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Session 7: Virtual Communities,
Multidimensional Interfaces and Activists
Chair: Pinar Yoldas
From Community to Virtual Community: The Evolution
of an Idea
Luigi Colazzo * – Sigrid
Marchiori + – Andrea
Molinari *
* Università di Trento, Dipartimento di Informatica
e Studi Aziendali, Trento Italy
+ Università di Trento, Facoltà di
Sociologia, Trento Italy
The virtual community idea comes from the
reflections developed around the sociological concept of community,
plus the effects of the computer-mediated communication on the structure
of the human interaction. Starting from the conviction that a community
is a form of social relationships that is too complex and heterogeneous
to be described as a precise object of the social reality, the most
appropriate question to understand its existence is related to the possibility of
its existence. In substance, we will try to answer to the following
question: how is possible to have all these forms of communities
and respective reifications?
The answer will serve us to understand
in what sense virtual communities can be considered communities,
what are the causes of virtual communities creation and why there
are different ways to describe the same objects.
The concept of virtual
community refers to an wide spectrum of phenomena, and this happens
because the concept of community arises from the analysis of the classic
sociologists as a not totally clear phenomenon, hardly to recognize,
comprehensive of a wide range of ways of relationship or disposition
to the social action. So, at first, we will introduce the principal
sociological reflections regarding the community concept, to understand
the possibility, through the main theories of the classic sociology,
to give a paternity to the contemporary phenomenon of the communities.
Subsequently, applying the Luhmann’s systems theory, we will
explain the rise of the community as cultural phenomenon involved in
the evolution of social structures. In substance, we will explain the
sense of the virtual community:
-
on one side, as the proper sense of a society that observes itself and finds in the symbol of the community the answer to the need of inclusion;
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on the other side, in the new opportunities that the technology offer to the satisfaction of such a need.
Multidimensional Interfaces in Global Society
Stefano Martelli
Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Palermo, Italy
What is
the social meanings of the communication by new technologies?
Which is the social function of an interface of communication as a
web site? Is it possibleto measure the communicative capacity of
a web site, in order to help the Webmasters’work?
The goal of
my paper is to draft an application of the multidimensional theory
of society to the communication field, in order to draw a methodology
and a technique to analyse the web site. 5 will be my speech’s
points:
First, I’ll draw the main features of the multidimensional
theory, which I applied to the communication field on the base of J.
Alexander’s epistemology, P.Lazarsfeld’s methodology and
T. Parsons’ theory of social action [§ 2].
Second, I’ll
shaw the main principles useful to analyse the communicative capacity
of the web site, i.e. the main interface of communication by internet.
The 4 dimensions of every communicative phenomenon will be distinguished
in sub-dimensions and indicators. A qualitative valuation of the web
site proprieties will be transformed into numbers by a quantitative
technique, and the findings will be manipulated by statistical tools.
The findings will be compared in order to give suggestions to web site
masters, so that they may improve the communication capacity of their
site [§ 3].
Third, I’ll give my answer to three epistemological and theoretical
questions, about the objectivity of the findings, their comparability
and the flexibility of the multidimensional theory [§ 4].
As last
point, I’ll give some suggestions useful to assume
a sociological view to the context in which a web site born, and to
adopt a global approach (i.e. to join local and global style of communication)
in order to characterize the identity of the web site and to improve
the communication capacity of this interface [§ 5].
In conclusion,
the multidimensional theory draw a coherent methodology and useful
techniques in order to make the interfaces of communication easier
and to improve customer satisfaction.
Internet Activists in Egypt: Public Sphere and
Mobilization
Dalia Chams
Journalist,
Al-Ahram Hebdo
Egypt counts more than 1,5 million Internet users.
Surveys estimates that in the year 2005, this country considered
as the most populated of the Arab world ( around
75 000.000 inhabitants),
will occupy the first rank among Internet users in the region. Even
if it’s somehow early to anticipate
or evaluate entirely the sociopolitical mutations caused by the use
of information and communication technology ( ITC), especially Internet
introduced into Egypt in 1993, it seems important to examine progressively
its sociopolitical effects.
Just at this particular time of history,
where Arabs have to challenge aspects of globalization and independence,
the Iraqi war has changed the regional status and urged several popular
reactions showing a need to transgress discursive boundaries obtaining
in offline public space, without fearing repression. It’s a pressing
matter of individual emancipation and desire for tacking action due
to the actual state of mass media under governmental control and the
Iraqi crisis which has shaken up civil society. So far this later has
been almost absent on the net. The practical impact of Internet use
by civil society activists has indeed been limited, in comparison with
hundreds of popular Islamic sites largely studied by researchers. Lately,
the construction of several new sites and the emergence of discussion
forums and sociopolitical platforms- without the interference of any
Islamic tendency- expresses the firm will “ to do it yourself”.
There is certainly a high correlation between the increasing number
of Islamic sites and the success of the religious trend among people,
but as the matter of fact this is also related to the know how, the
contacts and the money of the Islamic diasporas.
Now that Egyptian users
are more familiar with Internet, some new behaviours and practices
are emerging, even when we are talking about poor cultural environment.
This is due in a part to the entrance of free net in 2001 and to the
diffusion of the Explorer 5 Microsoft version in 1999/2000 which permits
to exchange texts in Arabic.
This paper goal is to analyze the content
of the most recent, non Islamic Egyptian sites and discussion forums
and to examine their users and their activists. Is the net reflecting
the conflict between different social and political trends or it still
doesn’t reach that extend?
Have the new activists of the net replaced the traditional way of exchanging
rumours and jokes? How does Internet represent an additional public
sphere, a place for governmental confrontation with civil society?
Are politicians, who usually seem very proud of the number of computers
connected to Internet and of their e-strategies, as an indicator of
development, ready for its “emancipatory” effects? Or does
they lay on the hypothetical idea that through Internet each one can
find a place to express himself which will lead to a status quo? The
Egyptian case study that we suggest represents certainly its own particularity
, because one cannot shear all Arab countries over a comb.