CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - Will the grad students of tomorrow be able to enroll in seminars on the sociology of the AOL chat room and attend symposia about the interpersonal dynamics of Usenet flame wars? That's the nascent hope of a group of researchers meeting today at MIT to talk about legitimizing the study of online communities within academia.
The notion is that a new social science is emerging as more of the world population gets connected to the Net. Combining sociology, psychology, ethnography, anthropology, and even urban planning, the new discipline examines the workings of human interaction in the digital world.
Four of the budding field's biggest names - Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and founder of Electric Minds; Amy Bruckman, a professor at Georgia Tech who has developed and studied multi-user dimensions; Marc Smith, a researcher at UCLA's Center for the Study of Online Community, and University of Toronto sociologist Barry Wellman - gathered Thursday night for a wide-ranging panel discussion on how the Net is changing the way we learn, govern, and communicate like no previous technology.
For that reason, they hope that the academic establishment will recognize online community as a topic worthy of investigation. "I want to see the field legitimized," Rheingold said, adding that he would like to see foundations making research grants to students and professors working in the field. "There's nothing like a lot of money to make something legitimate in the eyes of academia."
Henry Jenkins, director of MIT's media arts and sciences program, suggested that serious research into how the Internet is affecting human interaction would counteract the negative stereotypes about digital stalkers and scam artists that dominate the mainstream media. "If there was ever a topic that was worthy of intensive, high-profile study, it's the nature of social interaction on the Net," he said. Jenkins said the researchers present would be seeking to organize a major conference on virtual communities sometime in 1998.
Georgia Tech's Bruckman, who has been conducting monthly online meetings with other researchers studying digital interaction, says that such a real-world conclave is crucial to the development of the field, both from a PR and knowledge-exchange perspective. "There's a lot to be gained from sharing ideas, rather than living in our separate little holes," she said.
Thursday night's presentations touched on a number of the questions the panelists say are worthy of further investigation. Bruckman asked whether the increasing prominence of content generated by corporations is overwhelming that created by individuals, a situation she termed "The Disney Dilemma." She also questioned how online communities will be governed - will they be direct democracies, representative democracies, or dictatorships? - and eventually suggested that maybe a private dinner party is the best metaphor for the way digital gatherings are best organized and run.
UCLA's Smith presented some of the data he has gathered about interaction on Usenet, and posed a number of questions about how such a transitory, amorphous medium can be measured and studied. "We see leaves, sometimes branches, but never entire forests," Smith said. "Lots of pieces of the Internet community are invisible." But Smith is undaunted, and has constructed a tool called Netscan, the aim of which is to create a complete visualization of Usenet.
University of Toronto sociologist Wellman discussed a research project getting under way in a Toronto suburb that has been wired for broadband Net access. How will such connectivity affect the community's public life? "Will the residents shop more in Land's End online than in the local stores?" Wellman asked.
A vociferous debate between the panelists and the audience erupted on the topic of the boundaries that define online communities. If prospective residents have to fill out an application or pay a fee to participate, does that destroy the egalitarian spirit of the Net, or does it merely duplicate the human desire to gather with groups of like-minded individuals? "Groups need boundaries, and money is one kind of boundary," said Smith. "One of the bad things about the Usenet is that there are almost no boundaries to keep people out." To which an audience member countered, "That's just a virtual version of walled communities, and it strikes me as incredibly elitist."
