Digital Watch

I have developed a time consuming Rightmove habit. In my defence, I’m wrangling with where and how we plan to bring up our freshly minted kids. For years, if you’d asked me what I thought was important about a home I would usually have said one thing: a strong sense of community. (Well, maybe two things: community and great laundry facilities!).

Now I find myself trying to turn theory into reality and it’s made me question how deep my understanding of communities runs, especially when the idea is stretched into our digital lives. Turns out, I’ve stumbled across a goldmine of ideas, thinking and research. Here are five things I’ve learned.

One: There is no easy definition of a community

The Journal of Computer Aided Communication might be one of my new favourite reads. It reaches deep into the social concepts being altered by online tools. It’s a little old, but this special edition spotlights research on online communities and describes a problem I quickly ran into – concepts of community cut across political theory, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Taking just one domain – political theory – you might have expected communitarians to have landed on a view. But take a look at these political dimensions of community (communities of place, memory/history or psychological communities) and it’s clear there is no tight boundary.

Two: (In my view) communities incur obligations

You might provide a range of answers to Michael Sandel’s thought experiments on the ethical call of the community, but personally I find the idea that community ties inform our ethical judgements compelling. I’d love to have a conversation about the risks of this position, but I suspect I’d still be left with a deep sense that identities, forged in communities, matter.

This view sets a high bar for communities. It’s not enough that we talk the talk. If you’re in a community, there is an element of work involved. Work towards goals, towards reciprocity, or towards maintaining and developing an identity. What does this mean for digital communities?

Three: Digital communities can work towards common goals

I discussed the idea of digital communities doing ‘work’ with a friend, and Wikipedia was the obvious example. Wikipedia contributors collaborate purely online and collectively deliver not just a common good, but a truly public good with a global reach. The Wikipedia ‘community’ is an enormous, dispersed group with diverse motivations. I questioned whether it could be referred to as a community at all. Then I found this wiki page, and while I’m sure there is a debate to be had, it seems at least arguable that Wikipedeans, or the most engaged subset, would self-identify as a community.

Four: Digital communities can provide meaningful support

The Covid-19 pandemic supercharged our relationships with digital tools for communicating within, and seeking support from, existing communities. That alone doesn’t tell us much about our relationships within purely digital communities. This study, again drawn from the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication is interesting. Its authors analysed posts on an online breast cancer forum to conclude that there was a positive correlation between the ‘amount of participation and psychosocial well-being’. Still a health-warning: the paper is clear that other studies have thrown up more challenging results (e.g. that online participation can increase feelings of isolation) and that they cannot prove causation.

Five: Digital communities can shape identities

This is a big statement! It’s my tentative conclusion, having paddled in the shallows (maybe not even paddling in the shallows, I think I’m still parking the car) of online gaming, social psychology and Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). We are used to casual references to gaming ‘communities’ and gamers’ ‘identities’, but how deep do these concepts run? I need to return to this topic, it’s huge. For now, I’m persuaded that in-game identities can shape real-world behaviours and affiliations, especially where World of Warcraft is involved. I plan to discuss this book with my brother over Christmas.

So where does this leave us? Perhaps what we have learned is that by virtue of being a very human concept, our idea of a community will necessarily be impacted by the fundamental changes to how humans communicate and relate, which are being brought about by digital tools, games and spaces.

This is exciting; we will find new ways to work together and to relate. But it also creates whole new domains from which people can be excluded. In next week’s post, I’ll consider the very real concerns around digital exclusion.

REFERENCES

Rodgers, S. and Chen, Q. Internet Community Group Participation: Psychosocial Benefits for Women with Breast Cancer. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), 2005.