COMMUNITY

    The community, as mentioned before, is formed by people from all around the world with a few common friends. The core group of users is located in Lund, Sweden. The site originally was created as a picture site for a few of the core users to share photos of parties. As their needs changed, so did the site. With a growing and improving site they also began to build a virtual community of their real-life friends. The posts were all in Swedish and any comments on pictures also were in Swedish. Naturally, being Swedes, they built a site in their own language. But as their friendship base grew and more internationals joined the group, language barriers became an issue. To accommodate everyone, Andre decided to translate and re-post everything in English. However, as he states in his news update about the changes, users still can comment and post in Swedish if they choose to do so, but the key information will be offered in English. This change allowed the community to grow and for non-Swedish speakers to become more active members.

             The community is shaped by its members, and because the online relationship is not their primary one, the community takes on an interesting form. When the majority of the community is together at school in Lund, the communication on the site drastically diminishes. When they are away from each other during breaks and holidays, the online presence picks up. As Preece discusses, any community has cycles of activity based on events Independent of the online community (379). This Is very evident in the destiny community. Most of the changes to the site were made over the summer and users were most active at that time as well. However, the picture page activity Increases drastically during the times of low "verbal" communication. The majority of friends see each other on a regular basis and celebrate events in person. Anabel Quan-Haase et. al found that one should view "the Internet as integrated into rhythms of daily life, with life online being an extension of offline activities" (296). And that is exactly what happens in this community. Those who see one another day-to-day use the community to enhance those relationships. Those who are far away maintain friendships in addition to their activities at home. I know, from personal experience that email use increases at this time along with phone calls. The entire community takes on more of a lurker status with weak ties when face-to-face interactions are high. Quan-Haase et. al found in their study that my experiences are characteristic of many such communities. "Face-to-face and telephone contact continue, complemented by the internet's ease in connecting geographically dispersed people and organizations who are bonded by shared interests" (296).

            Many users will sign on to the site, look at pictures, read what people have posted, click on links to individual blogs to see what others are doing, but they never will post their own message. Many factors can contribute to lurking. The person could feel unwelcome, shy or just doesn't want to be social. One example of a successful lurker is Susanna. She met Andre in Greece about two years ago and they soon began dating. The only problem was that she lived in Finland. They were able to talk and visit one another frequently, but when Susanna decided to move to Lund, she wanted to make friends. By joining destiny and forming weak ties with Andre's friends, she was able to move without the stress of trying to meet people and fit in. "…It has become clear that most relationships formed in cyberspace continue in physical space leading to new forms of community characterized by a mixture of online and offline interactions" (Rheingold, 2000; Muller, 1999; Matei and Ball-Rokeach, 2001 cited in Quan- Haase et. al). This was the case for Susanna. She saw pictures of people which can show a lot about the people and how they interact and she also could read their conversations on forums to get to know the people. This made her interactions with them easier when she visited Lund and once she moved, she already had existing relationships. As Preece stated, "lurkers can become so immersed in the community's discussions that they feel they know the participants and that they belong to the community even though they have never posted a message" (90). Several other exchange students and internationals use Susanna's tactics and feel connected to the entire group even though they might only speak to one or two members outside of the community.

HOME  NEXT >
potential and conflicts / hierarchies / community / social network and policies