A 360-degree view of today’s online communities
INTERVIEW - The Governance Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering recently released their report, ‘The Power of Virtual Communities, which examines the role online groups play in creating opportunities for people to build new kinds of meaningful communities they often could not form in real space.
This research was built on interviews with 50 Facebook community leaders and dozens of global community experts, Facebook internal research, a literature review, and a 15,000 respondent global survey conducted by YouGov of people who are currently members of online and in-person communities. The study shows that in 11 of the 15 nations surveyed, the largest proportion of people said the most important group in their lives is primarily online.
SCIAM had the opportunity to discuss the notion of collective intelligence in relation to online communities with Professor Beth Noveck, Founder and Director of the GovLab, and Doctor Lex Paulson, Executive Director of the UM6P School of Collective Intelligence and Partner at SCIAM, co-authors of the report.
SCIAM . - There has been a shift from the concept of “community” to the concept of “social networks”. What explains this shift? Where do online communities come into play within this shift?
The idea of community — a collective sense of belonging, distinct identity, common rules and values — is as old as the human species. And over tens of thousands of years, as we invented new technologies like agriculture, the alphabet, the printing press, our ideas of community have evolved.
While social networks are hardly the first technology to disrupt how we collaborate and create meaning collectively, it’s undeniable that they have reshaped the social world for many of us in a very short time.
It’s important to see both the positive and the negative in this disruption. On the one hand, the rise of online platforms has allowed people to find each other across traditional borders, experience a strong sense of community, and develop power in ways that wouldn’t be possible face to face. However, we should realize that not all online groups are communities. Online interactions can also be superficial, transactional, and unhealthy both for individuals and society as a whole.
In this report, we wanted to take a 360-degree view of the community experience online and see what we could learn about how meaning is created differently in different cultural contexts.
SCIAM . - To what extent do you agree with the idea that the network structure is one of the most prospective future societal organization forms ?
It’s a very interesting question. As a species, we tend to identify quite intensely with the tools we create. The age of radio gave us the metaphors of “crossed wires” and being “on the same wavelength,” and today the internet has brought the metaphors of networks, bandwidth, and platforms into our social imagination. We see networks everywhere.
But it’s not just in our minds. There’s an urgent need to use the power of networks as society grows more complex and interdependent. Covid-19 didn’t care about our borders; the effects of climate change are not contained to countries that emitted the most.
SCIAM . - How are online communities a form of collective intelligence ?
The premise of collective intelligence is that the knowledge we need to solve our hardest problems is not contained in a single person — however talented or powerful — but rather in networks of many people with many kinds of expertise. The challenge is how to organize these networks so that they serve our well-being and help us make progress on social problems instead of making them worse.
SCIAM . - What can we learn from this form of collective intelligence?
In online communities, we can see the full range of human qualities, good and bad. We find people giving their time and talents to support each other and fight for justice; so too do we find abuse, intolerance, and sound and fury signifying nothing.
In our research across 15 countries, including France, we see how important governance is to the community experience.
Not just formal rules and bylaws, though they can help. The key problem is what are the norms the community lives by? How do people listen and react to one another? How do decisions get made?
SCIAM . - What traits, skills, and abilities are needed to run a successful online community?
One of the more striking pieces of data of the report was the sheer number of people taking leadership in online groups.
There are over 70 million admins of Facebook groups, for example — a larger number than the population of France !
Our report also generated some fascinating data involving which leadership traits are the most valued in online communities across 15 countries. Reading the news, one might think that the most successful leaders are the ones who can whip up their followers into outrage. Actually, what we found is that the three most important traits in a leader, as judged by members of these communities, were “welcoming differences of opinion among members,” “being visible and communicating well,” and “acting ethically at all times.”
So these person-to-person skills, including empathy and clear communication, will be more and more important as online communities develop. And these leaders, the vast majority of whom are volunteers, need new forms of training and professional recognition — as well as the ability to transfer the skills they build in these groups into their careers.
SCIAM . - For collective intelligence to emerge, quite a few ingredients go into the recipe. A key ingredient is trust. Through the different interviews you lead, what did you learn about trust? What role does trust play in online communities?
Trust is one of the most important elements that transform a group into a community. If the members of a group only interact on a transactional level, or if unkind behavior isn’t called out and sanctioned, people won’t feel comfortable sharing what they think, and won’t be motivated to invest time and resources in a common cause.
So moderation of group discussions is incredibly important. According to those we interviewed, moderators need to strike the balance between empathy (‘why did you say it this way?’) and neutral enforcement (‘this isn’t how we do things). Building trust at the collective level involves emotional intelligence, consistency, and sensitivity to the unique culture of the group.
SCIAM . - How do you move from online communities to collective action?
Many of the groups we studied have what you could call “counter-cultural” norms and are what political scientists call “cross-cleavage” communities. These groups cut across traditional social groupings, and bring together people normally divided by geography around a shared trait or interest.
Additionally, several of the communities we studied, whether it was supporting the African diaspora in Germany or maternal health in India, attracted members and leaders who are often marginalized in the physical societies they inhabit. They use the platform to build new kinds of community they could not form in real space.
So the relevant question for these groups may not be “how do we go from online discussion to offline action?” — a majority of online groups have at least some in-person activities — but rather, what new kinds of social action are made possible by these people who find each other online? This is a point that deserves more research.
SCIAM . - What role can online communities play in solving global issues such as the one we are living through right now with the Covid pandemic?
Though the online environment is in many ways a global, borderless one, another finding of our research which may surprise some readers is that groups that generate the greatest sense of belonging are groups with ties to local communities and cities. 38 percent of respondents nominated this category of group as generating “quite a bit or great deal of belonging,” while only 12 percent of respondents nominated a group with a predominantly global orientation.
How should we interpret this? One point of view may be that a time of global crisis causes people to focus more intensely on their local environment. Alternatively, it may also be true that making progress on the most complex global problems — climate change, radicalization, pandemics — may ultimately depend less on national politicians or bureaucrats, and more on networks of local actors taking responsibility in new ways.
Online platforms aren’t making these problems go away — our technologies are just tools, after all — but they can enable new and powerful forms of collaboration if we get them right.
