Session 2

Galston’s piece was thought provoking and I agree with the vast majority of points made. One assumption he makes that I don’t necessarily agree with is:

“One of the great problems of contemporary American society and politics is the proliferation of narrow groups and the weakening of structures that create incentives for accommodation.”

I think narrow groups have always existed in America and America has only grown more integrated with time, from the efforts of the civil rights movement of the 60s to a new call for action for gay rights in the last few years. I don’t think narrow groups are the problem. America was very segregated in the past. Look at the Amish community who cuts themselves off from “English society.” Actually this reading made me think of Rumspringa. This is where Amish teenagers have the freedom to explore the world outside of the Amish community then they must decide whether to join the Amish community and become baptized or reject the community and possibly be banned from contact with their family members or other members of the community for life. This is a situation where the cost of leaving the community is very high and its no wonder that most choose to stay with the Amish. But this is an extreme example; there is no accommodation offered in this situation, it’s all or nothing.


Would Galston admire the Amish society? He admires the small town in Portugal he visited where he saw an example of what he views is a community.
His description of Portugal made me think of Dolceacqua, a very small village in Italy, where my husband spent a lot of time growing up and where we lived for three months. It was similar to the Portuguese town; a tight knit community where there is "mutual familiarity, stable social patterns, and shared experience." My husband often expressed the idea that in Dolceacqua you can’t stay mad at people for too long because you’re going to have to see them again day after day. Anyway, Galston states that a higher percentage of young people stay in this small community compared to other small towns in western Europe. Aren’t there other factors involved than personal choice? In Docleacqua the young people don’t stay because there are no jobs. It has little to do with the strength of the community. Necessities of life like lack of food, shelter, safety and stability can tear apart even the strongest held communities.


The short article by Weeks about a mother (jokingly) threatening to kill her child explored the idea of social responsibility on the web. I agree with this quote from David C. Evans:

"the full array of human tendencies — constructive, destructive, pro-social, anti-social, conservative and risky — to be expressed in social media, as they are in any other arenas of social life."

And while in many ways I agree with Professor BJ Fogg: “Text is an impoverished medium for communicating emotion, intent, real meaning." I also believe that the issue of social responsibility on the web is not much different from the real world.

Professor BJ Fogg is quoted as stating, “people will respond to people who sound like they are in trouble — online or off. That's just normal human behavior." I could argue that people are just as likely to not respond to people who sound like they are in trouble online or off. What about the Bystander Effect? There are numerous examples of people witnessing brutal attacks, rapes and even murders and doing nothing about it. The thought is that the more people are there the more the sense of responsibility is diffused, basically everyone thinks someone else will do something about it. One of the first cases of the Bystander Effect occurred in 1964, after the good-old-days Galston mentions of social life on the stoop in Chicago in the 1950s where everyone took care of everyone else. So did the bystander effect come about because of the loss of tightly knit communities in America, I don’t know? But I don’t believe that those people who tried to intervene in the Twitter case did so because they felt responsible as a member of a community, the community of human beings perhaps but not more than that.

So does the Internet strength community? This question was left unanswered and what I decided to explore. I joined the social network http://www.iseecolor.com/ I didn’t know a lot about it and the site doesn’t really explain itself or give itself a particular mission, I liked that. It also has a lot of active members. Here’s a screenshot of the home page.

As you can see there are different ways you can communicate, you can start a thread in a group, post comments on members walls or use the chat feature. Within twenty four hours of signing up I received three wall posts that were just advertisements, this was disappointing and I received one friend request from someone I don’t know. The groups section is where I had the most fun. Here’s a screenshot of some of the most active groups


The majority of them seem to be about sex. Going through these groups was good for a laugh; people were flirty, fun and funny and didn’t take things to an uncomfortable point. The Married People Issues Group was a group where members had the chance to voice an issue or concern and get feedback from others. This would seem to be a community building exercise so I focused on this group. There were people with (it appears but you can’t be sure) real problems asking for advice. I was uncomfortable commenting because I didn’t have any advice to give. I've never been one to give advice, it's just not part of my personality. Since it was part of the assignment to interact I forced myself and made a comment on an issue not so serious. Here’s a screenshot.


In terms of whether my interacting helped to answer my question of whether Internet strengthens community, I’d say no. It was much too short of a time period. I think if I posted a question or an issue to the Married Peoples Issues Group than that would have helped. But I was really not comfortable with posting a real issue I have and then announcing it to all of you nor was I comfortable with making an issue up. The majority of the people who commented were sincere and thoughtful in their replies and I didn’t want to deceive anyone. So, I mostly lurked. Did I see a community? In some ways yes, in other ways no, depends on how you define community (not another definition question I had enough of that last session☺). I think that the people who posted their issues appreciated the comments and gained some different perspectives, they seemed to walk away happy and a little more confidant moving forward. Here’s one example of the original poster appreciative of a commenter and updating everyone on what happened regarding their issue.

People are happy and a need was met, that’s great. Like Galston says “Online groups can fulfill important emotional and utilitarian needs. But they must not be taken as comprehensive models of a future society.” Duh, people will always need face-to-face interaction, and I don’t know anyone trying to stop that. When I think about the issues of social computing that have come up in our readings, social responsibility, narcissism, surveillance and the impact of inclusion or exclusion I see parallels in the real world, I don’t think these issues are truly as unique as they may seem. More and more this quote from the Weeks article rings true to me:

"People are people both online and offline, so although social media may change how we interact with others, it's unlikely to change core human concepts of friendship and community," says David C. Evans, founder of the social media research company Psychster Inc.
"The new media for social behavior is like a new volcanic island in the ocean that is being populated by plants and animals: Although there will be a slight evolution in how things look and act, the basic form will reflect its origins."

These issues have been examined and debated by psychologists and socialists for ages; social computing gives than more to talk about and a slightly different tint but at its core the issues are the same online or offline. Perhaps a question I’d like to explore for a final project is: are these issues truly unique to the social computing environment, I’m not 100% convinced.