LAIZER EDWIN N

BAPRM 42691

IMPACTS OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services.

Impacts of virtual communities

On health

Concerns with a virtual community's tendency to promote less socializing include: verbal aggression and inhibitions, promotion of suicide and issues with privacy. However, studies regarding the health effects of these communities did not show any negative effects. There was a high drop-out rate of participants in the study. The health-related effects are not clear because of the lack of thoroughness and the variation in studies done on the subject.

Rather, recent studies have looked into development of health related communities and their impact on those already suffering health issues. These forms of social networks allow for open conversation between individuals who are going through similar experiences, whether themselves or in their family. Such sites have in fact grown in popularity, so much so that now many health care providers are forming groups for their patients, even providing areas where questions may be directed to doctors. These sites prove especially useful when related to rare medical conditions.

On civic participation

New forms of civic engagement and citizenship have emerged from the rise of social networking sites. Networking sites acts as a medium for expression and discourse about issues in specific user communities. Online content sharing sites have made it easy for youth to not only express themselves and their ideas through digital media, but also connect with large networked communities. Within these spaces, young people are pushing the boundaries of traditional forms of engagement such as voting and joining political organizations and creating their own ways to discuss, connect, and act in their communities.

Civic engagement through online volunteering has shown to have a positive effects on personal satisfaction and development. Some 84 percent of online volunteers found that their online volunteering experience had contributed to their personal development and learning^.

On communication

Yochai Benkler, in his book The Wealth of Networks from 2006, suggests that virtual communities would ′come to represent a new form of human communal existence, providing new scope for building a shared experience of human interaction. Although Benkler's prediction was not entirely correct, however, it is clear that communications and social relations are extremely complex within a virtual community. The two main effects that can be seen according to Benkler’s are a thickening of preexisting relations with friends, family and neighbors and the beginnings of the emergence of greater scope for limited-purpose loose relationships Despite being acknowledged as loose relationships, Benkler argues that they remain meaningful.

Previous concerns about the effects of Internet use on community and family fell into two categories: sustained, intimate human relations are critical to well-functioning human beings as a matter of psychological need' and that people with social capital are better off than those who lack it and it leads to better results in terms of political participation However, Benkler argues that unless Internet connections actually displace direct unmediated, human contact, there is no basis to think that using the Internet will lead to a decline in those nourishing connections we need psychologically, or in the useful connections we make socially. Benkler continues to suggest that the nature of an individual changes over time, based on social practices and expectations. There is a shift from individuals who depend on social relations that are locally embedded, unmediated and stable relationships to networked individuals who are more dependent on their own combination of strong and weak ties, cross boundaries and weave their own fluid relationships. Manuel Castells calls this the ′networked society.