Week 4, Topic 1 (A+B) empowering online communities

I think that online communities can empower certain types of people, but not necessarily everyone. Durkheim’s idea communities have ‘shared norms and values’ are shown on online communities. People talk on websites which they all have a shared interest on and show their opinion. This shows the ‘togetherness’ which is a factor of a community. However it could be argued that these aspects or shared opinions are derived from real life, so these online communities are not actually a new community, but as Rheingold argues they are just a development of the communities that appear IRL. But this change in style could mean that people are becoming more aware of communities and are able to get more involved in them, making them much more empowering. If people are too wary to give their opinion IRL, the online communities are ideal for people to share their views on subjects. Baym would argue that these communities allow people to be together, they have generated group specific meanings such as text language, and this mutual understanding allows people to share their views on the same level-bringing people who want to discuss topics together. However, this net being a public sphere, does raise some limitations for me. Whilst looking at the idea of the online community, it raises questions about how limited these communities can be. Yes, people can engage with on another on various different communication sites, but in my opinion they won’t reflect a community of say a city. Forums, network sites etc are very limited; people talk to people about specific subjects and interests. Therefore, this will fail to reflect all different ethnicities, genders, ages etc that live together in a community. If the older generation do not understand the internet, then they will fail to have their opinion shared on the site. If a certain type of person wants to speak about a game, only other people who understand this game will share the view, this is unlike real life communities. There are restrictions to communities in real life obviously, different ages tend to group together, but I feel like you do meet much more diverse people IRL. Also, because of Turkle’s idea of freedom on the net, you would never been sure that the person you are talking to is actually interested in what you are speaking about, or just trying out a new persona, which may fail to reach a feeling of togetherness.