Online communities and their effects on social reality

Our culture centers its every thought on time and space; we have only so many hours in a day and we live by the ideology, “time is money”. Society’s perception of time and space changes as we grow from an agricultural society to an industrial society, and the shift into an information society has elicited a similar change (Gotved, 2006). Online communities have become a changing force in society and have caused some social waves. Time is no longer perceived as “…biological and chronological...[but] the sense of time is annihilated by the ever-faster communication technology used to compress and de-sequence it” (2006). Space is now “…one [that] flows, where the traffic between different kinds of networks constitutes a new relation between social practices and geography” (2006).

Boudreau and Newman introduced the triangle of social reality to identify the components of social reality (2006). This triangle consists of a base, social interaction, and two sides, culture and social structure.

With this model, we can see the interconnectivity between these three aspects of social reality and that the change in one affects the others as well. Culture is made up of “the ever shifting patterns of interaction, the common knowledge and the sense of a shared past.” (2006). The social interactions which we take part in through our communication in society provide a foundation for culture. If a specific type of social interaction occurs for long enough it has the potential to become part of the social structure (2006). The process is cyclical and interdependent, technology and online communities blur the lines because of the change in time and space and have a huge effect on the construction of social reality.

References:

Gotved, Stine. (2006). ‘Time and space in cyber social reality’. New Media & Society, 3, 467-486. Retrieved Oct. 25, 2006, from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Communication Studies: A SAGE Full-Text Collection database.