The introduction of online blogging forged an association with the word ‘online community’; but is this the correct term/use of blogging? Is it a phenomenon in the social networking world of online media? And has it really affected our community?
Barry Wellman (2001) wrote, "I define "community" as networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity. I do not limit my thinking about community to neighbourhoods and villages. This is good advice for any epoch and especially pertinent for the twenty-first century." He identifies a “community” as a network within society, and does not ‘limit’ it to the physical sense of the word- online blogging has therefore given meaning to this by allowing the interaction of people who share information and give a sense of ‘belonging’.
White (2005) describes them as, “ecosystems of people writing about things they care about”- thus blogs began to take the form of niche’s just as our physical communities had niche’s of businessmen, families, ethnic or the elderly. Blogging established a new platform for which our physical pockets of communities could interact within a wider community- the internet.
Currently, blogpulse.com has identified 149,393,857 blogs, 47,118 of those being created within the past 24 hours- the rapidly growing blogging network is a new phenomenon in social interaction amongst a wider “ecosystem”. It is though that this phenomenon will soon become ‘a thing of the past’, however it is clear that there are many uses for blogging being invented every day- such as blog mentoring communities, implying that the blogging ‘community’ has a lot more to give to our community.
Wellman, B, 2002, “Physical place and cyberplace: the rise of networked individualism”, in Community Informatics: Shaping Computer-mediated Social Networks, eds B, Loader, L, Keeble, Routledge, New York, pp.17-42.
White, N. 2005, 'How Some Folks Have Tried to Describe Community'. Retrieved 28 October, 2010, from http://www.fullcirc.com/community/definingcommunity.htm
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