Is Virtual Community Possible?

     To respond to the question as to whether virtual community can be formed, one needs to first have a working definition of “community.” One of the better frameworks for understanding “community” I have come across in my career is one offered by psychologist M. Scott Peck in The Different Drum:  Community-Making and Peace (1987).  In this book, Peck describes community building as a conscious and deliberate process that demands people to recognize that the “shadow” and broken parts of our “selves” leads us to a state of emptiness in which we come to understand the deep human need for compassionate understanding (pp. 83-85). Using Peck’s description we can see that virtual communities are possible, but are less probable because of the degree to which people may be unwilling to be truly open and honest with one another in virtual communities. Two elements in Peck’s description of community building deserve special mention.

The first element in Peck’s description of community is the conscious and deliberate nature of community building. Applying this aspect to our COML 509 class experience, it is easy to see how we all have made a conscious and deliberate choice to undertake the rigors of a graduate program. The program demands that we engage in discussion forums. So our class experience fits this first aspect of Peck’s description of community building.

The second element in Peck’s description of community building is a recognition of the shadow part of our “selves” that opens us up to the possibility of sharing our deep need for compassionate understanding.  It is here where the Peckian notion of community building breaks down in our COML 509 experience of community.  By design, the COML 509 experience is more of a community of locality—the students are thrust together into a classroom community—rather than a community of sociability in which the community is defined by its interactions with each other (Lengel, Thurlow & Tomic, 2009, p. 109). We may indeed interact with each other in the COML 509 class, but the interactions stem from the necessity to fulfill course requirements rather than from the need to be social. I am not certain that I would feel that I knew my classmates more as a result of being in a face-to-face classroom with them; however, I feel like I would have more opportunities to get to know them if I were in a traditional classroom. I am an old-school guy. I need the nonverbals that even Skyping cannot reproduce in a “live,”and tangible experience of being face-to-face.

So is virtual community possible? It is possible, but much less probable.

References

Griffin, E. (2009). Communication: A First Look at Communication (7th ed.).

            Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. (Original work published 1991).

Peck, S. (1987). The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.