Week 6, 6.1, Community of Practice

A community of practice is something more than a club of friends or a network of connections between people’ (Lave, Wenger) An example of a community of practice could therefore be dancing. Everybody who goes to the dance class simply goes to learn how to dance. At the class you get to know people and build relationships, ‘They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other’ (Lave, Wenger) It is thought it is easier and more effective to learn something with other people than teaching yourself as you can learn from others. The group understand eachother as they are learning the same routines and also have a shared interest in dancing.

Wenger claims that community of practice 'emphasizes the learning that people have done together rather than the unit they report to, the project they are working on, or the people they know.’ In terms of dancing, everyone is learning the same routines, and there is no hierarchy other than the dance teacher. This means that they can relate to one another and learn from eachother.

Week 5, Task 1 - Bruns part a).

What do you understand by the words ‘produser’, ‘produsage’, and ‘intercreativity’? Are they useful in understanding collaborative creation of content online?

Online gaming communities and sites such as Wikipedia can be categorised as 'produsage.' In Bruns' terms 'produsage' is "the collaborative, iterative, and user-led production of content by participants in a hybrid user-producer, or 'produser' role." (2006: 1)

A 'produser' is someone who is between production and consumption of the website or program. A 'produser' has a say in the content and can also contribute to it. Again, a good example of this would be Wikipedia.

The way 'produsers' work together is called 'Intercreativity.' The content is created by more than one person, and is done so online.Because it is done online it is interactive, and therefore this process is called intercreativity.


Bruns, A. (2006) Towards Produsage: Futures for User-Led Content Production, http://snurb.info/files/12132812018_towards_produsage_0.pdf

Week 5, Meikle a) and b)

The benefit to having online news is that it can be updated immediately, so the news is always up to date, whereas for example, newspapers are only updated with new news daily. As well as this, specific news concerning something you may have a personal interest in, can be easily accessed. Online news is meant to be informative to people all over the world, but are news stories that are covered in England relevant to somebody in, for example, China? To some extent yes, they are, but often they are not. There is also the question of who is writing the stories. A British writer may have a completely different opinion or outlook about something than for example, a French journalist. This goes against Meikle's ideas about news reports needing to be unconstrained by geography.
Because of news being accessible on the internet, and anyone being able to publish things on the internet, it reverses the previous power structure of news. The passive audience can now contribute to the news itself, and involve themselves in producing news articles. Ordinary people with no journalism experience can now publish articles and write their own opinions about the news . But will this ever catch on? Personally, if I want to access the news online, I will visit site such as BBC or MSN to ensure that I read reports by credible journalists, so does the online news community really change what we read?

Week 4, File Sharing Online

File sharing downloading music both legally and illegally has completely changed the way in which music is consumed. According to the LLC, around one billion songs a month are being traded on illegal file-sharing networks. There are many applications which you can use to download music illegally, instantly and for free.

Music is being bought online more and more, and now, with bands being able to make and broadcast their own music online, the accessibility to new music is growing. With artists such as Lily Allen and Kate Nash becoming famous through networking sites such as Myspace, are these huge record companies still needed?

Analysing A Web Forum

I looked at the web forum discussing the reality TV show 'The Hills'

http://community.realitytvworld.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/rtvw2/community/dcboard.cgi?az=list&forum=DCForumID100


The forum showed the titles of the posts, the most recent one first, and the first line of each post. Under each title there was the number of message responses which each post had received. One user starts a thread, perhaps with a question, and others' messages appear to the side. The user who wrote the comment in the first place can then reply to these messages and so continue the discussion.


All members have a name. Some are perhaps real names, others obviously aren't, for example 'goldie100.' The majority of users have an avatar next to their name; usually some sort of picture but never of themselves. Although this is, to some extent, witholding their identity, it is important to consider that these people are talking to others who they don't know, and so, perhaps to some extent, have the right to withold their identity.

Using an informal language the users chat and ask eachother questions about the show. The users talk about the characters in the show as if they know them, which I found strange. The friendly tone aids the forum to appear a place of fun discussion for people with similar interests. Only a minority of users give much away about themselves or their personal lives other than their interest in the show, however it is possible to tell who is perhaps male or female due to their name, or what they are discussing.

Week4, Topic1

In Lister's view, the Internet can provide a public sphere in terms of finding people with the same interests as yourself and being part of an online community with them. Although this is true, Lister questions how far public communication can be determined by 'electronic mediated texts.' By definition, a public sphere must be characterised by maximum access. This is true, however with only around 10% of the world's population having access to the Internet, can this form of communication really be defined as 'worldwide'? And, considering this, can online communication be defined as a public sphere?

Blanchard and Horan (2000) showed that social capital increases when opportunities for engagement are facilitated by virtual communities. This shows that This does not mean that online communities and communication can, or ever will, replace face to face communication, or be as rewarding as a face to face relationship.

Week 3,Topic 1 - b) and c)

The ability of being whoever you want to be appeals to many people as it allows them to experiment with their own personalities, in a way that they would not do so in 'real-life'. 'Second-Life,' with 800,000 registered users, is growing at the extraordinary rate of 20% a month.(Jefferies, S, www.guardian.co.uk) This shows that the idea of being whoever you want to be appeals to many people. I think it can give people confidence to say things they wouldn’t say, and generally express themselves in a way they don’t feel they can do in real life. Personally, I can see this as a positive thing, until people online lie, or deceive people about their identities. It does allow people to disconnect and experience new identities, as described in the lecture, it can create a “better self.” However, I agree with the post-modern views - “technological embodiment of a post structualist theory” (Lister page 167) when the element of escapism is confused with real-life. This is evident within the case study in Lister page 168, the “Cross Dressing Psychiatrist.” Although an experiment, it is clear that these events happen so often online and I think this makes these sites, where identities can be hidden, a problem.

Week 3, Task 2, Part a)

Is withholding one’s identity ethically wrong?

In my personal opinion this depends on the extent of your identity you withhold, and in what circumstances. If you are witholding your identity simply to deceive people I think it is ethically and morally wrong. For example, if you're a white, middle-aged male, pretending to be an young, black woman, you are deceiving the person you are talking to, and also may be stereotyping which could lead to offence. In my personal opinion this is ethically wrong. However, if you don't give out your full personal details on a forum or internet chatroom then I don't see that as wrong.

Sherry Turkle argues that we now have several selves, thus it could be considered that the idea of 'self' is the same as the idea of identity. These multiple identities are changable, and 'new media', especially webforums fuel these 'selves' or 'avatars'. This means, in terms of Turkle, we can have more than one identity. Is this really so different to 'real-life?' It could be argued that on a day to day basis we adopt different identities. We act differently in front of friends than we would in front of strangers or people of authority. Is the idea of multiple identities really such a new thing?

Lecture Week3. Selves and Others Online

It is evident that more and more people use the Internet to keep in touch with friends and family, but also to meet new people. This leads to questions about the type of relationships people have over the Internet. Are these relationships as fulfilling as 'real-life' relationships? Can you really get to know somebody over the Internet? There are stories about couples meeting in Internet chatrooms and getting married, so perhaps to some extent these relationships can develop but there are also stories about people meeting others they have met online and finding out they are not who they think they are.

There is then the question of who we are when we are online. Are we always ourselves, or do we adopt a completely different persona? In a study of an online community, Jennifer Mnookin concluded that users 'need not in any way correspond to a person's real life identity; people can make and remake themselves, choosing their gender and the details of their online presentation' (1996) This shows that people can be whoever they want to be online, and not have to face the consequences of what would happen if they were like that in reality. This is underpinned by the names of some of the sites such as Myspace and Youtube, reinforcing the idea of being there for you to be who you want to be, whether that really is yourself, or someone entirely different.