Blog Post Due 11/14
1. In what ways do virtual communities both positively and negatively impact individuals' identity and belonging?
Virtual communities have enormous influences in shaping individuals' identities and belongings. On one hand, there is a connectedness among people, an expression of oneself, especially among marginalized groups. Social media creates spaces for people to reconstruct their identities, and their bodies, with the curated creation of online personas, creating homeplace. Yet, this sense of virtual community runs alongside its own negative ramifications-for being toxic, moving spaces that more often than not distort and reinforce harmfully stereotypical ideas of the self. Gamergate became an example of how online communities can foster harassment and exclusion, taking a sense of belonging and making it divisive and hostile.
2. What role does profit play in the construction of ethnic online communities, and how does this possibly affect questions of authenticity and purpose?
Profit is also one of the key factors that shapes ethnic online communities and often directs the course they may take. According to Steven McLaine, the creation and maintenance of these online spaces are increasingly being driven by commercial interests. While these may function as nurturing communities with regard to cultural solidarity and common experience for subaltern ethnicities, commercialism could weaken the authenticity of such means and ends. Commercially oriented interests may commodify cultures to make money, even though more community oriented or culturally specific goals are also at stake in this regard. This tension between profit and purpose raises questions about whether ethnic communities are compromising their values to fit into a broader and profit driven audience.
3. What are the ethical issues raised in the construction of virtual communities, surveillance, privacy, and exploitation of users?
Virtual communities often raise a number of significant ethical issues to do with privacy, surveillance, and exploitation of users. Social networking sites need their users to constantly perform and divulge parts of the self, which raises a concern about privacy and the commodification of personal data. Moreover, most of these platforms track user behaviors, increasingly utilizing this for profit in a manner that has raised key ethical questions about surveillance. The commercial intentions of many of these sites that benefit off of the user's cultural identity. This kind of exploitation can destroy the credibility and legitimacy of ethnic online communities, begging the question of who benefits from these spaces, and at what cost.
4. How do the dynamics of online harassment within communities such as Gamergate point to the darker side of virtual community?
The dynamics of online harassment epitomize the darker side of virtual community with the very same spaces that afford agency for persons and forge solidarities can be those reinforcing toxic environments where harassment and abuse occurred. Gamergate centralized misogyny and racism in an online harassment campaign and demonstrated, in crystal clarity, how quickly such a movement ostensibly about gaming culture could spiral into a tool for cyberbullying. The toxicity can be further exacerbated by anonymity on the internet, where one could commit crimes without immediate repercussions. It also underlines the vulnerability of certain groups, especially women and minorities, within these online spaces. Moderation and community guidelines are important in combating that section of the virtual community.
Hathaway, Jay. What is Gamergate, and why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks
McLaine, Steven. Ethnic Online Communities
Lee, L. (2015). Women of color and social media multitasking blogs-virtual homeplace.











