The Forum > Article Comments > On the question of community: blogs and belonging > Comments
On the question of community: blogs and belonging : Comments
By Nicholas Hookway, published 8/12/2005Nick Hookway examines 'community' in a virtual world and our declining civic, political and religious participation.
- Pages:
-
- 1
- Page 2
-
- All
I agree with you on the several issues raised while still agreeing with myself. What a stupid sentence, but you know what I mean. This is what is so fascinating about online communities - they're not communities in the normal sense of the word, whatever that means. The word community is a much-abused one and can mean anything the speaker wants it to mean. Online communities take that one step further by being whatever the individuals who create them want them to be without the normal kinds of consensus.
Much ignored sociologist Louis Wirth was interested in both consensus and absence, absence meaning the things we're not aware of because we take them for granted. Culture I suppose. Ethnicity. Consensus is highly dependent upon absence and to my way of thinking online communities do weird things to absence and consensus which makes them look different.
I haven't been doing this for long enough to have experienced much of the stuff online people must experience, but I'm learning.