Virtual Augumentation of "Real" Communities

Much of the research on the effects of the Internet on community and social organization focus on communications and relationships that develop primarily on-line in the context of discussion lists, chat rooms, and MUD's. However the most important impact of computer mediated communications may relate to the ways in which these interactions influence the preexisting social contexts. The articles listed in this section cover, from various perspectives, the development of computer networked communication systems in actual geographical communities including cities, small towns, surburban neighbourhoods, and dispersed rural hamets.

Shapiro, Andrew
June 21, 1999      The net that binds, using cyberspace to create real communities The Nation.

A summary article on the impact and significance of computerized community networks and local gateways in "real" (grounded) communities. Briefly describes a number of successful projects and stress the ability of these undertakings to enhance and restore a sense of local community and participation. Also notes that some completely virtual communities can have the effect of enhancing civil society in actual communities when there is clear localization in participation, such as the case of the Well in San Francisco. Suggest that computer users put more pressure on community sites, specifically commercial gateway sites, to encorporate civic input and provide web space to important community institutions. Includes links to several interesting examples.

This article discusses the development of virtual cities in the context of the decline of public areas in contemporary urban settings. Greater privatization and commercialization of urban space combined with increasing fears about personal safety are reducing contexts for people to meet and interact as citizens with common civic interests and concerns. These processes threaten the health and welfare of "civil society" and contribute to rising trends in individualization and social fragmentation and polarization. Virtual cities (Web based versions of cities) introduce a possible solution in the form of online public spaces for discussion, mobilization, participation, and cooperation on political and social issues.  They also offer a way help reduce the chaos of cyberspace by organizing material around clearly identified and anchored places.Two types of vitual cities have been created: non-grounded and grounded. Nongrounded forms are imaginary constructions that occur only in cyberspace. Grounded forms represent actual cities. Current experiments in both realms have been faced with two problems:

1. Most virtual cities reflect rather than reverse current urban trends. Virtual space are primarily commerical oriented and make little attempt to raise significant concerns or build opportunities for participation and discussion for users. Furthermore, private sponsorship tends to create a multiplicity of sites and several competing versions of the same city.
2. The presence of virtual cities excludes sectors of the citizenry that don't have computer access.

Some movement towards more socially responsive and responsible Web based cities include:
Amsterdam Digitale Stad and Bologna Home Page. Both have significant provisions for user input and publicly accessible computer facilities. (Unfortunately you will not be able to assess these sites unless you understand Dutch and Italian. However you can go to an American site - Berkeley, California - to view a similar attempt. Note especially the provision of an issue discussion section. Boson-Online presents a more informal approach. You may want to compare Berkeley's and Boston's set up to the City of Winnipeg site.)

Blacksburg is a town in Viginia which engaged in an early attempt to create greater civic participation by linking all the homes in the community to the Internet. A project, The Blacksburg Electronic Village, involving free provision of Internet services to households and business was initiated by Virginia Tech, the main local employer. A web site providing basic civic information and general and specific interest USENET discussion channels was established. Eighty percent of the population was hooked into the system by 1999. This high percentage was due to the large number of computer literate university students, staff, and faculty. Reseach on the impact of the project found that it did not have a major effect on civic life.

1. 12% of the network users thought that the project increased their participation in community affairs
2. 10% of the businesses advertising on the network experience an increase in sales
3. the largest use of email was to contact friends and relations outside of the community.

This article discusses preliminary findings from a study of a wired Toronto surburb. As part of the development of a new neighbourhood all the households were given the opportunity to be connect to the Internet for an initial fee free period. A special community site was set up for email contact among residents on several special interest and community interest topics. Sixty-five percent of the population participated. The researchers observed that connectivity significantly enhanced interaction within the new community. People in wired households knew three times as many neigbours by name than did those in households that didn't participate. They regularly talked to twice as many community residents and exchanged personal visits with twice as many people. Online communications facilitate the sharing of information, advice, and support on general community issues such as new resident orientation, burglaries, important public events, and voicing complaints against the real estate developer.

The InfoZone is a community computer project in Telluride, Colorado a town of 2,000 people. The town was already close knit with a lot of civic participation before the introduction of community network. However the project further enhanced the development of community relations and activities. It facilitated increase communication among residents. It also created an additional and especially uninitimidating and uninhibiting forum for public discussion allowing for "more in-depth analysis of issues". Nevertheless only a minority (no statistics are given) of the town's residents actually used the system.

Big Sky Telegraph is a community network established for a number of contiguous hamlets in a sparsely populated region of Montana. Its primary purpose is to connect teachers in 40 one-room schoolhouses to provide them with a network of information and support. It was hoped that the teachers would also act as a "bridge" to encourage and facilitate participation of other members of this dispersed community. Many teachers activily participated (at a 25%-30% rate) and found that they could maintain effective horizontal communications and access to education resources that were more efficienty than the usual paths through the centralized county education bureaucracy or the teaching college. The wider population was more reluctant to participate, partially because of economic concerns and partially out of fear that computerized networks could create a context of social and cultural domination from national and international influences. As such the network expresses contractory forces of decentralized democratic communication and hierarchical external control.

Community Informatics Research Web Site
http://www.cira.org.uk
 

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