Online Communities

An online community is a group of people who mainly communicate online, whether by email or social networking sites. Unlike real communities, online communities are less interactive and understanding of the other people within the community can never be as indepth as from actually meeting someone however, people can form communities with people they could not normally, for example they can be people from every continent in one community which, whithout the internet would be virtually impossible. Due to the fact of not being able to see of hear eachover people have come up with 'numerous abbreaviations (LOL, BTW, etc.) and emoticons (:-)(= smile) developed as specialised language to communicate in conditions of bandwich scarcity' (Lister et al). This demonstrates that people have to expain whether they are laughing and also facial expressions which gives the impression that it would be hard to understand people with just text and people can be easily misunderstood online. I can understand social communities using the internet as an aid to help them communicate quicker but I think an online community itself with no interaction in real life, misunderstandings and easy loss of contact is pointless and will not last as long as real communities and groups of people.