Interpersonal Culture on the Internet: Television, the Internet, and the Making of a CommunityCommunity is a highly contested concept, and in the milieu of mass media, it is even more highly fraught. The book is a community formation narrative, adding to our common database of emergent community practice on the Internet. The book bolsters our understandings of the substantive processes involved, particularly those of boundary formation, spatial dimensions of communities, and how communities are always both embedded and emerging entities. Finally, it deals with the question of how seamless and/or disruptive the new technology of the Internet is vis-a-vis our traditional practices of community formation and maintenance. We are interested in a problem with communities based in media fandoms. Eventually, the artist will quit making music, the movie will cease to have sequels, or the television show will get cancelled. What happens to these communities when their basis of interest goes away? Is the bond of community enough to keep them together? Why do people fracture into other groups? Why do some hold on to the one-for-all-all-for-one mentality? chosen offline, or do they stick by the friends they made in the community, who would not ordinarily be their type? In the last couple of years of working with this community, the ways in which one gauges when a community ends, and when it merely morphs into some other kind of interpersonal phenomenon have been at the forefront of our research. The book is ethnographic in method, and deals with community concepts such as networks, geography, boundaries, and politics. |
From inside the book
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Page 39
... structure and the actor who makes up that structure . A spider in its web has built that web , and lives within it ; it remakes the web over and over , not deviating much at all from its previous designs . Clearly , the spider is not ...
... structure and the actor who makes up that structure . A spider in its web has built that web , and lives within it ; it remakes the web over and over , not deviating much at all from its previous designs . Clearly , the spider is not ...
Page 113
... structure . There were several concrete influences of this kind for this community . There were internal structural divisions offered by the computer- coded formats of the various areas for communication . Under the auspices of the old ...
... structure . There were several concrete influences of this kind for this community . There were internal structural divisions offered by the computer- coded formats of the various areas for communication . Under the auspices of the old ...
Page 114
... structure the spaces for themselves . Instead of creating the thread to demarcate topic , many of these places treated the thread as demarcating a day or time limit , and within each thread the spatial structure of linear , open topic ...
... structure the spaces for themselves . Instead of creating the thread to demarcate topic , many of these places treated the thread as demarcating a day or time limit , and within each thread the spatial structure of linear , open topic ...
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Alex Angel anonymous Apollo behavior bezoars boundaries Bronze Bronze Beta Bronze community Bronzers BtVS Buffy the Vampire Caritas Ccool Chrissy Closet Buffyholic Coffee Clubbers connections conversation cultural Cybershark Cyberspace DarkLady Darling Violetta Deadboy developed discussion edited Eiddileg episode Ethnography experience fandom feel format Four Star Mary friends Gatson Gender highlighted identity interactions Internet community involved issues Joss Whedon kenickie LiveJournal loki London membership Meteor Monique newbies nodes NSync NuPhalanx official ongoing online and offline online community organized participation particular PBP Committee person Polgara political posters Posting Board Party practices Routledge rules Sarah Michelle Gellar SarahNicole says sense Social Sociological someone stina talk Technology television things threaded board topic Vampire Slayer VIPs Virtual Virtual Community Viva Las Buffy weekend willa writing X-Files York Zweerink