While reading articles for this week’s class and thinking about the concept of (virtual) communities I began to realize that many online communities we join are just an extension of our real world communities. This is especially common when it comes to communities of common interest.
I encountered several different such communities during my student years, especially during the time of my student exchange. One of my professors was very technology savvy and one of his research fields were social media. Not surprisingly, we had to use several different social media in one of the classes he taught. We even created our own virtual community with the use of Ning platform. The site we created worked as a place where students collaborated among each other, posted assignments, blogs, events, photos, etc. Beside this site, professor created another site, dedicated to professionals, academics, students and all others interested in social media. The site works similarly as the site we used in class – its users enables to collaborate among themselves, share content, post events, etc.
I was required to join these two online communities because they were part of my academic life. So I extended my real, offline community I belonged to as a student, to online environment and community. I believe similarly works also many other communities – our offline and online worlds are so intertwined nowadays that it’s hard to make clear distinction when on starts and the other ends. So also many of our online activities, which result in joining certain online community, reflect or present just an extension of our offline world.
