Big Brother Africa Star Game Online Community

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Introduction and the community chosen
The characteristics of the community
Expression of individualism in the community
Similarity and difference of the community with other communities
Reference

Introduction and the community chosen

Human beings are social beings, who interact to learn new ideas and skills. Socialization is a lifelong experience that is necessary for survival (Buton, 2009). Traditionally, people interacted informally through face-to-face talks, and by playing games to know each other. In addition, social forums provided an opportunity to share information. However, the last two decades witnessed the emergence of socialization through virtual communities; people reduced face-to-face contacts and they increased virtual friends. According to Dasgupta, “a virtual community, is a group (sociology) whose members are connected using information technology, typically the internet” (2006). Members of a virtual community are connected by the need to belong and share a common interest. This research paper follows and analyses Big Brother Africa Star Game online chat room (bigbrotherafrica.com). Big Brother Africa Star Game is a reality show aired in 42 African countries by M-net, a South African television network. The reality show is produced by Endemol, which owns the Big Brother franchise (Hiramoto, 2012). Its chat room is open to viewers and anyone who visit the Big Brother Africa Star Game website. Members of the online chat room join freely without providing any personal information, and most do not use their real names. The purpose of the chat room is to discuss the behavior of contestants besides voting to retain and evict participants. It is a real-time chat room, where members instantly view comments as soon as they enter them. Membership is drawn from the 42 African countries where the show airs; it is not restrictive because anyone who accesses the website can join and participate.

The characteristics of the community

The community has unique characteristics and behavior; it is like an individual with characteristics and behaviors particular to him/her. First, the group does not measure individual or behavioral characteristics. Traditional, virtual sites use behavioral characteristics to manage accounts. The information provided by individuals when they sign in identifies individual accounts. Formal community sites require one to provide personal information like the date of birth and email address. The information is used as a basis for identifying members and checking antisocial behaviors. Behavioral techniques used to identify individuals in virtual sites include signing features, keystroke patterns, voice, and gait (Camarinha–Matos, Paraskaskis, and Afsarmanesh, 2009). Big Brother Africa Star Game online chat room is a voluntary, virtual community with random entry and exit. The site does not have procedural systems to regulate and vet membership; that is the reason why members have names like Volcano, Tsunami, Easy, and Yuvvonben523 (M-net, 2012). The language is informal similar to the one used in a text message; for example, “thank you” is ‘thank us. The group is highly empowered because one can change names at will and it lacks shared leadership enabling some members to use abusive language.

The second characteristic of the Big Brother Africa Star Game online chat room is it has no hierarchy among members. Other social, virtual providers have a mechanism of establishing hierarchies; the number of posts and friends determines hierarchy. In the case of Big Brother Africa, all members are equal, and members are differentiated by the names they use and the comments they make. Successful chat rooms have high social capital, lacks structure, have high trust and members share a common goal (Camarinha-Matos, Paraskakis, and Afsarmanesh, 2009).

Unlike formal chat rooms, Big Brother Africa Star Game online chat room is highly informal; as a result, it has weak task significance but a strong task identity. Formal work groups have useful job designs, which defined tasks and enrich jobs (DuBrin, 2012). Big Brother chat room does not have job relevance to members; the only glue holding them together is their addiction to the real game. They, therefore, have no interdependent tasks but are dependent on each other to share information.

Expression of individualism in the community

Virtual communities allow creativity and enable members to express themselves without the fear of being reprimanded. It enables members to express their individuality in ways they cannot in a physical setting. In Big Brother Africa online chat room, members express individuality in the following ways:

A majority of members remain anonymous by using pseudo names; members use a name like Justme and Noejoe (M-net, 2012). It is difficult to locate members because they use pseudo names and operate from personal computers in 42 countries. Members adopt a virtual identity different from their actual identity by using pseudo names (Peachey and Childs, 2011). Members express themselves freely without compromising relationships with work colleagues and family.

When members join the chat room, they lose uniqueness because the system lacks a hierarchical order. All members are equal irrespective of one physical position in life. In a physical social setting, individuals have unique, differentiated, and developed identities which they drop when they join virtual communities. They, therefore, use different personalities thus distinguishing their individuality.

In a virtual community, individuals lack inhibition and have diminished concern for self-presentation (Peachey and Childs, 2011). In Big Brother Africa’s online chat room, members lack courtesy and often use abusive and derogatory language. Because of the real-time nature of the chat room members are unafraid to say anything; the chat room displays conversation made within ten minutes.

The chat room is similar to the traditional real-life conversation in the following ways:

Communication is a factor of thought and custom; in the physical face-to-face social setup, people use communication to express thoughts and feelings. Members use online chat rooms to express what they think and feel. In addition, they express themselves according to learned traditions and norms.

Similarity and difference of the community with other communities

Both traditional and virtual communications differentiate individuals from one another. In traditional communication, an individual style of communication says a lot about an individual personality. In a virtual community, members have distinct ways of communication; by observing the chat room, different styles of communication emerge. Some individuals are rude while others are polite; some are clear, and others are vague.

Big Brother Africa chat room is different from traditional ‘real life’ communication in the following ways:

Chat room communication is impersonal and unfeeling while traditional communication has an element of human feelings. Chat room communication lacks emotion because elements of verbal communication such as tone and eye contact are lacking. It does not provide an opportunity to evaluate an individual against history, looks, and emotions. A big percentage of verbal communication is body language which is lacking in chat room communication. Oral communication allows a person to express himself/herself in the best way possible; chat room conversations are brief and often use poor grammar. It allows one to be rude something unacceptable in real-life communication.

In conclusion, chat room conversation allows people in different parts of the world to communicate conveniently besides allowing information to be shared as soon as it is available.

Reference

Big Brother Africa. Live Chat, 2012 .

Buton, E. (2009). Basic Sociology. Bloomington: Author House.

Camarinha-Matos, L., Paraskakis, I., and Afsarmanesh, H. Leveraging Knowledge for Innovation in Collaborative Networks: 10^th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterpreises, PRO-VE 2009 Proccedings. New York: Springer.

DasGupta, S. (2006). Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities and Technologies. Hershey: IDEA Group, Inc.

DuBrin, A. (2012). Essentials of Management. Mason: Cengage Learning.

Hiramoto, M. (2012). Media Intertextualities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Mnet-TV(South Africa). (2012). Big Brother Africa 2012 [Television Broadcast]. Big Brother Africa News. South Africa: Mnet-TV.

Peachey, A. and Childs, M. (2011). Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds. New York: Springer.

Click Here To Order Now!