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From Virtual Communities to Research on Virtuality: Emerging Concepts and Research Challenges—Ethnographic Research in the Digital Age

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Abstract

The concept of “virtual communities” has emerged since the creation of the Internet in the 1970s—although the term was not introduced until 1993 (by Howard Rheingold). These consist of groups of people who interact through virtual networks and have common interests. Unlike traditional communities, virtual communities do not require concurrence of their members in space or time, thus allowing asynchronous communication and interaction among geographically distant people.

Along with the development and massive use of communication technologies, virtual networks have been modified (particularly through the emergence of virtual communities with greater numbers of members and for a wide variety of purposes such as recreational, teaching and learning, political and economic ones, among others). This has led some people to prefer to aggregate in virtual communities as opposed to traditional communities, such that the massive use of virtual networks become their main way of communication. Current examples of virtual networks are e-mail groups, online chat rooms, instant messaging and virtual social networks (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). Each of these networks has reasons to call itself a community and also to not do so.

In this context, the study of virtual communities is an issue of increasing interest in the social sciences (cf. authors such as Howard Rheingold, Barry Wellman, Milena Gulia, Robert Kraut and Sara Kiesler). With this in mind—and particularly as a means for explaining dynamic aspects of virtual communities—some authors’ ideas have been premised within prior theories of social networks (as used in the interpretation of traditional communities). At the same time, new concepts have been proposed that are framed in terms of the interaction between civilisation and technology. They aim to explain the changing way people communicate and exchange ideas in cyberspace, the adjustment of humans to technology, their participation in virtual communities and citizen mobilisations mediated by virtual networks. Regarding this last point, Howard Rheingold (Smart mobs: The next social revolution. Basic Books, 2002) suggests the concept of “smart mobs” to explain virtual mass coordinations as new modes of social organization.

The present chapter aims to carry out a review of the proposed theories and current research on virtual communities. In particular, these conceptual frameworks are described in order to better understand the trajectory of these communities from their inception, as well as their features that are both common with and different from traditional communities. They also consider the systematic categorization of individual effects and social impacts of virtual communities.

Main emerging concepts and research challenges in the topic are also summarized. Emphasis is placed on what could be the inflections of ethnographic and subjective-based studies of virtual communities and, as well, the potentialities and gaps of this methodological approach in the context of social networks.

Finally, we briefly discuss several prognoses that have been made about the presence of virtual communities and consequent social changes for the coming years.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There are long references and nuances of this subject in Western thought: They can be reviewed in Hegel, in the Encyclopedia, in Derrida (1968) The ends of man, in Castoriadis (1989/1990) Anthropology, philosophy and politics, more extensive discussions on human singularity, as regularity, not reducible to class.

  2. 2.

    Explored in Chap. 6.

  3. 3.

    That are studied in a certain sense in Chaps. 1, 6 and 9.

  4. 4.

    Hand in hand with the ideas of George Devereux (1967).

  5. 5.

    See Nancy (1983), on the concept of the common in Marx.

  6. 6.

    With antecedents in Michel Serres (1980, 1987) in “(…) the theory of the quasi-object that, when circulating, constitutes the collective” (Lévy, 1995, p. 125). We can thus find in Lévi the idea that the collective appears as an effect and not only as an origin; however, it is necessary to emphasize here, for this text, that these effects—of circularity of subjects and quasi-objects—are not being necessarily conscious for the subjects but part of the experience of subjectivity. Those elements constitute the explorable scopes of the networks as space and form of work of the social psychologist.

  7. 7.

    Here we go back to the reconfiguration of virtual and potential by Felix Guattari (1992) to emphasize that in human experience, the virtual is part of the possible, not only as a value universe but as potential, whether incorporeal or trans-corporeal.

  8. 8.

    Levi (1995) tries to emphasise its difference with Marxism insofar as the virtual refers not to realisation but actualisation. However, Marx’s (1858) notion of objectification contained the idea of both realisation and actualisation. In fact, through this second alternative, it developed all the potentialities of the dialectical pair objectification/de-objectification, inherited from Hegel, applied in this case to the function of capital and its forms of relationship with human labour.

  9. 9.

    Of the “statute that names them” as Piera Aulanier called (1966).

  10. 10.

    For the collection, debugging, analysis and visualization of social media data, computer tools have been developed (for example, Datasift and NodeXL), some of which require programming skills for their use (Hansen et al., 2020).

  11. 11.

    On the concept of emergencies as an object of social psychology, the reader can review Machin (2005) or Chap. 6 of this volume.

  12. 12.

    In the sense that Sigmund Freud developed it for the clinic, Machin & Santana (2006).

  13. 13.

    It is a network—nebulous, far-flung and sparsely knit, but real and supportive” (Wellman, 2018, p. 37).

  14. 14.

    On pathologization as a trend in psychology and psychiatry, there is more extensive work in Machin (2016) as part of the project linked to the Latin American Association for Research in Fundamental Psychopathology.

  15. 15.

    Individual, it is here avoided as a term, just because it is a central part of the same discussion process.

  16. 16.

    Antecedents of the idea of the common, as alien to the individual, but through which the subject is objectified, initially in a direct way and then in a virtual way, in its representation of money (Marx, 1858).

  17. 17.

    Not mediated by race, ethnicity, age, gender, socioeconomic status, etc., which encourages response to requests from other members (Wellman & Gulia, 2005).

  18. 18.

    One of whose effects Marx studies by way of alienation.

  19. 19.

    Interaction and reciprocal support with strangers (Kiesler & Sproull, 1988; Constant et al., 1994); and the construction of links and immediate repair of damages in virtual and face-to-face environments (Wellman & Gulia, 2005); the consequences on the replacement of public sociability by an intimate or private one (Wellman, 2018); the discussion around the Internet as a replacement or as an addition to other forms of communication, (Wellman et al., 2003), or the significance of or other types of interactions—virtual or face-to-face (Litt et al., 2020; Wellman & Gulia, 2005).

  20. 20.

    Studies on citizen mobilization mediated by technological tools (Gurak, 2005).

  21. 21.

    Studies have focused mainly on the availability of Internet access, rather than the direct consequences of participation in virtual communities (Chen et al. 2002; Wellman & Gulia, 2005) and the effects on the promotion levels of access and participation or by the accountant in social control (Wellman & Gulia, 2005).

  22. 22.

    They propose to classify them into content and textual analysis of the messages exchanged in virtual communities, for example, the transcription analysis tool (TAT), an analytically based model and elements of Vygotskian theory, focused on the contents and patterns of interaction. Social network analysis (SNA) is the mapping and measurement of relationships and flows (network links) between people, groups, organizations or processing entities (network nodes). It can be focused on the individual (study from a random sample of members) or the entire network, providing both a visual presentation of the community and qualitative and quantitative measures of the dynamics present in it. Finally, people are more than a real person; they are user profiles that serve as software and product design tools.

  23. 23.

    Regarding the interventions in the monument to José Miguel Gómez in Havana (Machin, 1998), some derivations of its interpretation can be reviewed in Machin (2000). On the appropriation of the communities gathered in the “Parque de la Libertad in Matanzas” as a public space, some research associated with a degree thesis was gathered in Sociocultural Studies, Faculty of Education and Social Sciences, University of Matanzas 2010. In Chile, several interventions were designed from this perspective around the El Llano park in San Miguel, Región Metropolitana Chile, 2018.

  24. 24.

    It is, arguably, one of the focuses of analysis in this chapter.

  25. 25.

    There is much written about the effects, particularly in children, young people and adolescents, on the negative and positive impact of networks or artefacts that lead to networks such as video games. In particular, we have conducted some of these in degree thesis in Psychology.

  26. 26.

    Lévy’s references (1995) lead us down the path, too broad and little argued for it to be sustained, of understanding the virtual even in gregarious animal expressions.

  27. 27.

    As Deleuze (1968, 1969) reminds us, with regard to Lacan’s reading of Freud in the passage from The Stolen Letter, which later betrays again with the notions inside out.

  28. 28.

    It was about whether the patient perceived this illusion of multi-consciousness of focus, as an alternative of salvation to his anxiety of control of all the realities in which he wanted to be and have control; or if he had perceived it as a threat to his need to be in one and only one of the foci; or if, on the other hand, he had perceived it as a persecutory threat, due to the existence of various control foci on which to become aware.

  29. 29.

    On the psychological features in the study of opinion blogs, Laura Courak (Gurak & Antonijevic, 2008) comments: “The phenomenon and practice of blogging offers a rich environment from which to look at the psychology of the Internet. By using blogging as a lens, researchers can see that many predictions and findings of early Internet research on social and psychological features of computer-mediated communication have held true, whereas others are not as true, and that the psychology of the Internet is very much a sense of the one and the many, the individual and the collective, the personal and the political. Blogs illustrate the fusion of key elements of human desire—to express one’s identity, create community, structure one’s past and present experiences—with the main technological features of 21st century digital communication. Blogs can serve as a lens to observe the way in which people currently use digital technologies and, in return, transform some of the traditional cultural norms—such as those between the public and the private.”

  30. 30.

    Taking into account, on the one hand, the ethical implications and on the other—and closely related to the ethical implications—the diversity of effects generated by returns, little traceable even before technology, almost entirely in the case of the era digital.

  31. 31.

    Even as analysed in another work, the very conditions of the appearance of self-consciousness.

  32. 32.

    Some of the research on networks attribute psychological traits to these products—visual or connection —as a result of the interpretations of these by the researcher (Badger, 2004; Blanchard, 2004; Wei, 2004).

  33. 33.

    As already mentioned, there is a long discussion about this in philosophy, which is constantly updated. It can be seen in Castoriadis (1989) “In the human sphere, on the contrary, the accidental and the statistical exist infinitely, but the singularity here is not alien to the essence, nor is it super-added to it. Here, uniqueness is essential; each time another is the face of the man that emerges, is created, through such a particular individual or such a particular society.” And at the same time, his intention to emphasize that this essence, rather than existing, is open, it is not finished (pp. 135–136).

  34. 34.

    Expensive to the senses given to the concept of experience in Vigotsky’s work, as a last attempt to subjectify his procedure for the elaboration of psychic processes and to the concept of countertransference in Freud—curiously later expressed as transference and reduced to “the analyst’s desire” by Lacan—to give an account of the experience involved in each analytic act, not reducible to a symptom, or entity of language.

  35. 35.

    “I will focus on the area of digitality and emotion because of the increasing number of voices in academia, industry and beyond that claim that emotions and affect are becoming more accessible to (and potentially manipulated by) digital technologies, and as such, are deemed to be an example of the ways that human life is under threat from machines (McStay, 2016)” (Tucker, 2018, p. 129).

  36. 36.

    It was preferred to cite the work by the date of the first edition. In some cases, that date was the moment of the conference or course that was used as the basis for each reference. In some other cases the date of a correction made by the author himself was also cited, when relevant to the discussion that it is sustained in the text. In the same way, the date of the revised edition was placed to be taken into account by the reader when he wishes to check the citations.

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Correspondence to Raudelio Machin Suarez .

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Machin Suarez, R., Viscay Mantilla, D. (2021). From Virtual Communities to Research on Virtuality: Emerging Concepts and Research Challenges—Ethnographic Research in the Digital Age. In: Machin Suarez, R. (eds) New Waves in Social Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87406-3_10

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