The Technological Expansion of Sociability: Virtual Communities as Imagined Communities

The Technological Expansion of Sociability: Virtual Communities as Imagined Communities Camelia Grădinaru, PhD, Senior Researcher Department of Interdisciplinary Research, Social Sciences and Humaniies ”Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Romania Abstract The recepion of Benedict Anderson’s ideas was very fruiful in many disciplines, and his work provided key concepts that can now throw a clarifying light in some blurry maters. The expression “imagined community” has known a remarkable proliferaion, a situaion that led to both the formaion of a research direcion and to the perpetuaion of a cliché. In this respect, my aricle pointed out some suggesive characterisics of virtual communiies, explaining why the imagined community is a valuable subject for the theorists of new media. The impossibility to know in person all the members of a big community is just one factor that determines its imagined face. Moreover, the set of values and inner presupposiions that guide the members are important bricks in the construcion of community. In my opinion, the virtual community is imagined as a muli-layered experience (technological, conversaional, relaional etc.). The dynamic of a virtual community contains the tension amongst these layers and the degree of its imagined side depends on muliple factors. In order to illustrate these aspects, I gave a brief example by analysing a Romanian virtual community, using the triad common language – temporality – high centers. In spite of its limitaions, the perspecives ofered by this concept are sill useful for understanding the nature of online communiies. Thus, the imagined community is a valuable set of beliefs and pracices that underlie and bolster the efecive meaning and funcioning of the virtual communiies. Keywords: virtual community; imagined community; online communicaion; cyberspace; online sociability Introduction The pervasiveness of new media in almost every sector of our life is already a common place for both the researchers of this ield and the ordinary people. Individuals use new ways to communicate, buy, learn, play, govern, or do business. The public sphere is not the only area where things have changed as a result of the tools brought about by new media. The private sphere has also been shaped by diferent experiences created by the Internet and mobile communicaion (Bakardjieva 2005; Ishii 2006). Even the household, as the centre of the private world, has known signiicant transformaions (Haythornthwaite, 184 C. G rădinaru - T he T echnoloGical e xpansion of s ociabiliTy : V irTual c ommuniTies as i maGined c ommuniTies 185 and Wellman 2002). Thus, the new technologies of informaion and communicaion are embedded in our everyday pracices and rouines, altering the perspecives about space and ime, and providing, in McLuhan’s terms, new extensions of our senses (McLuhan 1994). Even if there were people who do not use the new media plaforms and faciliies, and in this respect we sill acknowledge the existence of a “digital divide”, we also have to noice the shits that new media produced in the lives of people that make use of them. The digital inequality is not only a technologic mater, but also a complex poliical and social issue. The social impact of new media was evident even in the early stages of the computermediated communicaion. Since then, the Internet has been characterized mainly as a social tool and not just a technological one. In new media literature, the change of paradigm from the deiniional characterisics to the praxeological perspecive proves fruiful for the detecion of the most suggesive inluence of new media in very diverse sectors of human life. In this context, the analysis of the social aggregaions constructed online was an important step in the research of what new media do in society. The virtual communiies represented (and sill do) one of the favourites subjects widely discussed. Their relevance is easy to be grasped: their presence disturbed the tradiional understanding of community, challenging the mainstream mechanisms of sociability, and also the domesicated norms and rules of the community commitment. The social contract was quesioned by these forms of community created through new media seings, evoking what Howard Rheingold thought about their power: „whenever CMC [computer-mediated communicaion] technology becomes available to people anywhere, they inevitably build virtual communiies with it, just as microorganisms inevitably create colonies” (2000, xx). The power to bond people from everywhere, in spite of distances or of the fact that they never met before in face-to-face condiions, is one of the most important new media traits. In this vein, my paper focuses on the imagined part of online communiies, given the fact that they may be very large, heterogeneous, luid, so that the members may be totally strangers outside of the online “borders”. At the core of the development of this analysis stands Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communiies. Relecions on the Origin and Spread of Naionalism. His view inluenced many theorists, so the expression “imagined communiies” became facilely used in order to describe virtual communiies. Thus, I will delineate the proile of this online imaginary and also I will briely discuss some of its weaknesses. In spite of its limitaions, the perspecives ofered by this concept are sill useful for understanding the intricate dynamic and nature of online communiies. In my opinion, the imagined community is a valuable set of beliefs and pracices that underlie and bolster the efecive meaning and funcioning of the virtual communiies. The imaginary supports the existence of a virtual community, giving it shape and organizaion. 186 a cademicus - i nTernaTional s cienTific J ournal www . academicus . edu . al 186 Virtual Sociability: A Glimpse into an Endless Concept Online forms of sociality revitalized an old sociological discussion about the uility of the term “community”, since – as Hillary (1995) emphasized, idenifying over 90 meanings – this concept is muli-semanic, volaile and descripive. Even if the virtual community already complicated the classic descripions of organic communiies (see, for instance, Nisbet’s theories or Tönnies’s prerequisites), the efervescence of USENET newsgroups, Muli-User Dungeons and MUDs Object-Oriented and of the other forms of virtual communiies pointed out the actuality of this subject. The help, support, advice, experise, ime or money provided by the members of an online community proved that the community is sill alive in cyberspace. Rheingold describes the online interacions inside WELL as a „git economy in which people do things for one another out of a spirit of building something between them, rather than a spreadsheet-calculated quid pro quo” (2000, 49). Peter Kollock used Rheingold’s ideas and analysed the digital git in “The economies of online cooperaion: gits and public goods in cyberspace” (1999). The well cohered arguments and delineaions (digital good versus public good or the list of moivaions for contribuing) showed “the striking amount of cooperaion that exists in online communiies. This is not to say that online cooperaion is inevitable or expanding. Nor is it to say that online cooperaion and collecive acion is always a beneit to the larger society. However, the changing economies of online interacion have shited the costs of providing public goods – someimes radically – and thus changed the kinds of groups, communiies, and insituions that are viable in this new social landscape” (Kollock 1999, 236). The binary individualism – cooperaion is only one example of the polarized discourse that virtual community provoked. The easiness to enter or to leave an online group, the paradox of obtaining altruist outputs on weak ies, the phenomenon of online knowledge transfer are just a few instances of the complexity of this concept. Thus, the virtual community is a protean concept and, in this vein, the quesion was if it should be theorized as a type of communitas (Matei 2011). Because the later term incorporates a set of contradictory traits (close and distant, temporary and permanent), it may be conceived as a “master term for exploring the ethos of interacion in online environments. […] Communitas is a term that suggests an altogether new and contradictory type of sociability, which implies a will to be together, but also the desire to individualize and distance oneself from others” (Matei 2011, 4). In this respect, communitas is a “cultural patern”, coordinated by a set of values. The social glue created by the online interpersonal relaionships and conversaional exchanges transform the individuals in very diferent ways. The members develop social bonds, shared spaces and values, and also conjoint discursive pracices (speciic expressions, jokes or rituals). The meaning of membership is a key element for the long life of community, but this does not exclude the fact that people try to become noiceable and praiseworthy. The social capital of the Internet (Wellman et al. 2001) is increasingly important not only for the online cohesion, but also for the mobilizaion of networks C. G rădinaru - T he T echnoloGical e xpansion of s ociabiliTy : V irTual c ommuniTies as i maGined c ommuniTies 187 in order to solve oline vital issues (poliical, humanitarian, or social). The online protests are a good illustraion of the relevance of the online social capital. The Imagined “Aura” of the Virtual Communities The seminal work wrote by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communiies: Relecions on the Origin and Spread of Naionalism, irst published in 1983, has a posiive recepion in many disciplines, including new media studies. For Anderson, the naion is an imagined poliical form, because “the members of even the smallest naion will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. […] In fact, all communiies larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined” (1991, 6). The impossibility to know in person all the members of a big community is just one factor that determines its imagined face. Moreover, the set of values and inner presupposiions that guide the members are important bricks in the construcion of community. Even the general pillars that sustain the society at a given moment have a certain shape within this imaginary (for instance, Anderson pointed out that print capitalism represents a key element of naionalism). The word “imagined” triggered a lot of interpretaions about idenity and collecivity. For instance, Phillips (2002, 600) evoked the development of its applicaion from naional forms to ainiies with Thompson’s “ideological community”, Durkheim’s “collecive representaions” or Foucault’s “discursive ensemble”. Norton (2001) examined the correlaion among imagined community, language learning and non-paricipaion. Phillips (2002) tried to ill the gap in the quanitaive research on self-atachment to imagined communiies and also in the analysis of the later as a valuable source of self-idenity. As a remark meant to emphasize the relevance of the subject for new media, we menion the career made by the expression “technological imaginary” (Flichy 2003) and also the importance of the “imagined audience” (LaRose, Kim, and Wei, 2011; Marwick and boyd 2011). The technological imaginary relates to all the changes that people believe a new medium can produce in social, interpersonal, poliical, educaional, or cultural areas. For Flichy, the technological imaginary has to be conceived as a frame of reference for the actors involved and not as an iniial matrix of a new technology. The concept of imagined audience is not an original concept of the new media. The invisible nature of public is also characterisic for diferent kinds of old media public: “Every paricipant in a communicaive act has an imagined audience. Audiences are not discrete; when we talk, we think we are speaking only to the people in front of us or on the other end of the telephone, but this is in many ways a fantasy” (Marwick and boyd 2011, 115). As personal media, new media deal with complex, indeterminate, and heterogeneous audiences. The context collapse and the ongoing tension between public and private meet the double standards of the user – content producer and spectator. In brief, “the networked audience contains many diferent social relaionships 188 a cademicus - i nTernaTional s cienTific J ournal www . academicus . edu . al 188 to be navigated, so users acknowledge concurrent muliple audiences. Just as writers icionalize the audience within the text in their audience addressed, Twiter users speak directly to their imagined audience” (Marwick and boyd 2011, 130). As Fox airmed, the members cannot read the minds of others, so they have to make inferences from communicaion and acion (2004, 53). Thus, we observed the producivity of the word “imagined” in the virtual context. The traits of virtual community made almost obviously the presence of a certain imaginary at work. The anonymous users that build a meaningful and useful new solidarity have to act for a more comprehensive reason than the “consensual hallucinaion” (Gibson 1984) done by new media. Because of its polysemy, the symbolic construcivist approach has been assumed as a good way of explaining the modaliies in which a virtual community funcions. The later can be seen as a cogniive, afecive and symbolic construct (Hill Collins 2010; Gradinaru 2011) that is elasic and changing. The opposiion between virtual communiies and “real” communiies and between online and oline communiies (Castells 2001, Fernback 2007) has as a powerful root the imaginary component of community. Thus, the limited durability of membership, the lack of temporal and spaial constraints, the limited possibiliies to punish someone for deviant behaviour, the possibility to use the anonymity are several arguments for those who assert the absence of authenicity and accountability in online social aggregaions. The invisible mechanism that puts things in moion into virtual seing is closely related with its imagined area. Instead of invesigaing the authenicity or the reality of virtual communiies, more useful is to look, as Anderson airmed, to “the style in which they are imagined” (1991: 6). Even if online communiies seem to be ariicially constructed in comparison with the tradiional communiies, the common idenity shared by members is enough to assure their funcionality. As Nancy Baym considered, one fruiful way through which we can understand the imaginaion of virtual communiies is the “close examinaion of one of the most primal forces that ies people together – interpersonal interacions. It is in the details of their talk that people develop and maintain the rituals, tradiions, norms, values, and senses of group and individual idenity that allow them to consider themselves communiies” (Baym 2000, 218). The interpersonal relaionships and the conversaion are essenial anchors of community. By formaing a issue of discussions, diferent kinds of ies (weak, strong or latent ies) are built and become “real” and efecive. The image that every member has on her or his online community – about their scope, way of exising, norms of communicaion, special neiquete, essenial topics, the paricular jargon or the speciic modaliies of joking – is central in the orientaion of the conversaions. As Benedict Anderson theorized, every community is caught between concrete social relaionships and aciviies and imagined sets of individuals conceived as similar. In this vein, the virtual community is ‘the new imagined community” (Fox 2004), the “metaimagined community, a relexive (re)interpretaion of 19th century naionalism” (Brabazon 2001, 2). Anyhow, the relaion between imaginary and virtual communiies is almost natural: “the context of CMC […] necessarily emphasizes the act of imaginaion that is required to summon the image of communion with others who are oten faceless, transient, or anonymous” (Foster 1996, 25). C. G rădinaru - T he T echnoloGical e xpansion of s ociabiliTy : V irTual c ommuniTies as i maGined c ommuniTies 189 In my opinion, the virtual community is imagined as a muli-layered object (technological, conversaional, relaional etc.). The dynamic of a virtual community contains the tension amongst these layers and the degree of its imagined side depends on muliple factors, such as the dimension of the community, its age, the clarity of its rules, its speciicity. The composiion of the virtual community is another important factor: the imagined part may be signiicantly diferent if this community is enirely online made, if its aciviies combine online and oline environments and people know each other or if the virtual community is another form of interacion for a tradiional local group consituted before in oline. As Fox noiced, we have to incorporate both the virtual and the physical domain and their interrelaions in order to beter understand the “communal space”. Thus, “virtual communiies provide a ‘lexible’ imagined environment but also present opportuniies for idenity shiting and even decepion because the idenifying cues that deine one’s idenity in the physical world – such as gender, age, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on – are enacted in much more complex ways online” (Fox 2004, 52). The diverse typologies of virtual communiies, using muliple criteria (type of users, interests, aciviies etc.) lead to various degree of imagined virtual sociability. The construcion of the imaginary of a certain community does not include only the users’ ideas about its structure, but also the expectances that they have about the atmosphere, the way of interacion, and the dynamic of relaions. Thus, the imagined percepion of community includes the technology, the content and representaion, the history of members, the intertextuality of content, and the communicaion among users (Fox 2004, 53). The imagined part provides the landmarks for the proper journey in the virtual realm. Even if Twiter is an asymmetric micro-blogging plaform and it was not created in order to develop virtual communiies, Gruzd, Wellman, and Takhteyev (2011) showed that it can be a useful basis for a community. For those theorists, Twiter can be conceived as an imagined community, since the people are always aware of other individuals that use Twiter, just as in Anderson’s concept. Several key elements characterize Anderson’s imagined community: common language, temporality (the presence of the homogenous ime), and the decline of high centers. In Twiter’s condiions, the dominant temporality is the presenism, while the high centers (celebriies, organizaions) sill play an important role in the dynamic of communicaion. The sense of community is alive and the community commitment supports its imaginary. Tara Brabazon (2001) tried to criicize the easy usage of “imagined community” in cyberspace and to verify the legiimacy of its extensive use. The metaphorical approaches and the seducive character of online rhetoric may conduct to the transformaion of this expression into a cliché, although “when theorizing virtual communiies from the perspecives of naional imaginings, it is clear that these social organizaions are on the same discursive bandwidth” (Brabazon 2001, 8). 190 a cademicus - i nTernaTional s cienTific J ournal www . academicus . edu . al 190 A quick example Desprecopii.com (in English, aboutchildren.com) is the most important and the biggest online resource in Romanian language addressed to parents or to those people who aspire to be parents. This plaform has 16 years and ofers a mulitude of services: informaion, support, advice, specialised counselling etc. I analyzed the topic “First ime in community” that comprises 100 responses, from November 19th 2013 to May 28th 2016. I chose this topic because this is the “place” where newcomers write a message, talk a litle about their selves, and the senior members write back to them, indicaing the most appropriate blogs, forums, topics inside the community. This secion that I decided to invesigate is also important because, in general, people tend to explain here the reasons for which they are there or intend to paricipate to the community. Thus, I considered that in this place I could ind easily the personal imagined ideas about this community, their expectances and their hopes. Using the triad common language – temporality – high centers (Gruzd, Wellman, and Takhteyev 2011), I observed that all 100 posts were writen in the style of the community: the users presented themselves briely, and then narrated their personal issue, expressing the wish to paricipate and to become a part of this “family”. The style of posts were similar both for senior members and newcomers, a situaion than can be explained by the status of readers / “lurkers” that they have before being a member. What was interesing about the coniguraion of people that wrote here was its complexity: newcomers, senior members, but also some old members that returned ater they let the community for a while engage in relevant discussions, wishing to be again a part of it. They share a common language, including abbreviaions (for instance, pbd – probable date of birth). Moreover, I classiied their interests in several categories, such as: documentaion, advice, support, guidance, but also sharing the own experiences and contribuing to the growth of this community. The images that people “invest” in the community are easily detectable in this stage – irst posts of the new members. In this respect, I detected posiive images about this community, seen as a warm and helpful network of people. All the newcomers were already convinced that their future quesions will be answered and the future support will be accorded. The general atmosphere is one of trust, paience, and conidence. One member said: “I decided to join you because I know that here I will ind assistance, advice and the most important thing – support. I hope you will accept me in your community”. These opinions are processed by the post of the senior members. For instance: “Welcome to the community. This is a warm and buzzing hive that receives you with love. We expect you at discussions”. From the standpoint of temporality, the community analysed conirms Anderson’s opinion about the importance of moving through history together. Within this consolidated community, there is a shared temporal dimension and a paricular history, archived in muliple topics, ideas, problems etc. The members are moving on the enire temporal axis, searching for answers in the past, posing in the present, and announcing events for the future. C. G rădinaru - T he T echnoloGical e xpansion of s ociabiliTy : V irTual c ommuniTies as i maGined c ommuniTies 191 As for the structure of the community, the preservaion of centers (hierarchy of users, for instance) seems to ofer stability and trust. The guidance is really good realized by experienced users that know very well the issues and the archives. They funcion as legiimate ilters for a huge amount of informaion. In sum, I believe that the posts that I have examined atest the imagined part of this community and also support the major ideas that new media theorists abstract from Anderson’s ideas. Conclusions The concept of imagined community is a nuanced one, and someimes it becomes hard to explain it in concrete frames. This aricle highlighted some of the relevant relecions made in new media studies or in the philosophy of communicaion. The virtual community seems to be the perfect candidate for this characterizaion, because in order to be funcional many gaps have to be illed (distance, context indeterminacy, anonymity, weak ies etc.). The imaginary may explain those gaps related to the structure or dynamics of the new forms of sociability. In spite of the things that have been clariied thus far, there is sill much work to be done. The speed of change requires, for the upcoming decades, consistent applied studies from the scholars in this ield. Bibliography 1. Anderson, Benedict. 1991. 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