traditional definition of a community is of geographically circumscribed entity (neighborhoods, villages, etc.). Virtual communities are usually dispersed geographically, and therefore are not communities under the original definition. Some online communities are linked geographically, and are known as community websites. However, if one considers communities to simply possess boundaries of some sort between their members and non-members, then a virtual community is certainly a community.^[2] Virtual communities resemble real life communities in the sense that they both provide support, information, friendship and acceptance between strangers.^[3]

Early research into the existence of media-based communities was concerned with the nature of reality, whether communities actually could exist through the media, which could place virtual community research into the social sciences definition of ontology. In the seventeenth century, scholars associated with the Royal Society of London formed a community through the exchange of letters.^[2] "Community without propinquity", coined by urban planner Melvin Webber in 1963 and "community liberated," analyzed by Barry Wellman in 1979 began the modern era of thinking about non-local community.^[4]

Impacts of virtual communities

On health

 Concerns with a virtual community's tendency to promote less socializing include: verbal aggression and inhibitions, promotion of suicide and issues with privacy. However, studies regarding the health effects of these communities did not show any negative effects. There was a high drop-out rate of participants in the study. The health-related effects are not clear because of the lack of thoroughness and the variation in studies done on the subject.^[7]

Rather, recent studies have looked into development of health related communities and their impact on those already suffering health issues. These forms of social networks allow for open conversation between individuals who are going through similar experiences, whether themselves or in their family.^[8] Such sites have in fact grown in popularity, so much so that now many health care providers are forming groups for their patients, even providing areas where questions may be directed to doctors. These sites prove especially useful when related to rare medical conditions

On communication

Yochai Benkler, in his book The Wealth of Networks from 2006, suggests that virtual communities would ′come to represent a new form of human communal existence, providing new scope for building a shared experience of human interaction′.^[18] Although Benkler's prediction was not entirely correct, however, it is clear that communications and social relations are extremely complex within a virtual community. The two main effects that can be seen according to Benkler are a ′thickening of preexisting relations with friends, family and neighbours′ and the beginnings of the ′emergence of greater scope for limited-purpose, loose relationships′.^[18] Despite being acknowledged as ′loose′ relationships, Benkler argues that they remain meaningful.

                by Minzi Catherine L. BAPRM 42616