Page 219 - Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

Holmes-06.qxd 2/15/2005 1:03 PM Page 202

202 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
first rests on its touted efficiency in being able to connect people with
20
common interests, and the second is that it is able to reduce serendipitous
21
interaction between strangers. Both of these views fall within an instru-
mental conception of the Internet.
In the first case, virtual community is cast in terms of interest-based
22
relationships. In the community-of-interest view, individuals, or avatars,
are bonded together solely in the pursuit of common interests. See Marc
A. Smith for a comparison of virtual communities with the committees of
correspondence of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The appeal of
CMC or the Internet is that it is seen to deliver the satisfaction of these inter-
ests much more efficiently than can life off-line. However, the needs that are
met to satisfy these interests tend to be less material than they are psycho-
logical. And indeed the appreciation of shared interest in a particular move-
ment, style or object, be it the environment, fashion or tropical fish, is viewed
to be sufficient in most cases for a sense of bond to emerge with other peo-
ple. Of course, this particular view, heavily promoted by Wired magazine in
the 1990s, is founded in a consumerist approach to community. J. Macgregor
Wise (1997) argues that it didn’t take long for the Internet to become a fron-
tier for commodification, not in what it sells, but in the way individuals
relate to it: ‘Community based on special interests (hobbies) is already on its
way towards a consumerist-centered (rather than community based on
community interests) organization, where the dominant communities (e.g.
newsgroups) are communities centered around leisure activities (e.g. Star
Trek)’ (154).
Another dominant instrumental view of the virtual community is cel-
ebratory of on-line cultures where there is ‘no sense of place’. In these def-
initions, computerization removes dependence on physical ‘place’ and
minimizes accidental contact amongst strangers. This in turn provides an
architecture for the community-of-interest to flourish, as individual inter-
actions are unlikely to be cluttered by colliding with unwanted forms of
association. Thus, it enhances the efficiency of communication among
those who already need to communicate more efficiently (see, e.g., Calhoun,
1986). However, this latter view differs substantially from the practice of
flânerie, which encourages a community of strangers bathing in each
other’s company.
In both of these views, the idea of community is a Gemeinschaft-by-other-
means, and not association as an end in itself. In both views, traditional ‘nos-
talgic’, real-life senses of community can benefit, but they can also be
threatened. Wellman and Gulia (1999) see the utopian versus the dystopian
versions of virtual community arguments as the central binary which orga-
23
nizes the debate. But the binary between the reinvigoration of real-life com-
munity and its attenuation conceals the fact that what is reaffirmed by both
positions is a commitment to a one-dimensional sense of real-life community,
which can be either ‘helped’ or eroded by technological mediation.
One glaring problem with such a commitment is that, as we have
identified, it is historically possible to uncover senses of community not