The New Electronic Community

If the decline of the funeral as a ritual of life and the decline of the memorial service as a meaningful event can be seen as a symptom of a declining sense of community in modern society, is the converse true? Does the emergence of a new genre of memorial service, the computer-mediated memorial service, represent the emergence of a new kind of community? Do computer media represent the basis for that new kind of community? Is the computer conference the focus of that new kind of community?

The community context of IBMPC

These questions are tested, in a limited way, by a set of questions in the 1988 IBMPC user survey (questions 34 to 48). These questions asked respondents to estimate the sense of community they felt with both IBMPC community and with other communities, including family, co-workers, neighbors, and people in the town or city they lived in. It was felt, on the basis of discussions on SHUTTLE FORUM, IBMPC BENEFITS, and elsewhere on IBMPC, that this sense of community was fairly strong; probably much stronger than the sense of community felt by those in the communities people lived in. Because the concept of community is a fuzzy one, three groups of questions were constructed, each testing a different notion of what it means to feel a sense of community:

• the importance of the opinions of various communities.
• the extent to which the respondent relied on various communities.
• the level of commitment the respondent felt to various communities.

Respondents were asked to assess these three notions of community for each of five communities which all could be assumed to belong to:

• their immediate family
• their immediate co-workers
• the IBMPC Computer Conferencing Community
• their neighbors
• the people in the city or town they lived in

A principal factor analysis of responses to these questions support the notion that these three varied groups of questions are measuring the same thing: presumably a sense of community. Even unrotated, the results of the factor analysis are highly interpretable, with all questions loading to a first factor (accounting for 30% of the unrotated variance), all questions concerning IBMPC community feeling loading to a second factor (9%), and all family questions loading (8%) to a third. In oblique rotation, seen in table above, the first factor simplifies somewhat, becoming a cluster of neighbor and local community variables. The second and third factors remain unchanged. Rotated, the three factors account for 37% of the variance in the fifteen variables, and are fairly strongly correlated with each other (interfactor correlations range from .30 to .39). One concludes, from this analysis, that:

• the fifteen community questions are measuring the same thing, which we presume to be a sense of community.
• respondents didn't regard their immediate neighbors very differently than they regarded their community at large. The two communities appear to be regarded as if they are the same.

These conclusions are re-enforced and extended as these variables are used to compare the five communities. In t-test comparisons (see the three tables above) between the questions in each group of questions, the results are identical:

• Means for neighbor and local community measures are not significantly different, indicating that neither community was considered more important than the other. All other means are significantly different from all others at the .01 level. All but one are significantly different at the .001 level.
• The rankings of these significantly different means are the same within each group of questions, ordered as follows:
  1. The family was most important. 72% of respondents felt the opinion of their family was at least very important (the median response). 64% of respondents felt they were at least very reliant on their families (the median response). 88% of respondents were at least very committed to their families. Indeed, the median for commitment (53%) was "extremely committed".
  2. Co-workers are the second most important community. 90% of respondents considered their co-workers opinions at least "moderately important" (the median). 73% of respondents were at least "moderately reliant" (the median) on co-workers. 54% are at least "very committed" (the median) and 88% at least "moderately committed" to their co-workers.
  3. The IBMPC conferencing community was the third most important community. 70% of respondents regard the opinions of members of this community to be at least "moderately important" (the median). 55% of respondents feel at least "moderately reliant" on the IBMPC Conferencing community (the median, however, is "somewhat reliant", 36% of respondents). 62% of respondents felt at least "moderately committed" (the median) to the IBMPC Conferencing community.
  4. Neighbors and ones local community was the least important community. 62% of respondents felt that the opinions of their neighbors and local community was only "somewhat important" (the median). 85% were no more than "somewhat reliant" (the median for town/city) on their neighbors or local community. The median for reliance on neighbors was "not reliant. 96% of respondents feel no more than moderately committed to these communities. The median and mode response for both measures is only "somewhat committed".

The relative unimportance of neighbors and the local community, which at one time might have been considered the very definition of a community, is not surprising given the general decline in the importance of these communities which has been documented elsewhere (Gorer, 1977). Today these communities might be regarded as providing a minimum benchmark for assessing the existence of community feeling. By this standard, the IBMPC computer conferencing community represents a fairly strong community. The community is not so strong as such immediately propinquitous communities as family and immediate co-workers, but much stronger than neighbors and local community.

One hesitates to make too much of these statistics, which only compare a small number of communities, and in only three ways. No community in the survey winds up being comparable to conferencing, and important communities like friends, local religious groups (churches, synagogues, etc.), and the organization one works for are excluded from the analysis. It seems safe to state, however, that if a community is based on a combination of commitment and mutual dependence, that the IBMPC Computer Conferencing facility qualifies as a distinctive and fairly strong community.

Computer conferencing and the new electronic community

These results would appear to support the assertion that IBMPC, and perhaps more generally, computer conferencing, supply the basis around which a new electronic community can emerge. Traditional communities were predicated on propinquity. A neighbor was a neighbor because he lived next door, or down the street, or across town. You need not share your neighbors interests to become friends. Indeed, if shared interests were the basis of ones friendships, it was not unlikely that one might find no friends within ones community. This perhaps is the basis of Frosts lament at the thought that "Good fences make good neighbors".

The propinquitous community was an interactive community, where conversations were with neighbors, group discussions entailed groups of neighbors, and speeches where generally made to groups of people that lived within reasonable walking or riding distance of each other. Today's world of "mass man" has broken these bonds of propinquity. Increasingly next door neighbors aren't friends with each other, don't talk to each other, don't know each other, and in many cases have never even met each other. When they do know each other, they rarely know each other well or, in an age where people move frequently, for long.

This trend is only made worse by mass media that aren't up to bridging the gap. Print and broadcast mass media are presentation only media, allowing speeches without feedback while denying face-to-face and group interaction. While the telephone makes up some of the gap, it too is limited. The synchronisity requirements and limited bandwidth make it extremely difficult to coordinate for small group interaction. Its cost and limited bandwidth limit its effectiveness as a substitute for face-to-face interaction. Its point-to-point character make it a difficult media to make new acquaintances with.

Computer media provide a new means for bridging this gap. By providing what is effectively interpersonal interaction to individuals in far flung locations, computer media, and particularly computer conferencing, create the possibility of new communities of interaction. These electronic communities are not bound by propinquity. Given access to these new media, members can come from literally anywhere in the world.

Because physical propinquity is increasingly irrelevant in computer media, these communities can be expected to form on different criteria than traditional communities. In particular, it can be expected that these electronic communities will form around individual interests. This trend is already evident in the conferencing facilities in IBM, where facilities have formed for each of the major computer operating systems that are used in the company, each reflecting the interests of its own community of users. Well over 1000 other facilities, each catering to the interests of a specific community, exist within IBM, and thousands of others can be found on USENET, BITNET, NSFNET, and other networks. Similar interest based computer conferencing facilities can be found, moreover, on CompuServe, The Source, BIX, and other consumer timesharing facilities.

In a large sense, these facilities have formed on the same criteria that form the basis for professional associations. People with similar interests organize professional associations to forward common goals. These goals take many forms. Most commonly, they take the form of journals, periodic conventions, and other communication through which members can share the results of research in their common areas of interest. They may also take the form of guidelines for professional conduct, apparatus for accreditation of professionals and educational institutions within a field, and group insurance policies.

Computer media, and computer conferencing in particular, offer professional associations a new means by which they can foster ongoing communication among people with similar interests. These new media are particularly attractive because the communication they offer is not periodic like journals or conventions, but ongoing. Members can participate on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, according to their needs and preferences. Their communication, moreover, is likely to include more than presentations of research directions and results. It is also likely to involve groups exploring research directions and strategies together, and individuals conversing with each other on a wide range of topics, with the field of interest that creates the community placing few limits on the topics of conversation.

If SHUTTLE FORUM is any indication, there are few limits on the scope of this community or the range of ideas and emotions that will be expressed within it. If so, computer conferencing offers the possibility of a new form of electronic community that can, in some sense, replace the conventional community, providing people with new sources of long term friendships that can be maintained regardless of where they live, where they move, or when they work and sleep; new sources of individual affirmation within the context of a community; new sources of sharing in the face of death and other life rituals as well as everyday interaction.