In todays Tutorial number six, we were looking at the internet and online communities. To expand on this i have decided to use facebook as an example.
www.facebook.com
Facebook is a free-access social networking website. People can sign up and connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Photo's and videos can be uploaded onto the person's personal profile also. (retrieved 25th May 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook)
Face book itself offers many services. These include things like the abilvity to share content and information. For example photos, videos and personal information. On face book members have the ability to email a friend privately or to post a public message on their personal page. If posting on their own personal page all friends are able to read and see this message whereas if done privately only this person can read it.
Face book also offers instant messaging. Therefore if you and a friend are online at the same time then you can talk to each other instantly. This is great when trying to communicate quickly and briefly or to people overseas.
These three dmethods of communcating make face book a very interactive site. People have face book to stay in connect and chat with friends.
Facebook also has many groups you can become a member of. For example i am a part of groups such as Craighead leavers 09 (my school year) and A.R.E.A 9 which was a concert i went to this year. People join groups which they have been a part of or which they are intrested in or believe in.
On your personal page theres a box that allows you to write "whats on your mind". People use this to let other friends know whats happening. Anything can be written in this space.
There are also games avaliable to play on face book for example farm town and 20/20. Farm town is game where you set up your own farm with animals and crops whereas 20/20 is a cricket game. These games are interactive with friends. For example on farm town you can go and work on other peoples farms etc.
Facebook also has quizes which people can do and also make. These are something fun and interesting to do.
Facebook gives you the ability to search for friends. Therefore if you are trying to find a long lost friend you can simply search there name and see if they come up. The person then has to add you and for them to be your friend you must first accept them. If you have friends in common with this person this will come up. This allows you to have a certain amount of privacy as you can only add and accept the people you want. Therefore people you dont know cant look at your page.
Peole can contribute to facebook by firstly setting up their own page. From here they can add friends, write to friends, join groups and play games. If you want to contribute to facebook itself you can make quizes, games and groups which people can join and play.
I personally think that people contribute to this community to keep in contact with friends, add and look at photos and to find long lost friends. Myself personally am a member of facebook to keep in contact with friends, look at photos and generally to find out what people are up to.
The types of topics discussed on facebook are mainly around whats happening in the person's life. For example what they have been up to lately or the upcoming weekend. This can be seen through conversation with friends and photos loaded. As peoples lives change they tend to change their profile. For example if they move they will change their address or if they get a new phone number they will also change this. This ensures all friends know what they are up to.
In relation to facebook a number of ethical issues arise, these include:
*Uploading photos and videos of people. This is a ethical issue as any person can load photos and videos without the consent of the person within these. Therefore any content can be added. This may be alarming in some cases with the content added as it may be unappropriate.
*Anyone can add you. This may be an ethical problem if you accept people you do not know. There have been measures put in place to stop this. For example you have to add and accept a person to be their friend.
*Users giving out personal information. This is an issue as giving out address and phone numbers could be a potiental threat to you
*People creating fake profiles. This is another potiental threat as a person could pretend to be someone else
A tradition communtiy is a local community, which has practices, beliefs, kinship systems, and other cultural and economic attributes passed down through generations, in the same form or in modified forms. A community is defined as a socially and geographically defined group of people living near, and/or dependent on, biodiversity or biological resources. This differs to an online community as an online community such as facebook is defined as online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as newsletters, telephone, email, internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. (retrieved 25th may 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_community)
A lot of people do not define facebook as a community and instead are asking the question, is Facebook helping us to stay in touch with our community or is it making our relationships more shallow and voyeuristic?
Instead of talking to someone face to face people are now tending to just send an email or instant message. This is a lot easier and quicker than meeting someone. So is this improving our relationships or making us socially isolated.
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