I'm still grappling with this idea of community online. Wellman and Gulia pose the question: Are Virtual Communities "Real" Communities? (And I still want to ask what, exactly, is a "real" community?) Their conclusion? A resounding probably. As many others have argued, they suggest that online links can support social links, both weak and strong.

But here's what's interesting. "Operating via the Net," say Wellman and Gulia, "virtual communities are simultaneously becoming more global and local, as worldwide connectivity and domestic matters intersect." Now a lot of time has passed since this article was published in 1997, but I think this has only become more true. The bigger the world gets, the smaller it gets, too. Somehow, the fact that you can connect with strangers around the world has somehow made it more possible to connect with people close to you. So though I have a few friends on Facebook who live a thousand miles away, most of them are actually people I see at least once a week.

I thought of this local/global thing when I came across this article. The author, Robert E. Cummings, is an American university professor who teaches composition. Not only does he go against the anti-Wikipedia zeitgeist among many academics, he actually gets his students to use it. He asks his class (a community) to examine how Wikipedia works, to prepare an entry on a film they've selected and to actually publish it. The students then monitor the response from others, who may make corrections, additions, or leave a comment. We're living in a world where a small community of writers can publish instantly to the world. As the author of the article points out, "this puts the writing teacher in the role of assisting students in making meaning for an audience with their text...."

And then there's "Lost in Cyberspace" by Brainard and Brinkerhoff. They describe two U.S.-based websites that create a network of interest (community?) around improving conditions in Afghanistan. These two networks are almost exclusively online, and yet they provide support for people across the planet, many of whom may not even have internet access.

Is a class a community? Is a cause a community? I hope Sherida won't mind my quoting her comments on my last post, because I think it helps me understand this idea much better: "Perhaps thinking of community as a process not as an end product would be useful when we want to encourage people to associate with each other."

This interests me as I move more into the field of communicating with university students using social media. We sometimes use the word "community" as a way to try to attract students to our services. In fact, our job in the student life field is to give students a sense of "community", something we ask specifically in benchmarking surveys. If I think of community as a process, it makes life a lot easier. Our students may have a relatively short time here, but we can hope to be a positive part of their process.

And, for no reason other than the fact that we were talking in class about dancing bears last night: