Real vs. Virtual Communities

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews several provided articles explaining how virtual communities are not substitutes for real communities and that the former have rather grave implications for human interaction and the development of personality. In this paper, reference is made to Victor Turner and other functionalist anthropologists to study the characteristics of communities as dynamic entities so that communities arrive from the effort involved in living in community.

From the Paper:

"Those discussing the Internet as a source of bona fide democracy, community, or freedom of expression, miss the shortcomings of a medium that is not a real community. Victor Turner's 'Contribution to Anthropology and Philosophy' stresses the phenomenon of human community as something other than a, "thing". (1966) Recent literature addressing the cyber-communities can be seen as presenting rather time-worn questions, however much we are encouraged to view the advent of cyber communication as unprecedented, or transforming Humanity, for the better. Unlike virtual communities, real communities involve dynamics that ask something of the individual, as a bona fide community and its spirit of communities are forever works in progress."

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• Research Paper # 107359 : "The Impact of E-communities"
• Essay # 6926 : "Virtual Community: Is this a Contradiction in Terms?"
• Research Paper # 100860 : "Virtual Online Communities"

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