Page 246 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

available an important tool for exploring the ideological dimensions of
text.

See also: Ideology, Semantics
Further reading: Halliday (1985); Montgomery (1986)

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

The network of the Internet provides the possibility for increased
connectivity between people. Communication through Internet
forums (such as e-mail, chat rooms, graphical worlds and discussion
lists) allows people to participate within multiple social networks,
known as ‘virtual communities’. Interaction within the virtual
environment is mediated through technology rather than face-to-face.
Meeting people can be achieved easily, despite distance. Language
differences can be overcome through software applications designed to
translate messages. As a result, particular communities can be formed in
the virtual world that might otherwise not exist.
The rise of virtual communities has been understood by some as
providing the means to greater community participation. In the early
days of the Internet, Howard Rheingold wrote that discovering the
Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link (WELL) ‘was like discovering a cozy
little world that had been flourishing without me, hidden within the
walls of my house; an entire cast of characters welcomed me to the
troupe with great merriment as soon as I found the secret door’
(Rheingold, 1994: 2). The virtual community here is depicted as a
mythical hope regained – the ecstatic realisation of a long-held desire
for a sense of belonging. Such portrayals of virtual communities re-
state the large body of communitarian theory that sees community
participation as a means to greater social cohesion and personal
fulfilment (see for example Putnam, 2000). Virtual communitarians
depart from their traditional communitarian predecessors by viewing
technology as a promise – a means to achieve the ideal of community,
rather than a contributor to its demise.
Analysis of virtual communities focuses largely on issues of identity
formation. Cyberspace strips away signifiers such as clothes, age,
gender and ethnicity. Individuals are able to create alternate identities
and to remake themselves, if momentarily, through fictional histories,
by renaming themselves and switching gender (‘cross-dressing’ online).
For some this holds emancipatory potential, allowing people to escape
prejudices, fears and repression experienced IRL (‘in real life’). For

231