Having read the piece, is it fair to say that ‘community is in the eye of the user(s)’, in the sense that it is about what’s on offer and how people respond to it, rather than saying any collection of people interacting online is a community?
Blanchard Reading
After reading the article, I do agree that community is in the eye of the user(s). I definitely don’t think that any collection of people interacting online can be defined as community.
Using the ‘sense of community’ proposal as a starting point, I think that if a user of an online group/forum or whatever it may be feels emotionally connected to the other users, has a fair share of input and has a sense of membership then they would feel like they are part of a community. Only they know what they feel about that ‘community’, if someone from outside that community was to come across the site and read the postings they would probably just see it as a standard group because they do not have the feelings of being involved nor would they be aware to a big enough extent of the relationships involved. In this respect, I think it is fair to say that community is in the eye of the user.
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