User:Lieven Van Speybroeck/Reading/Theory/Fernback The Individual within the Collective: Difference between revisions
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# Openness of cyberspace: only rules are social propriety and "netiquette" | # Openness of cyberspace: only rules are social propriety and "netiquette" | ||
#: -> Flaming and virtual harassment ("dark side of CMC") | #: -> Flaming and virtual harassment ("dark side of CMC") | ||
# Nature and limits of public space ~ seventeeth-century coffee houses of Britain/salons Paris/... | #* Nature and limits of public space ~ seventeeth-century coffee houses of Britain/salons Paris/... | ||
# Cyberspace offers a surrogate for an authentic socially democratic public realm that in the 'real' world exists nowhere | #* Cyberspace offers a surrogate for an authentic socially democratic public realm that in the 'real' world exists nowhere | ||
# Cyberspace is both public and private | #* Cyberspace is both public and private | ||
# The term 'community': | |||
#* Both material and symbolic dimensions | |||
#* Notion of community us dynamic and evolves as society evolves | |||
#* '''Rheingold (1993)''': Virtual communities as social aggregations that emerge when people carry on discussions | |||
#: - long enough | |||
#: - with sufficient feeling | |||
#: - to form personal relationships | |||
#* '''Ideologically''' cyberspace communities offer a platform for free speech, individualism, equality and open access | |||
#* Volatility of virtual 'membership' to communities: log on, log off | |||
# Collective versus individual | |||
#* Some negative viewpoints: | |||
#: Sennet: community as a form of ''destructive gemeinschaft'', where emotional relations between people take precedence over collective action. | |||
#: Dewey: absence of individuality that can operate within the community. The individual's full potential cannot be realized without the context of the community to guide it. | |||
#: Etzioni, Tipton, Bellah a.o.: individuals can subvert hyper-individualistic, selfish tendencies in favor of realizing the benefits acting responsably within a moralistic, transcendent order. | |||
#: Jones: no one medium/technology has been able to provide crucial elements as empowerment, political action, moral, social order..., in combination. |
Revision as of 23:29, 23 October 2010
Notes on Jan Fernback's The Individual within the Collective
- Central questions:
- How is collectivity in cyberspace jusxtaposed against individuality?
- How is cyberspace used as a public space and what does this mean for the collectivity?
- How are anarchy and dissent dealt with among the collectivity of computer-mediated communication (CMC) users?
- On (cyber)space:
- [...] space is not matter, but a set of culturally bound relations as well as an empirical construction. Urry (1985)
- The development of electronic communication technologies has abrogated space and time such that we live in a boundless "global village" with "no sense of place". (~McLucah & Meyrowitz)
- -> widespread use of CMC made re-examination of our concept of space necessary.
- Cyberspace is popular culture: a pixelated mirror of everyday life and all it's 'features'
- CMC as an example of
- Users as consumers:
- Our participation in public life has been reduced to our media consumption
- Television as the main tool for mediaconsumption (passive consumption)
- Openness of cyberspace: only rules are social propriety and "netiquette"
- -> Flaming and virtual harassment ("dark side of CMC")
- Nature and limits of public space ~ seventeeth-century coffee houses of Britain/salons Paris/...
- Cyberspace offers a surrogate for an authentic socially democratic public realm that in the 'real' world exists nowhere
- Cyberspace is both public and private
- The term 'community':
- Both material and symbolic dimensions
- Notion of community us dynamic and evolves as society evolves
- Rheingold (1993): Virtual communities as social aggregations that emerge when people carry on discussions
- - long enough
- - with sufficient feeling
- - to form personal relationships
- Ideologically cyberspace communities offer a platform for free speech, individualism, equality and open access
- Volatility of virtual 'membership' to communities: log on, log off
- Collective versus individual
- Some negative viewpoints:
- Sennet: community as a form of destructive gemeinschaft, where emotional relations between people take precedence over collective action.
- Dewey: absence of individuality that can operate within the community. The individual's full potential cannot be realized without the context of the community to guide it.
- Etzioni, Tipton, Bellah a.o.: individuals can subvert hyper-individualistic, selfish tendencies in favor of realizing the benefits acting responsably within a moralistic, transcendent order.
- Jones: no one medium/technology has been able to provide crucial elements as empowerment, political action, moral, social order..., in combination.