Computer-mediated social capital
As I’ve mentioned before on ANTIP, I’ve been very slowly reading Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. The first section is dedicated to exploring trends in different arenas of civic and social engagement, and I’ve finally finished the chapter about online communities. Putnam makes several prescient points. When the book was published in 2000, he considered it much too early to generalize about the effects of the Web on social involvement. He is wary of both virtual evangelists and those who consider the Internet a force of social deterioration. The general trend to disengagement tracked in the book was in motion long before the personal computer came on the scene.
Putnam notes that the democratization of online communications permits anonymous, frank discussions and has the potential to get people talking beyond their own physical demographics, whether race, gender, age, or location. However, despite this potential diversity, Putnam noted that online communications tend to be more homogeneous in subject and values: folks who own French poodles can find one another and spend all their time online discussing that subject. (Siva Vaidhyanathan mentioned this in his talk on Googlization on Monday, the way that customization can lead us to sheltered views of the information out there.) Nonetheless, the ability for marginalized individuals to find a community online shouldn’t be underestimated.
Regarding political participation (such as sending an email to president@whitehouse.gov) Putnam questions whether we may find many ways to speak without really being listened to. That is, does the Internet give us the illusion of being more involved? Putnam points to several studies indicating that online communications may be better at reinforcing existing face-to-face relationships, rather than fostering longterm born-digital relationships. I seriously wonder how different this may be today, now that we’re a decade further into digital natives growing up in online communities. However, it certainly points to the success of sites like Facebook and Myspace, where individuals build virtual social networks from existing in-person networks.
The underlying message in this chapter stands strong, 9 years out: information alone is not enough to make community. I’ll post more when I get to the section about how online communities may be a tool for building up social capital. It’s bound to be interesting.
Fascinating, especially “despite this potential diversity, Putnam noted that online communications tend to be more homogeneous in subject and values”…
This is something that Rob Cosco and I were talking about here in my branch one Friday. To build a social network on Twitter, for example, one prefers to follow ‘sane people who think like I do’. That builds in homogeneity in one’s worldview – never a good thing – and reinforces our own comfortable biases.
I have to pick up a copy of “Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community”. As a Canadian, I am interested in hearing your thoughts on whether the book is relevant to a Canadian collapse of community (or whether it pertains exclusively to an American experience).
Dean
Dean Giustini
7 Oct 09 at 11:39 am
I’d never thought about “customization leading to sheltered views” but I can see how this can happen – very, very interesting!
Community is one of my favourite topics and I think in-person communication, participation and action are necessary to feel involved in a community. Two of my favourite takes on community are the text from the Syracuse Cultural workers poster: http://syracuseculturalworkers.com/poster-how-build-community and from the United Way’s 2008 annual report: http://www.unitedwaysimcoecounty.on.ca/pdf/AGMReport.pdf
Deirdre
7 Oct 09 at 1:59 pm
@Dean It’s an engaging read, I wish I had a book club to talk it over with. Putnam’s argument definitely comes from within one particular context and is built on a pile of US stats, but the conclusions drawn certainly make good discussion in other arenas. In fact, a few years back I chatted with a friend-of-a-friend who was translating it into Italian. (He wanted to pick my brain about how to translate things like “Jim Crow laws” but I had no advice for him!)
@Deirdre Thanks for the links! I agree that in-person interaction is so often required for community, although I also believe that some folks can make it work online. It’s just…a different creature.
KM
7 Oct 09 at 4:23 pm