Theoretical Approaches to Virtual Communities

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Virtual Community Defined
Case Study Analysis
Virtual Community and Technology
Business Environment
Learning Environment
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Virtual communities represent a unique communication environment with its own rules and principles located in cyberspace. Virtual communities became possible only with the development of the Internet and information technologies. One of biggest pitfalls of the cyberspace has been that it gave rise to one more form of divide amongst the society, termed as digital divide. But at the same time, the cyberspace has provided many opportunities to the mankind to spread education and disseminate knowledge through a number of channels including virtual communities.

Even while managing an organization or community, cyberspace lends a helping hand (Kitchen, 2001). Development of virtual communities on the cyberspace, within a section of the society, group of friends, peer groups etc. are some of the examples which have become quite prevalent in our society today. Though earlier as well, we used to have the concept of the gathering of like-minded people, parties, clubs etc. but those were more formal in nature.

Virtual Community Defined

Howard Rheingold defines Virtual Communities as: social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. The main problem with this definition is that it does not take into account social relations and unique communication emerged in cyberspace.

In contrast to Howard Rheingold, Bartnatt v(2002) defines virtual community as a group of people interacting via media technologies, usually the Internet (Bartnatt 2002, p. 43). On the other hand, development of virtual communities in todays cyberspace like social networking sites, have made it easier for a wider section of the community to join the group/s and take the benefits, enrich the information database or help in disseminating the information. Cyberspace and the missionary zeal of some of the community leaders has further given a flip to such development. In contrast to Howard Rheingold, Feenberg and Maria Bakardjieva explains the nature of virtual community as (2004): If face-to-face contact is required by definition, then obviously no community can form online (p. 37).

How the curiosity amongst the kids help them in understanding the wonderful world of cyberspace, animations, paintings etc. and how this similar curiosity helps in developing of a like-minded groups of kids desirous of learning skills provided they get an opportunity (Baudrillard, 2000).

Identity and place play a crucial role in virtual communities defining unique communication patterns and interaction between users. The continuing releases of both the Microsoft and Netscape WWW browsers will greatly extend the ways in which individuals can communicate. These enhanced facilities will be available for intracompany communications as well as those between individuals in separate organizations (Kling and Courtright 2003).

In addition to the simple exchange of e-mail messages it will be possible to have a private on-line dialogue with a group of people irrespective of where they are located. As the sophistication and variety of these new forms of communications increases it will take longer for the technical standards to become defined and globally adopted (Levy, 2006; Bogard, 2003). There is an irresistible trend towards the development of new methods of virtual and impersonal communicating with customers: banks and software houses are desperately working together to produce secure payment systems; multimedia companies are desperately working to deliver these services over new forms of communication such as interactive television, satellite television, telephone developments and a whole host of other technological combinations.

Enlightened strategists are working within many producer organizations to work out new ways of adding value to the proposition. Communication technologies stand at a peculiar interface between the technical culture of those who create them, the commercial interests of those who produce and market them, and the everyday life world of ordinary users (Feenberg and Bakardjieva 2004, p. 38).

Case Study Analysis

Theoretical approaches virtual communities suggest that the concept of virtual communities is closely connected with the online identity concept. There have already been a number of references to how the online identity can be used for communications (Hillis, 2005).

Applied to online identity, the virtual community concept can be explained as the collective term that describes the technologies and functionality that make this possible and is simply the applications of communication techniques to individual processes. For instance, modern companies are often faced with the challenge of trying to improve the quality and currency of the information they supply to their employees, while at the same time seeking to maximize the flexibility of where and how their staff work. This presents human resource personnel with a major information management task, often conducted over multiple locations in many countries (Bogard, 2003).

The various applications of online identity (e-mail, WWW and push) offer excellent methods of maintaining contact with existing customers, making communications far easier than using traditional methods. In addition, a refined stream of information can be directed towards the individual customer once their areas of interest have been understood (Krueger, 2000).

The need to perceive online communications as something directed at a market sector could be a redundant concept as the Internet provides the capability for virtual communications to be directed at the individual consumer level. For industries where the product can be digitized (for example IT, finance, entertainment and information services) it becomes relatively easy to enable the prospective customer to trial the products prior to the purchase (Lipnack and Stamps 2001).

Theoretical approaches suggest that virtual communities may create the facilities to sell direct to the customer, but it may be difficult to ignite the change in purchasing attitudes that will make this occur. Facebook is s networking software which units groups of users from all over the world and provide a core for community amongst users. The blunt, but probably most effective way of stimulating such a change of behavior, will be by offering financial inducements.

The potential for a company to reduce its cost of sale and administration by having direct contact with the customer should generate considerable savings, some of which may need to be connected back to the customer (Lipnack and Stamps 2000). There are new opportunities for online providers to enhance their post sale customer support and generate opportunities for further sales. An online providers reputation is often enhanced or discredited by the way in which it handles enquiries from customers.

While the telephone may well remain the most effective medium for customer contact, there will be instances when support can be offered via the Internet. For example, if a query is very complex, the use of an on-screen questionnaire can assist the customer to specify the exact nature of their requirement. In addition, the provision of on-line support makes it available 24 hours a day on a global basis (Benedikt, 2003; Grosse, 2002).

Virtual Community and Technology

Howard Rheingold defines Virtual Communities as: social aggregations but this concept does not explain the role of business relations and unique virtual setting. Theoretical approaches suggest that within companies it is becoming common for technical information to be collected and disseminated to staff via the Internet (Poster, 2001). There maybe advantages in making this information, or a subset of it, available as a part of post sale support. An example of this is the way that many software companies now offer their customers the facilities to submit questions on their products and to have access to the knowledge base.

It is clear that there are many options available to a company when deciding how to proceed with exploiting the Internet. Once a decision has been made to begin this process an Internet marketing plan needs to be created. For this to be effective a number of factors need to be taken into consideration, beginning with establishing precise business objectives and measurable targets (Green and Adam, 2001).

Obviously, the plan will only be useful to the extent that it is implemented so the organizational and staffing issues must be clearly defined as must the resulting requirements for direct investment and personnel. Because of the fast changing nature of the Internet it will be necessary to review and revise this plan more frequently than those from other parts of the organization (Mihaela and Smith 2001).

There are a number of pitfalls that frequently occur and need to be guarded against during the planning and implementation phases. Too often the group responsible for the implementation becomes separated from the mainstream of a companys marketing development. Internet-related marketing activity is of maximum value when it supports and extends existing virtual communication tasks as well as in creating totally new opportunities. Even when a formal Internet marketing plan does exist, it is often not communicated throughout the marketing organization, even to the point where staff are unaware that their company has a WWW site.

Apart from being wasteful and unprofessional, this lack of communication can result in staff, who have Internet-related assignments, being unaware of the overall context of their work. Wherever possible users should be encouraged to make the use of the Internet as part of their normal working routine (Ludlow, 2001). The long-term objective must be to ensure that all marketing staff are aware of the potential of the Internet and capable of exploiting the opportunities that it offers. There is no single solution that will ensure that it is fully incorporated into all marketing activities but, as with any other major change within an organization, the commitment and attitude of senior management will be key to the success or failure of the project (Benedikt, 2003).

Business Environment

When these capabilities are combined to address traditional business situations, it is possible to generate communication benefits. By selecting examples from three business functions (HR and corporate communications, purchasing, and finance and accounting) it is possible to illustrate how business entities are already gaining advantage from the virtual communities (Roebuck et al 2004).

Howard Rheingold definition of Virtual Communities is weak enough to explain these complex relations and interaction patterns. The Palace and Habbo Hotel demonstrate the ability of employees to have continual access to the latest version of corporate directories and the provision of distance learning facilities, through to the ability of the individual to customize the format of financial reporting information delivered to the desktop.

An important ingredient in enabling many of these new developments has been the evolution of the intranet. Whereas the focus of the Internet has been to provide access to a wide range of data to an audience that is normally external to the business, the intranet is solely focused on the community of users within the organization (Elmer, 2002). Almost all of the intranets technology is the same as that used for the WWW. What differs are types of users and their demands for information. The Glossary provides a more detailed definition of the intranet (Schachter, 2001).

Such virtual community as Second Life and a Tale in the Desert can facilitate the establishment of interorganizational ties, yet success depends on the inherent business necessities of such ties, and top managements commitment to making them work. Since knowledge workers become accessible to a number of legally independent organizations, they are assets to a wider community, making them a valuable resource to be protected.

In order to keep control over the assets that are invested into these new business alliances, organizations may establish a hierarchical structure of formal control for them (Wilbur, 2000). This depends on the significance of the alliance and the potential danger associated with losing key internal resources. In summary, communication technology can influence organizations through an incremental process starting at the individual level, transcending teams, affecting the entire organization, and eventually redefining the boundaries of the firm. The immediate effect of communication technology use may therefore only become visible after communication technology has been used intensively for a longer period of time.

This tension is reflected in the knowledge workers compliance with certain social norms of interaction. Yet, as users, they also create new norms of interaction by choosing to use a technology in an unintended manner, and thereby influencing the norms of the organization (Cuthell, 2002). By changing the social patterns of interaction, virtual design dimensions are affected. The use of communication technology will therefore result in intended and unintended consequences for organizations. The complex interaction between virtual space and users makes it difficult to predict the exact path of communication technology influence on organizations over time. Since new cyberspace can provide tools for establishing and supporting links between information, they provide a starting point for knowledge development (Willson, 1997).

New community can be used to support information distribution, yet knowledge workers have to use more traditional media to make sense of the distributed information to enable it to develop into knowledge. Essentially, virtual community can inspire information sharing, yet it requires human beings to realize their potential. This is the case because knowledge involves thinking about the information. New communication technology can also play a critical role in raising the consciousness of existing links within the organization, since its implementation and use requires renewed thinking about the entire process of information acquisition, distribution, interpretation and storage.

Given renewed thinking about these processes, communication technology implementation may unleash human thought that leads to the development of knowledge (Wellman 1999). For the organizational infrastructure, appropriate incentive schemes, an open organizational culture, key people and teams need to be readily available to support the development of knowledge. For the communication technology infrastructure, access to a wide range of communication tools is necessary. Communication technology can be viewed as a knowledge development tool that is capable of capturing and making better use of both explicit and tacit knowledge. Yet, it has to be supported by the organizational infrastructure to be functional (Carnegie, 2003).

Learning Environment

Howard Rheingold definition of Virtual Communities helps to explain learning possibilities of these online entities. Although virtual community can be viewed as a tool for learning, its success depends on the ability to identify the different factors that enable and constrain the implementation and use of virtual community. Without the identification of the conditions that impede and facilitate organizational learning, communication technology is frequently viewed as a static instrument. This limits the potential use of communication technology in enabling learning, since the process of implementation requires an understanding about the involved complexity and dynamics (Coyne, 2005).

Conclusion

Following Howard Rheingold Virtual Communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net. Thus, the case study analysis shows that virtual communities are based on unique identity of users and social changes in communication and interaction patterns. In virtual community, context and identity model, resources in terms of time and money are crucial for virtual community to support learning.

Since the implementation of virtual community is a long-term investment, key individuals need to be assigned to keep track of technology use over time and to initiate organizational and technological adjustments that will take advantage of identified opportunities and alleviate problems. Without users committed to this role, virtual community may not be able to provide the expected value. Although cyberspace technology has been found to have the potential to change organizational behavior by decreasing response time, by speeding up information processing and altering the time and place of work, there are unavoidable second-order effects that may constrain learning.

References

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Benedikt, M. (ed.) (2003), Cyberspace, First Steps. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

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