Blogs as Virtual Square Towns

I know there’s been a lot of posting between yesterday and today (this is really nice to see the conversation growing and unfolding in so many interesting directions!), but I wanted to just point to an article in the NY Times that Elizabeth Ferrer (Director of Visual Arts at Rotunda Gallery, BRICS) mentioned to me yesterdayhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/nyregion/thecity/11blog.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=article%20on%20community%20blogs%20jan%2011&st=cse&scp=3

The article is about local communities blogs in NY City. While the main point of the article is about the style of interactions and the harsh and / or emotional tone of some of these posts, the article also highlights how “ For the past few years, blog comments sections, acting as virtual town squares, have offered residents around the country a forum in which to weigh in — and vent — on a wide spectrum of local issues.”Moreover, it also notes how the web is not ” a radical alternative to the bricks-and-mortar world” which erases physical geography. On the contrary ” the Internet has also had the opposite effect by helping to connect people more closely to their physical and political surroundings. And for New Yorkers, whose surroundings are more complex than most, this effect can be particularly powerful, enabling them to take on the long-anonymous, too-big-to-fight city. Like Mr. Johnson, bloggers are expanding the idea of what constitutes a neighborhood: It’s not just a place, but also a constellation of views and opinions.” 

This is very relevant to our discussion about the relationships between physical and virtual interactions and spaces. In fact, in my work with Gerry DeSanctis on public online forums on Knowledge management (see for example, http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol9/iss10/2/), I highlighted the importance of embodiment. While we assumed (and people usually assume) that online forums will attract participants scattered all around the globe, we noted that often participants of a forum belonged to the same geography. In one of the forum, we observed an increasingly complex intertwining between the discussions on the forum and face-to-face monthly meetings). I also found the stories about how some of the blog creators are trying to find ways to manage relationships and create a nice and friendly culture (set of shared behaviors and discursive practices) interesting as there were many similarities with what I observed in my work on online forums. 

Cheers,al