Building Social Networks Via Computer Networks: Creating and Sustaining Distributed Learning Communities

Abstract

The ideal and widely held belief about communities is that they are composed of people who live close to each other, who freely share companionship, goods, services, and support of all kinds to other members of the community. Although this view still holds our hearts, it is often lamented as an ideal “lost” with the advent of urban life (Burbules, 2000; Fischer, 1982; Wellman, 1999a). However, we still find ourselves as members of communities, tied to others by kinship, friendship, work, and neighborhood. What has changed is our ability to maintain relationships with more far-flung intimates and associates, using the telephone, cars, airplanes, and electronic communication to keep in contact. Communities exist “liberated” from geography and neighborhood (Wellman, 1979). We can define community based on what we do with others, rather than where we live with others in terms of the social networks we maintain (Fischer, 1982; Wellman, 1988, 1999a; Wellman & Gulia, 1999a). Viewing community as resting on an underlying social network provides us with a way of examining and understanding the basis of computer-networked communities (Wellman et al., 1996) – communities where geographical colocation and face-to-face meetings have been removed as prerequisites for communal ties, where people do not need to meet face to face and yet sustain personal relationships with others within a community context. A social network perspective lets us explore some of the ambiguities of online communities, such as how “community” can be used to refer to both “networks of virtual strangers exchanging ideas and information” and “virtual friends debating the finer points of gender-bending their online personae” (McLaughlin, Osborn & Smith, 1995, p. 93).