I sit somewhat perplexed as I write to my blog about the definition of community, what it has been, what it is and what it will be. In discussions with class mates at OISE, I discovered that the term 'Community' is a place of murky waters when trying to decifer a definition, I found that 'Community' means different things to different people, depending on social context. Just as in the readings, "The Internet & Social Life" by Bargh and McKenna ('04) discusses online community evolution in workplace, as a social support and looking at how virtual groups can actually be beneficial parts of society. Many people see 'community' with negatives ideals, for example in the recent US elections, the Republican party's criticism of community organizing. Take a look at this
YouTube video on community organizers. Others view community with historical significance and deep roots. This notion became a hot topic among several of us in class who struggled to reconcile the new with the old definitions. One even suggested created a whole new name for online community that represented the times. Eg. like the term "blog" for writing an open journal and sharing with it interactively with others online. At first, I found it hard to agree...but the more we discussed, the more I realized that yes, perhaps an online community or virtual group should have its own special definition. Might I propose "commonline" as a potential name. A common place online. Other suggestions are more than welcome. Let's see what we can come up with and if it will catch on.
Another topic of interest for me was the discussion of "communities of practice" -- a term I'm pretty familiar with through my work (at
Saint Elizabeth Health Care). We've been using this term to bring together groups of professionals, staff with common skills to share in a particular knowledge area. We've mostly been using Discussion Forums as the venue for this online and it has worked out quite well when facilitated. Another way of pulling communities of practice (CoP) together is over Wikis. I found a very interesting example of this again on
YouTube: Communities of Practice Using Wiki by Dr. Brand Niemann. After understanding how Wikis can be used for collaboration by a group online, I'm inclined to recommend we try this out at work...stay tuned on how well this is received.
Thank you for sharing the video on the history of Community Organizers! I enjoyed it very much and after watching it, I found that perhaps we should appreciate and recognize, or at least acknowledge the work of those done in the past. Those who were able to organize communities together to inspire change for the better, such as Martin Luther King Jr.
ReplyDeleteThrough the readings in class about online communities, studies have shown that online communities DO exist, but their definitions are just slightly different than the traditional geographical oriented communities. Virtual or online communities are now defined by interests rather than geographical location. However, there has been no mention of a new term to identify these virtual online communities. Therefore, I support “commonline”. Let’s hope it catches on! :)