I am investigating the online community:
“Facebook”
www.facebook.com
The focus of this community is to connect people with friends and others who work, study and live around them and all over the world. Facebook is about participation and socialization with others.
Facebook allows the user to create their own personal page including as much or as little information about themselves as they wish. Facebook also offers a choice of privacy settings so that the only people who can view your page are the ones who you approve and there is the option of removing contributors and reporting abuse that may occur. Facebook allows the user to upload photos, videos, notes and comments, join fan groups, organise events, play games, do quizzes, join networks such as your school or college and other fun applications to enter.
People can contribute by either writing a public comment onto the users page, sending a private message to the people who you deem appropriate or the option of a live chat one-on-one with the person when both users are online simultaneously.
People who choose to contribute to Facebook are most likely seeking to increase their social interactions with others to gain their own sense of belonging and sense of identity. Identity can be expressed though interactions with others of similar interests or the ability to voice their opinions publicly. Joining this online community creates the idea of belonging to a group as within that group applying the same beliefs and culture the group holds to their own personal ideas.
This is an example of a Facebook page which any member can join and add their own opinion to. The title of the group is “Save the Whales” and this is some of the context:
Elizabeth McMahon
Stunning Victory for Whales Breaking News: The International Whaling Commission’s controversial proposal to legalize commercial whaling has failed
Animal Rescue - Animal Welfare, Save The Whales, Save Animals - IFAW.org IFAW Web Site
www.ifaw.org
IFAW's mission is to improve the welfare of wild and domestic animals throughout the world by reducing commercial exploitation, protecting wildlife habitats, and assisting animals in distress. We seek to motivate the public to prevent cruelty to animals and to promote animal welfare and conservation...
Wednesday at 4:03pm
La Marie
......Now I'm no big animal lover but damn clean up that oil and save the whales
Tuesday at 3:37pm
The MV Bob Barker "The Japanese Whaling association used the second part of the day to address the aggression towards their whaling ships by Sea Shepherd. Without Sea Shepherd being able to attend the meetings, I would like to thank the JWA for giving us a place on stage so the whole world could see that Sea Shepherd is still living up to it’s promise to save whales."~
Laurens De Groot
Tuesday at 2:23pm
Some of the ethical dilemmas around Facebook are the privacy issues as most of the content that users put on Facebook are made for the public to view. Photos may also be uploaded for the general public to see and as discussed previously, photographs may be taken without persons’ permission and revel the location of a person which may be undesired. However, privacy control settings are put in place to prevent such issues from occurring and it is up to the user to put these in place.
The benefit of having an online community rather than a traditional community that relies on geographic proximity is that contact can be kept with others anywhere in the world, at anytime. Joining this community is also free and can also be accessed on a mobile phone for instant communication.
However, Facebook is not a face to face way of communicating so this prevents personal contact with others and interaction on a much deeper level. It is also difficult to judge a person’s mood through online interaction as cues such as body language, facial expression and tone are not visible.
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