Organised Cyber Mobs - How Do Online Communities Organise Themselves?

The question of how online communities organise themselves is one of those multifaceted matters. Do they organise themselves in a regimented manner, does chaos somehow bring order in a fashion similar to folksonomic classification systems or is there even an organising mechanism at all? In consideration of this aspect of virtual cultures, one needs to investigate the following five aspects to gain even a basic understanding of the dynamics of online communities:

1. The motivations individuals possess for engaging in online discussions.
2. The contributions they make to the online community.
3. The level of involvement and factors influencing participation levels in online communities.
4. The influence of 'offline' experiences, and 
5. The nature, purpose or function of the community itself. 

Early investigations into the dynamics of online communities entertained the possibility that online environments and computer mediated communications would reinvigorate a sense of "community building, citizenry and participation in public life" (Flew 2005, 62). Furthermore, it was anticipated that virtual communities would be "communities not of common location, but of common interest." (Licklider & Taylor 1968). Despite this observation seeming painfully obvious in todays modern, media saturated world, in 1968, when it was proposed the nature, appearance and dynamics of the internet were barely conceivable. The simplicity of Licklider's and Taylor's (1968) statement however provides what I consider to be perhaps the most influential social phenomenon governing online communities. That is to say, everyone who is involved in an online community, is so because they choose to be. Regardless of whether an individual's intentions or activities are productive or destructive, they are taking the time and effort to engage and contribute to arriving at a consensus or sate of equilibrium. 

There are a number of different roles one can assume in online communities. These roles are directly related to the level of involvement, commitment  and mutual respect any one individual develops within a particular community. Roles within online communities can range from administrators to consumers, observers to contributors and anywhere in between. A succinct analogy to illustrate this type of hierarchical governance of online communities manifests itself in the power levels, skills and abilities of various characters within MUDs, MOOs and other MMORPGs. Social hierarchies are a phenomenon that have organised and governed human interactions, mediated and unmediated, since the dawn of civilisation. Furthermore, managing individual contributions in the online environment, such that they amount to constructive contributions, is governed by rules and values appropriated from those which organise and maintain order in offline communities.

Laws, codes of conduct, codes of ethics, standards, expectations and social norms all maintain a cohesive offline society by communicating what constitutes favourable, permissible, condonable or unacceptable behaviour. An understanding of social norms in an unmediated environment is transfered into online communities and governs online interactions. The difference in cyberspace is the anonymity provided by fanciful usernames, avatars, characters and geographically distanced users. Wikipedia overcomes these problems by requiring contributors to be members and by tracking IP addresses to avoid a phenomenon known as "sock puppeteering" (Collis 2008). 

Not every online community is as robust as Wikipedia however and as can be observed in the real world, vandalism, abuse and other antisocial or destructive behaviours persist. Computer viruses, worms and trojans are obvious examples which not only plague mainstream and social software programs but plague the entire online community. Other forms of antisocial online behaviour include: edit warring, vandalism, defamation and attacking or abusive language. These have all occurred within the Wikipedia and will probably continue to do so, however destructive behaviour also occurs in chat rooms, within the blogosphere and in almost every imaginable online community. Regardless, the majority of participants within the spectrum of online communities are there to actively contribute by advancing the project, developing the community or creating new and interesting networks and connections.  

Thus, online communities do possess either a written or unwritten code of conduct or both. It is established by the sites creator, the community itself and the laws and norms governing the offline world. The multitude of interactions and the democracy of the medium will never and could never eradicate destructive behaviour entirely, the irony however is, in an environment increasingly organised by tagging and folksonomies destructive behaviour adds a dimension of understanding inherent in chaotic systems. 

The below video graphically represents this phenomenon with regard to the open source software community: 

References:

1. Bruns, A. 2008. Wikipedia: Representations of knowledge. In Blogs, wikipedia, second life, and beyond: From production to produsage, ed. A. Bruns. New York: Peter Lang, pp.101-136.
2. Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, wikipedia, second life and beyond: From production to produsage http://produsage.org/files/Produsage%20-%20Introduction.pdf (accessed May 1, 2008).
3. Bruns, A. 2007. Produsage: Towards a broader framework for user-led content creation.  http://produsage.org/files/Produsage%20(Creativity%20and%20Cognition%202007) (accessed May 3, 2008)
4. Collis, C. 2008. Wikipedia: a guide to user led content creation. (Lecture, Queensland University of Technology, May 15, 2008).
5. Flew, T. 2005. New Media. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 
6. Licklider, J. R. 1968. In Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting computer-mediated communication and community, ed. S.G. Jones, 1-34. Thousand Oaks: Sage. In New media, ed. T. Flew, 63. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press