Characteristics of Internet Communities
The greatest benefit of Internet communities is the ease with which a person can communicate with a broad range of people. By drastically increasing the number of people an individual can come in contact with, the Internet exposes an individual to a diverse array of people, creating an exciting environment in which to make acquaintances. It’s easy to use and available all the time.
The key difference between virtual and actual communities is that on-line, contact with relative strangers is a social norm. By creating a situation in which humans can communicate with the comfort associated with the short, informal discussions characteristic of chat rooms and without the usual restraints of social norms, on-line communities are naturally exciting and stimulating:
An on-line community is one of the easiest ways to meet new people. Certainly it is very low risk. I think this is mainly due to the essential informality of on-line conversation. Rather than being required to sustain a single conversation with one or more people, relationships usually form out of numerous, often short exchanges. (Coate, 1992)People can have social contact without any actual social presence, allowing them to express themselves freely. As E.M. Reid states, "If all computer-mediated communication systems can be said to have one single unifying effect upon human behavior it is that usage tends to cause the user to become less inhibited." (Reid, 1994)
What King calls the “hyperpersonal aspect” of Internet communication allows individuals to be selective about how they present themselves. By magnifying and selecting the characteristics they wish to expose, the user can almost create a caricature of themselves, with various effects on the community. The most innocent of these is the common observation that arguments and lovers quarrels have a high frequency in on-line relationships. As individuals create a caricature of themselves, these strong personalities may have a higher tendency to clash as all their characteristics are magnified. Secondly, judgments are made solely on what a person chooses to tell, which can lead to highly emotional evaluations of others; the physical aspects of an individual are hidden when on-line, so the emotional takes center stage.
People that lurk in chat rooms or e-mail groups, participating in a read-only format must also be considered. Though there is not much attraction to this in academic and business discussion forums, chat rooms and other forums which suggest more emotional subject matter often attract voyeurs, who observe the interactions of those that actively participate. Combined with the tendency of people to lose their inhibitions when on-line, this “electronic eavesdropping” can prove very dangerous, as the “lurking” users may gain personal information that should be kept private.