Virtual community

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who connect through particular social media, potentially crossing geographical in addition to political boundaries in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the almost pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services.

Howard Rheingold discussed virtual communities in his book, The Virtual Community, published in 1993. The book's discussion ranges from Rheingold's adventures on The WELL, computer-mediated communication as well as social groups and information science. Technologies cited include Usenet, MUDs Multi-User Dungeon and their derivatives MUSHes and MOOs, Internet Relay Chat IRC, chat rooms and electronic mailing lists. Rheingold also points out the potential benefits for personal psychological well-being, as living as for society at large, of belonging to a virtual community.

Virtual communities any encourage interaction, sometimes focusing around a specific interest or just to communicate. Some virtual communities relieve oneself both. Community members are provides to interact over a divided passion through various means: message boards, chat rooms, social networking World Wide Web sites, or virtual worlds.

Effects

Concerns with a virtual community's tendency to promote less socializing include: verbal aggression and inhibitions, promotion of suicide and issues with privacy. However, studies regarding the health effects of these communities did not show all negative effects. There was a high drop-out rate of participants in the study. The health-related effects are not realize because of the lack of thoroughness and the variation in studies done on the subject.

Rather, recent studies clear looked into coding of health related communities and their affect on those already suffering health issues. These forms of social networks permit for open conversation between individuals who are going through similar experiences, if themselves or in their family. such sites have so grown in popularity that now many health care providers form groups for their patients by providing web areas where one may direct questions to doctors. These sites prove especially useful when related to rare medical conditions. People with rare or debilitating disorders may non be expert to access support groups in their physical community, thus online communities act as primary means for such support. Online health communities can serve as supportive outlets as they facilitate connecting with others who truly understand the disease, as living as offer more practical support, such as receiving help in right to life with the disease. Involvement in social communities of similar health interests has created a means for patients to creation a better understanding and behavior towards treatment and health practices. Patients increasingly ownership such outlets, but the extent to which these practices have effects on health are still being studied.

Studies on health networks have mostly been conducted on groups which typically suffer the near from extreme forms of diseases, for example cancer patients, HIV patients, or patients with other life-threatening diseases. it is for general knowledge that one participates in online communities to interact with society and creation relationships. Individuals who suffer from rare or severe illnesses are unable to meet physically because of distance or because it could be a risk to their health to leave a secure environment. Thus, they have turned to the internet. A study conducted by Haven B. Battles and Lori S. Wiener on the effects of networks on children suffering from incurable diseases reveal a positive correlation in enhancing children's behaviors and overall moods. Their behavior and mood not only changed, but they were more willing to go to treatment after having these interactions.

In addition to communities which focus strictly on information relating to illness and disease, there are also those which focus on specific health-related conditions such as fertility issues. Some studies have mentioned that virtual communities can provide valuable benefits to their users. Online health-focused communities were offered to advertisement a unique form of emotional support that differed from event-based realities and informational support networks. Growing amounts of presented material show how online communities impact the health of their users. Apparently the creation of health communities has a positive impact on those who are ill or in need of medical information.

New forms of civic engagement and citizenship have emerged from the rise of social networking sites. Networking sites act as a medium for expression and discourse approximately issues in specific user communities. Online content-sharing sites have submission it easy for youth as well as others to not only express themselves and their ideas through digital media, but also connect with large networked communities. Within these spaces, young people are pushing the boundaries of traditional forms of engagement such as voting and link political organizations and devloping their own ways to discuss, connect, and act in their communities.

Civic engagement through online volunteering has shown to have positive effects on personal satisfaction and development. Some 84 percent of online volunteers found that their online volunteering experience had contributed to their personal development and learning.

In his book The Wealth of Networks from 2006, Yochai Benkler suggests that virtual communities would "come to symbolize a new form of human communal existence, providing new scope for building a divided experience of human interaction". Although Benkler's prediction has not become entirely true, clearly communications and social relations are extremely complex within a virtual community. The two leading effects that can be seen according to Benkler are a "thickening of preexisting relations with friends, types and neighbours" and the beginnings of the "emergence of greater scope for limited-purpose, loose relationships". Despite being acknowledged as "loose" relationships, Benkler argues that they fall out meaningful.

Previous concerns about the effects of Internet usage on community and brand fell into two categories: 1 sustained, intimate human relations "are critical to well-functioning human beings as a matter of psychological need" and 2 people with "social capital" are better off than those who lack it. It leads to better results in terms of political participation. However, Benkler argues that unless Internet connections actually displace direct, unmediated, human contact, there is no basis to think that using the Internet will lead to a decline in those nourishing connections we need psychologically, or in the useful connections we make socially. Benkler manages tothat the nature of an individual refine over time, based on social practices and expectations. There is a shift from individuals who depend upon locally embedded, unmediated andsocial relationships to networked individuals who are more dependent upon their own combination of strong and weak ties across boundaries and weave their own fluid relationships. Manuel Castells calls this the 'networked society'.

In 1997, MCI Communications released the "Anthem" advertisement, heralding the internet as a utopia without age, race, or gender. Lisa Nakamura argues in chapter 16 of her 2002 book After/image of identity: Gender, Technology, and Identity Politics, that engineering gives us iterations of our age, race and gender in virtual spaces, as opposed to them being fully extinguished. Nakamura uses a metaphor of "after-images" to describe the cultural phenomenon of expressing identity on the internet. The concepts is that any performance of identity on the internet is simultaneously present and past-tense, "posthuman and projectionary", due to its immortality.

Doctor Sherry Turkle, professor of Social Studies of Science and engineering at MIT, believes the internet is a place where actions of discrimination are less likely to occur. In her 1995 book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, she argues that discrimination is easier in reality as this is the easier to identify as face value, what is contrary to your norm. The internet authorises for a more fluid expression of identity and thus, we become more accepting of inconsistent personae within ourselves and others. For these reasons, Turkle argues users existing in online spaces are less compelled to judge or compare ourselves to our peers, allowing people in virtual tables an opportunity to gain a greater capacity for acknowledging diversity.

Nakamura argues against this view, coining the term Identity Tourism in her 1999 article Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet. Identity tourism, in the context of cyberspace, is a term used to the describe the phenomenon of users donning and doffing other-race and other-gender personae. Nakamura finds that performed behavior from these identity tourists often perpetuate stereotypes.

The gaming community is extremely vast and accessible to a wide variety of people, However, there are negative effects on the relationships 'gamers' have with the medium when expressing identity of gender. Doctor Adrienne Shaw notes in her 2012 article Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity, that gender, perhaps subconsciously, plays a large role in identifying oneself as a 'gamer.'