Portfolio Assignment #2

Part 1: Write a summary of the author’s essay about your term. Try to point out key arguments and examples they provide.

The essay mainly discusses the characteristics and affordances of digital community different from those of embodied clanship and kinship. The meanings of community have transformed extensively. When it comes to the premodern notions, community, suggested by Ferdinand Tönnies, is a conventional structure in which skills and trades, agrarian lifestyles, and ethnic and religious ties united individuals with a collective consciousnesses. When it comes to the postmodern notions, community, proposed by Victor Turner, is ritual rites of passage transform an individual from a state of social indeterminacy to a state of communal oneness and homogeneity.

With the advent of modern mass communication technologies, a semblance of premodern, pre-technological community is regained, thereby reinstating consensus in social life. As John Dewey said, journalism could reproduce the effects of traditional communities, uniting a public into a community. However, Dewey’s concern about modern mass communication technologies is similar to the concern about digital communication today, a lack of face-to-face communication in industrialized life may be resulted because entertainment and news are tailored to the individual and consumed alone. This promotes individualism, leading to lower civic and political engagement, religious participation, trust,social ties and altruism. Human may have a paradoxical attitude towards mediation technologies, such as hopes, panics and fear because of the global connectivity and fear of disconnection derived from it.

Digital community is the solution of the fear of disconnection as today’s diverse digital landscape means self-selection into communities of interest and affinity like Facebook and Myspace. However, it is put forth that digital community involves“culture of individualism,” emphasizing consumerism, networked individualism, and autonomy; rather than the “culture of communalism,” rooted in history and geography.After all, community has come full circle, as disembodied souls unite in fellowship mediated by the digital.

Part 2: Connect your word to our topic for class on Thursday, February 6th — Digital Media & Online Relationships. How does your term intersect with the ideas discussed in our readings/videos that you watched for class?

Digital community is a platform for people with common interest. People who have common interest can have more to talk to each other. Moreover, as the digital community breaks the boundary of time and place, people can enter the community regardless of nationality, gender, and religion. It broadens the man pool that may have potential to develop online relationships. Besides, community provides the basis of interlinked personal communities. In the community, people do not have to necessarily know each other to develop relationships. For example, mutual friends of two people can be shown on personal profile on Facebook, which greatly increases the mutual trust between people.