Online interactions have positive effects for real-life communities

According to Caroline Haythornthwaite and Lori Kendall, professors in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Illinois, online interactions not only have positive outcomes for real-life, place-based communities, but the intersection between online communication and the offline world also forms two halves of a support mechanism for communities.

As information and communication technologies have become increasingly intertwined with everyday life, the Internet and social media have combined to create a vibrant and indispensable communication and information platform and infrastructure for today’s world.

From social networking, to civic participation, to community support during emergencies, to providing on-the-ground information in disaster areas, the professors say that the rapid development and widespread use of online technologies – for communicating and networking, for contributing and distributing content, and for storing, sharing and retrieving files – are creating ties that bind for offline communities.

“Research on who people communicate with online shows a lot of local activity,” Haythornthwaite said. “So online communication always reinforces local relationships and local identities that build networks of interacting individuals who are mutually aware of each other. Together, this demonstrates a continuous change in how we maintain local community, while also emphasizing the importance and significance of our attachments to local places and spaces.”

“While people can go to a site for information and personal support, they have also formed some long-term relationships with others they’ve met there and communicated with,” Kendall said. “So both things are happening, but I would say there’s probably more contact online with locals, and more searches for local information.”

“What has been growing over the years is a stronger, Internet-enabled connection to the geographically-based community,” Haythornthwaite said. “We’ve evolved from one-to-one or small group communication to whole ‘community’ communication.”

“It’s very possible for people to ignore opinions they don’t like and talk only to people they agree with online,” Kendall said. “Offline is often messier. To the extent that you’re going to get involved with your local community and your neighbors, you’re going to have to hash out disagreements and deal with a wide range of identities, experiences, and opinions.

Emerging and evolving uses of information and communication technologies only serve to reinforce and regenerate geographically-based community identities, the professors say. With the ubiquity of Internet-enabled cell phones with cameras, the mobile Internet provides a low effort, just-in-time, virtual printing press, making anyone a writer, editor and publisher of hyperlocal news.

“I think the use of cell phones to access the Web is a bigger factor in connecting the Internet to a local geographical community than the World Wide Web has been,” Kendall said.

Haythornthwaite and Kendall’s article, “Internet and Community,” is published in the April 2010 issue of American Behavioral Scientist.

Excerpted from Online interactions have positive effects for real-life communities, by Phil Ciciora, News Editor, University of Illinois News Bureau

Found via @idealist