Week Four - Topic 1a - Do CMC groups deserve the status of community?

What do you think about the issue of whether or not all CMC (computer-mediated-communication) groups deserve the status of communities? What characteristics would you stress as important?

Blanchard Reading

I think that this question relates well to my thoughts on the notion that online community can be empowering / disempowering (post below).
All CMC groups could be described as communities, depending on your definition of ‘community’. As below, a community can be a group of people with common background or shared interests. In this case then I would say that most groups deserve the status of a community.
However, a community in real life is what I think of when the word community is mentioned. I agree that people within a community should get along no matter their differences. I agree with Jones (1997) that people’s feelings and the relationships between people are characteristics that help differentiate between a standard group and a community.
A sense of community has been defined by McMillan and Chavis (1986) to have the following characteristics: feelings of membership, feelings of influence, integration of fulfilment and needs and a shared emotional connection. I agree that these qualities define what a community is about and that a sense of community can also be a distinguishing factor between a group and an online community in the ‘reality’ term.