An online community that I am part of is fans of the St. Louis Rams on the website: http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=35
According to Haythornwaite, there are properties that a community must exhibit. The community must have strong interpersonal ties, a shared focus/common purpose, common language and identity, and there must be common ground and reciprocity. The Rams forum, I believe, exhibits all these properties. Although we are very unfamiliar with each other in the physical aspect, we have talked about the Rams for so long, it's almost like we know which guy is going to provide what information and can almost predict what each other is going to say about each topic. Of course we all have a shared focus and common purpose. Our focus is to provide our head coach, which he will probably never read, our assessment of the previous game and express our agreement or lack there of with the playcalling, especially when they lose, which they've been doing a lot of this year. Our purpose is to inform each other of the lastest news and injury updates and to talk back and forth what we thought about the previous game or season. We all have a common identity; that is that we are all Rams fans and we bleed gold and blue. I do believe we have some common language also. Torry Holt, our star wide-reciever, is known as "Big Game" Holt. Steven Jackson, who is our pro-bowl running back, can often be seen referred to as "Action" Jackson. Will Witherspoon, our fast middle linebacker, is often called "Spoon". We all have common ground as we are all fans of football in general, especially of the Rams. Many members share even more common ground as they live in the St. Louis area. There is also reciprocity because we inform each other on the latest news and updates from local newspapers and radio stations.
I'm not sure there is as much online/offline synergy in this community as there would be in a FTF community. A FTF community has the communication distributed in reality and more than likely they have shared information that allows for CMC also. In the Rams forum, there are usernames, but you can't really find specific information for people, therefore is no means to reach them in the real world.
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Hello Eric, it’s a great post. I especially like your title. It shows strong common identity. I think your community is a good example of forming and maintaining an effective community without physical co-existence. Your description on your community seems like this community is mostly made up of strong ties. Are there any weak ties among actors? I think it will also be interesting to explore about social capital of this community. What kind of information, influence and reputation does this community provide? What kind of mobilization takes place to realize the effects of social capital?
Hey Eric, I really enjoyed reading your post because I share your passion for sports and like your Rams, my Jets are not doing too well. I think your analysis of the language is well done because as we know, those who post on a sports forum often will always seem to know all the jargon. Yet if an outsider enters, they might have no idea what you are talking about. I also agree with your point about online/off line synergies. I think that I speak about sports for example in a similar (if not the same) way online than I do in person- same terms and such. The only thing that might be different is that i will be easier to harshly criticize something I do not agree with online than in face to face because of anonymity. Anonymity seems to give us power, and I feel that I might react more harshly to a comment online I do not agree with than in a face to face interaction. Good job and let's hope our teams can turn it around...probably not, but there's always next year I guess haha.
Hey Eric,
Common sports fans, especially fans of a similar team, always seem to form really strong bonds. The medium which you discussed, an online forum, was an interesting one to look at for this assignment since there really was no online/offline synergy. As a result, one would think the ties between your social network would not be as strong as some of the other discussed mediums, however you seem to disagree. What do you think the strongest factor is within your group, common ground? There must surely be disagreement within the forum, how does this effect the network? And more interesting, if there was a flame war within the forum, how would you feel towards another member of the group who disagrees with you, being that you’ve had zero face to face contact and don’t really know these people, or do you? Interesting post!
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