TECHNOLOGY, NETWORKS AND COMMUNITIES

Abstract

Technologies such as the internet offer tremendous and potentially transformative possibilities for imagining and living with others. The possibility for new ways of being together raises the question of appropriate concepts, languages and theories to describe, analyse and engage with these social forms and practices. Network and community concepts and rhetoric are most commonly employed for this purpose, yet the differences between them and the rationale for their specific uses are unclear. In order to gain a more nuanced and informed picture, this paper attempts a very broad overview of the fields of network and community theory particularly in relation to technologically mediated social practices. The intent is to begin mapping the uses, limitations and strengths of community and network theory. In the process, the paper will bring to light some of the tensions, issues and concerns surrounding the analysis of technosociality.

Keywords:

• virtual community
• social networks
• community theory
• network theory
• internet

Notes

Though some of the discussions around web 2.0 appear to be replaying some of the same hopes and fears.

See, for example, a nettime thread on understanding networks started in response to a post by Ned Rossiter (http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0604/msg00015.html); or the AoIR thread by John Postill (http://listserv.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l-aoir.org/2006-July/010274.html) (28 February 2007). These examples are offered as illustrations only: the debates about community and about network are extensive historically and within and across disciplines.

Networks are broadly, though not exclusively, understood in these types of analyses as a mesh or interlinking set of nodal connections.

For example, online analyses of networks, predominantly though not exclusively using SNA methods (more on this later), examine patterns of connectivity: who is connected to whom; the density of connections; and determining bridging and bonding associations.

Solidary groups is Wellman's term.

This fits nicely with the rhetoric underpinning web 2.0 that users add value. However, it is arguable that each site has a critical mass limit. Some of the debates positing a decline in MySpace popularity suggest that this may be due in part to its ‘oversubscription’.

My thanks to Ted Mitew for drawing my attention to these authors.

For example, The New Network Theory conference, Amsterdam, 28–30 June 2007.

An ANT understanding of network is not to be confused with the more commonplace understanding of networks discussed above: instead it is more concerned with relational associations and the result or outcome of such associations (Latour 2007).