Assignment 7: Be Selfish! Take Advantage of Your Community Resources

When discussing the term community, Wikipedia suggests that, in general, a community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. In human communities, conditions that may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants of the community include: intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks as well as a number of other conditions. A community that can be found on the World Wide Web, however, is different. This particular type of community can be described as an online community, a virtual community, or an e-community. An online community is then defined as a group of people that primarily interact via a computer network rather than face-to-face. Examples of these may include: instant messaging programs, e-mail, list serves, blogs, etc. Although these two communities may seem very different, they share a purpose, a purpose in which I am going to identify through my own, personal interaction within these two different communities.

An online community in which I belong to is the Communications major list serve. This specific community is set up so that the Communication advisers can easily get in touch with every student within the major who chooses to become a part of the list serve and serves to bring information to all students within it, including: scholarship opportunities, meetings, internship/job opening and opportunities, times in which advisers are available, and any other information that the Communication advisers perceive to be important enough to inform the entirety of the student body within the major. This type of online community reflects the Lasswell Model of Communication in that communication flows one way with very little to no multi directional communication within the community. Any feedback that does occur occurs indirectly by students participating in the opportunities offered by the e-mails sent through the list serve. This type of technology used also affects the development of social ties by increasing the competition within the major.

Because opportunities such as scholarships and internships are being sent to everybody within the major, competition naturally increases with the number of people who know about the specific opportunity because, theoretically, the more people who know about a certain chance for personal gain, the more people who will participate. Because of these reasons, the online community of the list serve is an ego network, a network that is centered on an individual, that individual being the adviser who sends the e-mails through the list serve. In contrast to this type of network, a community outside of the virtual world in which I participate in is more of a whole network (Miller, 2006).

A real-life community in which I consider myself to be a part of is my work community at the Gap. In this community, communication has a multi-directional flow, no longer focusing on one individual within the network, making it a whole network. Within this community, there are many different kinds of communication that takes place, affecting the development of social ties in a different way in which technology would. Naturally, communication between co-workers, customers, and managers is different, therefore forming different relationships within the community. Although all relationships within my work community are weak, the weakness factor varies within them, as well as formality. My relationships with my co-workers are definitely a lot more informal than with my managers and my relationship ties with the customers are extremely weak compared to the ties I have with my co-workers and managers. These weak ties do not necessarily harm my relationships, however; several weak tie relationships contrasted to few strong tie relationships increase social resources as well as opportunity within the given community or network. An example of this would be my co-worker, Sam. I am currently in the process of looking at places where I want to live next year at school and I was discussing this with Sam, who lives in the South Lake apartments. With this conversation, I built a resource in which I can go to in order to learn more about living in on-campus apartments. Had I not been a part of my work community and developed a weak tie with Sam, I would have never gained a close resource to go to in order to get such specific and trustful information from (Miller, 2006).

Although these two communities are very different in almost all ways, there is one way in which they are the same. Both the Communication major list serve and the Gap community develop relationships in which opportunity is increased. The list serve does this by informing me of internships and scholarships that are available for the major and my job does this by increasing my weak tie resources as well as developing relationships that may help me within my community at work. By forming a positive relationship with my managers, my chances of getting a raise will most likely increase, as well as the chance of getting the hours that I want. I have learned, from the experience of being a part of both online and offline communities that, if you want to get ahead in life, you should take advantage of your community resources that help you gain positive opportunities as best you can in order to help yourself!

Citations:

(2007, Oct 13). Community. Retrieved October 17, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community#Types_of_community

(2007, Oct 14). Virtual Community. Retrieved October 17, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_community#Increasing_participation_in_virtual_communities

Miller, Katherine (2006). Organizational Communication Approaches and Processes. Belmont, CA: Thomson Higher Education.