Reading Reflection 1
This week’s readings highlight the topic of community - the definition, the rise, the fall, and how
the concept has managed to reascend in an entirely new way. In Putnam Bowling Alone:
America’s Declining Social Capital, he delineated the decline of civic engagement over the past
25 years. I thought the actual statistics were pretty surprising; I had no clue that there was that
much of a fall in community involvement over the years. The more interesting part about this
was when politics came into play. Apparently civic engagement declined even more when the
democracy is disgusted with how political issues are being handled or the status of of the state. I
was shocked by this, because I feel as though so many Americans are disgusted with the current
status of our country...and it seems like civic engagement has risen since 2016. Disgust makes
me want to take action, so it is peculiar that most want to detach themselves from situations that
they actually would like to change.
Perhaps that just stems from laziness or lack of motivation, which ties into the other readings. In
my opinion, “Laziness/Lack of motivation” but also innovation has lead to erosion of
face-to-face and the emergence of more online communities discussed in Hampton’s Persistent
and Pervasive Community: New Communication Technologies and the Future of Community
and Bruckman’s A New Perspective on "Community" and its Implications for
Computer-Mediated Communication Systems. The word community is no longer characterized
by the physical. Proximity is not a factor. As long as there is common ground and people are
associated in some way, it is a community. I imagine that this “new community” is even better
than the old. In a way, the old definition and practice of community was limiting. Interaction
extends far beyond social constructs and has now allowed so many new amazing occurrences.
Although, I am in favor of what these new communities have changed and added to society and
humanity, I still think that is important to have something tangible and real, which is what I
believe [Link] does. I love how the site is taking online communities and taking them back
to reality. It is equipped with so many categories, easy to navigate, combines old and new
concepts and tries to foster more face-to-face interactions based on all these things. It is great
that people are able to form online communities regardless of constructs or proximity (there is an
any distance option) and and now have the choice to make it as real as they choose. It seems to
be a great balance for the idea of community that anyone has in mind.
