Weather or not.....Spelling Mistake? No.

As a freshman at Cornell I chose to major in the the field of Earth and Atmospheric sciences where I becaming a member of EAS as well as AMS ( the American Meteorological Society). The basis of my entrance was common interest in the weather that we experience day in and day out. This is all beside the point as I recently switched into Communications. Why do I discuss the current switch? I do this because immediately following my transfer I felt as if I had left a group that had been so much a part of my life as a freshman in college. However, to my suprise it was easy to get deeply involved in the Communication community at a much quicker rate than I had even hoped.

In one of my classes this semester, Psychology of Social Computing, we have started to discuss what the true definition of a community is and how one places themself in a given group. In looking at my current switch I have clearly joined another community.

I recently took on the job of VP Communications for the Sports Marketing Group, more commonly known as SMG. This group, while originally I saw as quite small, has proved to be one of the more extensive communities on campus. Our main job being to increase revenue for the athletic office but more importantly increase attendance at sporting events in hopes of creating a greater support system for our players. SMG fits Haythornthwaite's definition of community in that it clearly is a group of individuals in which relationships "crisscross and reinforce oine another and also it involves a level of commitment to similar values etc(127)." The SMG participants all value the athletic experience in college and understand that their individual effort may go unrecognized. It is this element of "not needing to be praised" that enables the group to work so well.

The SMG social network is comprised of actors who are students, ithaca businesses, and staff at the school; in addition one could say that the teams themselves are also a part of this group. For the group to function we rely on a cohesive communication network. The elements that allow actors to work with one another isknow as " relations" (Haythornwaite, 126). An example of this is that Ithaca businesses rely on the student promotional ideas in order to get their business logo and name out to the public. The relationship is recipricated in that the students rely on these business to fund the promotions. Additionally the athletic staff and teams rely on the students to increase attendence and the students thus hope the teams will increase victory percentage. As you can see here this group relies heaviliy on the idea of reciprocity. Additionally each relationship represents a strong tie. These ties also provide evidence of social capital within the group. Each actor must be able to rely on the other and trust that the network will work and as Haythornwaite posits " social capital benefits include the ability to trust network members, to have a common language and to depend on network based mechanisms to manage behavior. (129)

Expanding on the element of ties within this community, the students on the executive board have extremely strong ties in that they meet twice a week face-to-face as well as communicate all week by email. Etzioni and Etzoni comment " communities that combine both f2f and CMC systems would be able to bond better and shre values more effectively than communities that rely upon only one or the other mode of communication (Haythornwaite, 131)" We see clear support for this statement in the SMG. From here the ties weaken as the students rarely meet face-to-face with the sponsors and only are in close contact with one or two of the athletic staff members who then talk to others. As far as the teams go, ties between the teams and SMG differ significantly. Certain teams have made the effort to come to meetings and give their input on what they would like seen done at the games. Interestingly enough this has greatly affected the attendence and attention paid at these games. One example of this is the Men's soccer team who have gone out of their way to make their games a "bigger deal" this year. In order to do this they have created a group/community of their own known as "Ezra's Army." http://cornell.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5910801641
Their goal here being to make people feel closer to the team (have a stronger tie, a more emotional attachment).

The SMG is composed of some synergies as the online interaction we have with our weaker ties allows our group to have more relevance and significance as well as provides us a way to connect with these people. SMG is what Haythornwaite would consider a Gemeinschaft in that it is based on a) strong interpersonal ties, b) shared focus & common purpose, 3) common language an identity, yet one could say that the weak ties students have with the Ithaca business sector would be classified as a Gesellschaft as we are not really connected, don't have a shared purpose (SMG- increase attendence and revenue for sports management, Businesses- increase revenue and awareness for themselves). Additionally these business aren't necessarily committed to the SMG. They could go many other places to promote themselves.

All in all the SMG is representative of many aspects of Haythornwaite's definition of community. We can draw on many different individual relationships within the group and create a parallel with different elements of a community.