Sunday, June 27, 2004
Well, this might be my final post on this weblog, because the course that's connected to it is ... over :(
At least, all the assignments and Q&A's are handed in, and the final research paper too. So this is probably it.
I really loved this course and hope to find a base in it for my thesis that I'll have to start on pretty soon actually. Tutor S., William and David, thanks for everything! Escpecially for the introduction of a weblog in my life. I enjoy the Internet more now than I did before this course!
Bye!
Your host, Sas
Posted at 06:35 pm by Saskia
Finally, the WHOLE paper!
To be honest, my stressing of last friday must have been a result of me being brainwashed because I had spent so much time behind the computer that week. When I got home, a friend of mine suggested to put the paper online in parts, so in the end everything would be online. Duh! This made very much sense indeed, why didn't I think of that before?
Wel anywayz, I didn't have acces to the internet until today, but under here (in three parts) is now finally my whole research paper about the online communities of MTV and VH1. I hope you enjoy it.
BTW, I just noticed that there was still a little part missing, namely some references of the first part. To make it right I would have to mess up part II and III, so I'll put the notes within this post. It's maybe a bit unclear because of this, but I don't want to mess everything up again.
Missing notes to part I:
[12] Willis and Bowman, ‘The Rules of Participation’
[13] M. Dodge and R. Kitchin, ‘Geographies of cyberspace’, Mapping cyberspace (London 2001) 53-54
[14] Dodge and Kitchin, ‘Geographies of cyberspace’, 58
[15] Wilbur, ‘An archeology of cyberspaces’, 7-8
[16] Foster, ‘Community and identity in the electronic village’, 31
[17] Dodge and Kitchin, ‘Geographies of the information society’, 35
[18] Sullivan, ‘The virtual community’
[19] Blanchard and Markus, ‘Sense of virtual community’
[20] Willis and Bowman, ‘The Rules of Participation’
[21] Derek Foster, ‘Community and identity in the electronic village’, Internet culture (New York 1997) 24-25
[22] Robert D. Hof and Seanna Browder, ‘Internet communities’, Business Week, Issue 3525 (May 1997)
[23] Hof and Browder, ‘Internet communities’ [24] Ibid
Posted at 06:24 pm by Saskia
The Virtual Communities of MTV & VH1
By Saskia Visser
________________________________________________________________________
Introduction
In the Netherlands the music channels MTV and TMF are being watched by many young people. These channels advertise a lot for their sites on the Internet. In the United States this won’t be any different probably. The biggest music channels in the United States are MTV and VH1, and what’s striking at their Internet sites, is that they both have a virtual community in which members can discuss things at special message boards. MTV and VH1 seem to try to create a sense of community on their sites. VH1 is a sub-division of MTV Networks, but their sites are quite different. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to investigate or their approach of creating a sense of virtual community would be different too. Thus, the main question that I want to answer with this research is the following:
How do the virtual communities of MTV and VH1 Online differ from each other?
To be able to find an answer to this question, the term ‘virtual community’ will have to be made clear. The last ten years there have been a lot of theorists writing about this specific subject, but there’s still not a one-sided definition of this new communal form. I’m not saying I will do this better than these theorists, but I will give it a try to make the term virtual community clear for myself. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to answer the main question of this research properly.
The different approaches of virtual communities will be discussed in the first paragraph, the theoretical paradigm. There will also be a little attention for the reason why so many sites have been trying to create a space for something like a virtual community. This is not so important for the conclusion of this research, but it will give us an image of the benefits that virtual communities can have for an Internet site.
In the second and third paragraph all the focus will be at the sites of MTV and VH1, to be more exactly at the communities within these sites. For both sites I will discuss the rules that they want their members to live up to. After that I’ll take a closer look at the communities themselves. How are the message boards organised? Is there a strict control maintained by the sites owners or are the participants quite free? How often do members participate on the message boards? And maybe one of the most important questions: Which sense of community is created?
In the end the conclusion will contain small summaries of the most important differences or striking things I have found in the two communities, and I’ll form an answer to the main question.
§ 1 Theoretical paradigm
Most of all, this theoretical paradigm will contain different approaches of what the term ‘virtual community’ actually means. In real life a community is most of the time described as a group of people who like to come together to talk and listen to each other. There’s a strong connection between these people, who have met in a certain place. This can be in the neighbourhood, but also on school, at work, in the sports team, and etcetera. Usually there’s a place connected to a community, where these people have met and/or meet.
With the coming of the Internet this has changed abruptly, at least, for people who are active on the Web. Internet sites have been creating spaces where people can chat with each other, while they are both on the other end of the world. These kinds of spaces are being called virtual communities. But when does this place within a site become a community? Many theorists have discussed this question, and I will discuss some of them in this paragraph, to be able to approach the communities on the sites of MTV and VH1 properly.
Thus the emphasis of this theoretical paradigm will be on trying to get a grip on the term ‘virtual community’, but there will also be a little attention for the importance of a virtual community. There must be a reason why so many Internet sites are trying to create something like a community within their sites. Robert D. Hof and Seanna Browder have written an interesting article on this specific aspect, and I will discuss this to make clear what the advantages of a community can be for an Internet site.
§ 1.1 Virtual community
What makes a community a community in the virtual world? As stated before, this paragraph is about trying to answer this question by using different theoretical approaches. The one to start with is the definition of Howard Rheingold. He has been one of the first to try to form a definition of virtual communities and has been cited in almost every work about virtual communities, for example by Shawn Wilbur. In one of his articles he cites Rheingold from ‘The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier’ (1993):
Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.[1]
Along with this definition Wilbur concludes that the key ingredients of a virtual community are thus communication and feeling. He later states that this seems to mean that, for Rheingold, the best virtual community is an extension of “real community”. These real communities seem to refer primarily to relations of commonality between persons and objects, and only rather imprecisely to the site of that community. The most important aspects of these communities are holding-in-common of qualities, properties, identities or ideas.[2]
Theorist Deref Foster thinks that the definition of Rheingold should be interrogated. He contends that any sense of community found on the Internet, must necessarily be virtual, but may not be sufficiently communal. To which degree is the traditional idea of community in fact present in virtual communities? Foster states that a community is built by a sufficient flow of ‘we-relevant’ information. The ‘we’ or the collective identity that results is structured around others who are seen as similar to the ‘me’. In this sense, community, like any form of communication, is not fully realized without a conception of self.[3]
Foster also thinks that the spirit of community is essential to the vitality of virtual communities. That which holds a virtual community intact is the subjective criterion of togetherness, a feeling of connectedness that confers a sense of belonging. Virtual communities require much more than the mere act of connection itself. The humanity of the interaction therefore seems to be the key to a virtual community. With this statement Foster returns to the part of Rheingold’s definition about ‘sufficient human feeling’.[4]
M. Dodge and R. Kitchin seem to put emphasis on this aspect too, when they use the next citation from Rheingold (1993): “Cyberspace allows the reclamation and development of the community without the locale.” Thus, the community is characterized by factors such as personal intimacy, moral commitment and social cohesion, and not by geographical location.[5]
After citing Rheingold’s definition in his article, Shawn Wilbur gives it a shot and he comes with seven different definitions of the term ‘virtual community’, and I think they are interesting enough to recall all of them. Wilbur states that (1) virtual community is the experience of sharing with unseen others a space of communication. (2) Virtual community is this work, this immersion, and also the connections it represents. Sometimes it is real-time communication. (3) Virtual community is the illusion of a community where there are no real people and no real communication. (4) Virtual community has no necessary link to computers or to glossy high technologies. (5) Virtual community is the simulation of community, comparable to Disneyland for example. (6)Virtual community is people all over the world gathered around television sets to watch the Super Bowl or a World Cup match. (7) Virtual community is the new middle landscape, where democratic values can thrive.[6]
Each of these definitions responds to some of the mimetic material carried by the notion of virtual community. None of them addresses the entire lineage, across time and cultures, but Wilbur hardly expects that there is a definition that could or would do this.[7] Theorist Mark Sullivan has tried it though. He states that virtual communities are social groups that emerge from networks when enough people carry on public discussions long enough to create webs of personal relationships. Like any other human community in real life, they develop their own norms and customs.[8] Sullivan’s description is a good try, but very incomplete, especially when you compare it to the elaborate definitions of other theorists.
For example, a very interesting article in which the arise of a sense of virtual community is extensively explored, is Sense of Virtual Community: Maintaining the Experience of Belonging (2002), by Anita L. Blanchard and M. Lynne Markus. According to them the term ‘community’ can mean different things. Generally a distinction is made between place-based communities (e.g. neighborhoods) and communities of interest (e.g. fans, stamp collectors). However, as Blanchard and Markus remark, recent research challenges the notion that place-based communities are the locus of community feelings and behaviors, such as the giving and receiving of help and emotional support. Thus, physical communities and experienced ones do not necessarily coincide. Therefore, Blanchard and Markus state that until the existence of community behaviors and feelings (a sense of community – SOC) among the members of a geographic neighborhood can be demonstrated, the neighborhood can’t be called a community.[9]
A SOC distinguishes four dimensions or attributes, which all have their own origins. First, the feelings of membership play an important role. This feeling arises from community boundaries (deviants help establish boundaries), perceptions of emotional safety, members’ sense of belonging to, and identification with, the group, personal investment of time into group, and a common symbol system. The result of this is that people could get a feeling of belonging to, and identifying with, the community. Second are the feelings of influence, to emerge from processes of maintaining norms within the group. Through this people can have a feeling of having influence on, and being influenced by, the community. Third point is the integration and fulfillment of needs, which comes from the rewards of being a member such as status in the group, competence in functioning in the group, shared values, and meeting other’s needs while having one’s own met. People want the feeling of being supported by others in the community while also supporting them. The last dimension is the shared emotional connection, which can develop from frequent interaction, high quality interaction, discrete events, shared history and crisis, investment of time and resources, the effect of honour and humiliation for members, and spiritual bond among members. This last dimensions results in feelings of relationships, shared history, and a ‘spirit’ of community.[10]
In the article The Rules of Participation (2003), Chris Willis and Shayne Bowman describe their own reasons why audience members are becoming participants. First of all they think that gaining status or building reputation is an important aspect in a given community. Social recognition is thus one of the biggest motivators, intoxicating participants with instant gratification and approval. This part of the motivation is kind of ego-driven and should result in enhancing social capital. The second reason they recall, is to create connections with others who have similar interests, online and off. Sense-making and understanding is the third possible reason for visiting communities. According to Willis and Bowman some people visit online communities to learn how to make sense of things, because journalism on itself doesn't completely satisfy the audience. From this reason we easily get to the fourth, which is to inform and be informed. This means that people want to provide news, information and advice not normally found in mainstream media. Everyone on the Internet is a potential expert on some subject, and can therefore be a tutor. The fifth reason Willis and Bowman recall is to entertain and be entertained, in the simplest sense of the word. The last motivation, to create, also speaks for itself.[11]
At another point in the text, Willis and Bowman claim to assume that people are motivated to participate in order to achieve a sense of belonging to a group; to build self-esteem through contributions and to garner recognition for contributing; and to develop new skills and opportunities for ego building and self-actualization. This is all possible because of the Web. This virtual connection has enabled its users to create, increase or renew their social capital. These communities are not merely trading grounds for information but a powerful extension of our social networks. Just as in real-life social networks, trust is a very important aspect in the virtual communities, and every new member will have to earn this.[12]
In another text than discussed earlier, namely Geographies of cyberspace (2001), Dodge and Kitchin don’t try to define the term virtual community, but they write about the implications that cyberspace has to both identity and community. It allows us to explore who we are, as well as changing who we are. Playing with identity through online social interactions means that the users of cyberspace are forging new communities; new social structures that are not based on where the participants live, or what they look like, but on what they think, say, believe, and are interested in.[13]
Still, Dodge and Kitchin think that people remain silent online for the same reasons they are reserved in ‘geographic’ spaces. Beside that, they state that in the same way that societies in ‘geographic’ space are organised through series of power relations, so too are social relations online. Power relations continue to exist, manifested both through the regulation of various cyberspaces and also through the expression of cultural ideologies. This affects the spatial freedom of users, policing and limiting their use of different spaces.[14]
§ 1.2 So what is a virtual community?
After discussing all these theorists, it seems to me that there are a couple of things they all bring forth in relation to the term ‘virtual community’. As a conclusion from Rheingold’s definition of virtual communities, Wilbur stated that the key ingredients of a virtual community are communication and feeling.[15] Foster recalls the necessity of togetherness, a feeling of connectedness that makes a community a community.[16] Dodge and Kitchin recall in their article that a community is characterized by factors such as personal intimacy, moral commitment and social cohesion, and not by geographical location.[17] A little bit an outsider with his short definition is Sullivan, but he also emphasizes the social aspect of communities.[18]
All these approaches seem to be brought together in the article of Blanchard and Markus, and the sense of virtual community they talk about. According to them a sense of virtual community can arise from four dimensions: feelings of membership, feelings of influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection.[19] Willis and Bowman have focused more on the reasons why audience members are becoming participants. They think this is because they want to gain status or build reputation, to make sense and understand, to inform and be informed, to entertain and be entertained, to create, and most importantly, to create connections with others who have similar interests, online and off. With this reason they come back to the social aspect of a virtual community, which all the other theorists have noted too. They even think that communities are not merely trading grounds for information but a powerful extension of our social networks. Just as in real-life social networks, trust is a very important aspect in the virtual communities, and every new member will have to earn this.[20]
For this research I want to emphasize the social aspect of virtual communities. Especially the theory of Blanchard and Markus, about the sense of a virtual community, is important in this aspect. A virtual community seems to be a virtual place where people from all over the world can meet to chat about their interests and make friends. When these people feel connected to other members, feel like they can have influence or being influenced, and they share emotional connection, you can speak of a sense of virtual community. Without this sense there is no community in my eyes, at least not as we see it in real life. Important to consider too though is what Foster has stated in his article. He contends that any sense of community found on the Internet, must necessarily be virtual, but may not be sufficiently communal.[21] This might be hard to investigate, but I think he has a good point. Not every community can create a sense of community. That depends on the people that visit the site.
§ 1.3 The benefit of a community
This research emphasizes the use of a community within the Internet sites of MTV and VH1. Of course, they have special reasons why they once decided to create such a space on the site. In this paragraph I want to explain what the advantage of a community within an Internet site can possibly have, by using Internet Communities (1997) by Robert D. Hof and Seanna Browder. In this article they discuss the influence that communities can have on the behaviour of the visitors of a certain site.
One of the most important things in the article of Hof and Browder is their statement that “…simply adding a way for Web surfers to chat consistently boosts traffic on any Web site by as much as 50%”. A chat room or forum encourages people – called new class of Netizen by Hof and Browder - is settling in, staying put, making a home away from home, instead of flitting from site to site dabbling in the gobs of information and latest news flashes. According to Hof and Browder these Netizen do want the information too, but what they especially want is a sense of community.[22]
All communities are built around a common interest or passion, whether it's playing piano or being a parent. But the ideal community site does more than just focus on like interests. It encourages lots of communication and interaction, whether through chat rooms, bulletin boards, or discussion forums, which can stretch out over a period of months. Most sites provide a framework and guidance along the way, but then they step back and let the members shape the community.[23]
Today the push is to turn the age-old appeal of communities into cash--especially on the profit-starved Web. Cybertowns could fulfil the early promise of profits on the Web. For one, these sites are alluring to advertisers, who will gladly pay to reach an audience that stays put long enough to absorb their ad messages. Moreover, communities have common interests and more defined demographics that make it easy for advertisers to target buyers.[24]
Notes to Part I
[1] Shawn P. Wilbur, ‘An archeology of cyberspaces: Virtuality, community, identity’, Internet culture (New York 1997) 7
[2] Wilbur, ‘An archeology of cyberspaces’, 7-8
[3] Derek Foster, ‘Community and identity in the electronic village’, Internet culture (New York 1997) 24-25
[4] Foster, ‘Community and identity in the electronic village’, 31
[5] M. Dodge and R. Kitchin, ‘Geographies of the information society’, Mapping cyberspace (London 2001) 35
[6] Wilbur, ‘An archeology of cyberspaces’, 13-14
[8] Mark Sullivan, ‘The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier’, Magill book reviews, (November 1994)
[9] Anita L. Blanchard and M. Lynne Markus, ‘Sense of virtual community: Maintaining the experience of belonging’ (2002)
[10] Blanchard and Markus, ‘Sense of virtual community’
[11] Chris Willis and Shayne Bowman, ‘The Rules of Participation’ (2003)
[12]
Posted at 05:36 pm by Saskia
§ 2 MTV Online
Since the start of its Internet site, MTV has been working hard on her strategy to convert its site into a youth-culture ‘browser’ of sorts replete with near-hourly news updates.[1] According to Matthew J. Smith, keeping one's site current and timely is a key to an effective page, so this regular base of updating is a very good thing.[2] The creators of MTV Online are always looking for supplements to their current mix of music, pop culture and MTV network programming.[3] In a move designed to raise its profile in the new-technology arena, MTV Networks has created a new department in 1998, the MTV/VH1 Interactive/Digital Operations Group. This department is responsible for overseeing MTV Online, VH1 Online, and the digital spin-off channel package the Suite from MTV and VH1.[4]
The emphasis of this research is on the communities of MTV as well as VH1. In this paragraph I’ll discuss the community on the Internet site of MTV. To do this there will first be attention for the rules that the site has in relation with the message boards. These rules can show how free the participants are within the community. After that we’ll take a closer look at the community itself, by going through the message boards themselves. I should note that the quotes that I used for this paragraph, have been literally cited, that means including the grammatical mistakes and maybe some unclear expressions.
§ 2.1 The rules of participation at MTV Online
As soon as you get to the community section at the Internet site of MTV, there are links - but no adress so I can't create links for these parts - to the ‘Community Guidelines’, the ‘Terms of Use’ and the ‘Privacy Statement’. The last two are very elaborate, but the community guidelines are just a list of points you shouldn’t do. Before this list MTV gives us a personal note:
If you're posting in our message boards or chat rooms, you agree to follow MTV.com's community guidelines. We're big fans of self-expression, but we also want to make this a safe place for communicating. Feel free to be open, opinionated and honest, but don't do any of the following things, or we may take your posting down. Serious violations may prompt us to close your user account.[5]
To give a good idea of what members of the MTV-community aren’t allowed to do, I’ll include the whole list of rules here. Members shouldn’t:
- Post personal information (yours or anyone else's);
- Impersonate anyone (another user, an artist, a celebrity, an MTV employee, etc.);
- Make personal attacks on other users;
- Make defamatory, obscene, pornographic, threatening, abusive or harassing comments;
- Post advertisements or solicitations of services or goods;
- Post chain letters;
- Post material that you do not own or have the right to use;
- Post unauthorized copyrighted material;
- Endorse drug abuse, alcohol abuse, illegal activities or hatred;
- Post off-topic information;
- Flood a message board or chat room with repetitive posts;
- Post other information that MTV decides (in its sole discretion) is inappropriate for the site;
- Post anything that includes vulgar, obscene or indecent language or images;
- Include URLs for outside sites that violate any of the above rules.[6]
These rules are all kind of logical, at least to most people they will be. What the members of the community probably won’t soon think of though , is what use they are to the site and what happens with the information that they, aware or unaware, give to MTV. In the Privacy Statement is explained how they collect and use this personal information. MTV claims to do this only as necessary to deliver high quality service, to administer their business and to let their members know of goods and services that are available from our family of companies. The personally identifiable information the site's users share with them is protected by MTV, maintaining strict standards of security and confidentiality. This personal information will only be disclosed to external organizations when they have previously obtained the user’s consent.[7]
The Terms of Use describe the rights and responsibilities of the user’s of MTV Online. This is not very interesting in relation to this research, although there was one thing that surprised me:
This Site is offered and made available only to users 13 years of age or older who reside in the United States of America. If you are not yet 13 years old, or do not reside in the United States, please discontinue using the Site immediately, or if, for any reason, you do not agree with all of the terms and conditions contained in this agreement, please discontinue using the Site immediately, because by using or attempting to use the Site, you are agreeing to be legally bound by this agreement.[8]
I understand the distinction in age, but what could be the problem when people from other countries than the United States visit the site? Of course, the programs and maybe the artists too will differ from country to country, but the site can still be fun. At least, I think that MTV.com is much more interesting than MTV.nl – the site of the Dutch MTV. The American site has much more to offer than its Dutch counterpart, which doesn’t even have a community.
§ 2.2 The MTV-community
The part on the site where the message boards are placed is really called ‘community’. In this sense MTV tries to emphasize the communal aspect of their site to everyone who visits them. The page that you get to when you click on ‘community’ is within the site of MTV and it contains different kinds of stuff for users. To have access to all the links on this page you have to become a member of the site. This means that you have to create a nickname, and with that and a password you get access to the community of MTV Online. On this community site you can watch Celebrity Profiles, see what MTV offers for Virgin Mobile keepers, subscribe to newsletters and send e-cards to friends. But the most important aspects of this community within MTV Online are two other things: creating or editing your profile and the message boards.
Everyone who subscribes to this site can create his/her own profile, and this is a very comprehensive profile. Of course, you can fill in things like your name and date of birth, but you can also include lists of favourite bands, albums and music videos. Beside that you can sum up things you like or are interested in, so other members can easily see or your worth talking to. If one of your interests changes, you can edit the profile immediately. The manner in which MTV offers its users to create a profile makes it easy for members to find people they might like, because they can easily see what others are interested in. The profile section also offers a possibility for members to send each other private messages. Other members can get to these profiles by using a special search engine. This engine finds other people who filled in the same interests as you.
Most important for this research, are the message boards that MTV offers. When you go to this link, you get on the page with a list of the different message boards that are available. There are 12 boards, all centring on a different music flow or certain programme of MTV. One of the boards is called ‘Fight for your Rights’, which refers to the award that’s presented to a celebrity who’s been devoting time and money to a good purpose. Within this board people can start topics about things that are going on in the world. There was for example a discussion about gay marriage after this was an issue in the United States a short while ago. Beside this one message board, members merely post things about entertainment though.
Within the clear overview of the different kinds of message boards, MTV has included information about the majority of posts and the date of the last post. Most of the time all subjects get several new posts every day. According to the majority of posts the most popular message boards are ‘All Things Rock’, ‘The Real World’, and ‘Road Rules’. When you click on one of the items a new window is opened with an advertisement. This advertisement disappears within a few seconds, but there’s also a link that lets you skip that few seconds. The different message boards all contain ten subjects per page and with a little symbol they show or the starters of the posts are online at that very moment, with the possibility to send them a private message. Everyone can start a new post and answer to every available post. Some posts get 20 answers, while others only get one. Although not all forums are very active, the reason why people do or don’t comment on a post depends merely on the subject of that certain post.
Some posts on the site seem to prove that there can certainly arise a sense of community in a virtual place. In reaction to a discussion “the finals were set up”, about the finals of the basketball championship in the United States, member ‘enuff4u2nv’ states the following:
Don't get all worked up guys! There is a hater in every group...and we have found ours. The Pistons played hard and worked hard all season. If any team in the NBA deserved it...it was them! Their defense is unstoppable! Pleas do urself a favor and ave ur breath. We won and there is nothing u can do about but talk. Go Pistons!!! DEEETROIT!!!!
This member stands up for other members of the community, because one of the other members had made offensive remarks about the finals of the NBA. Everyone who responded was very indignant at this, and ‘enuff4u2nv’ tried to hush the discussion by saying that the one who started the post was just a ‘hater’, so they shouldn’t pay much attention to him.
Willis and Bowman wrote in their article that just as in real-life social networks, trust is a very important aspect in the virtual communities, and every new member will have to earn this.[9] This can be found back in the MTV-community. A good example of this is the following post of ‘IseeYou07’: “hey i'm new here so i really dont know anyone just im just trying to make some friends so write back”. This person clearly is looking for friends within the community of MTV Online. In real-life communities people look for exactly the same thing, be it in person.
Gaining trust from other members can work the other way around too though. Some time ago member ‘BettaHex’ started a post called “I think it's time to hang up my hat!...i'm taking a break from the forum!”. He got some positive good byes, but what I found striking was that some people were extremely negative about BettaHex and happy to see him leave. To give you a good impression of this negative rush, I’ll include the post of BettaHex below, and two responses of people who don’t mind seeing him leave.
BettaHex
it's been about 3 years since i joined and as much as i hated many of you people, i still enjoyed debating with everyone. The forum is no longer what it used to be and i no longer find this place to be as interesting. Don't get me wrong though, i will definately miss chatting with everyone...i just don't think it's worth coming here only to see negative comments. i might check back from time to time, but we'll see what happens. if anyone wants, we can still chat on AIM. just send me a PM and we'll exchange sn's. i'm signing off,
Betta :)
The Top 5 Things I'll Miss Most About Betta
1. How I called him a monkey and how he resembled one after I saw his picture.
2. His fanaticism with Britney Spears and how he reminded me that age doesn't bring maturity.
3. How he tried standing up for impostors and failed miserably.
4. The times he has been proven wrong by everybody on this board.
5. Now who will I get to make an example out of for dumbest Britney fan?
corrupted_prep
LMAO @oldschoolrcoker. I loved your list, and they were true. Especially #4, it was so sad that he tried to be smart, and failed misrebly and everyone proved him wrong and made him look like an idiot. LOL. But, except #1, because i haven't seen him. Bu hey Betta, if you're going to leave, you don't have to announce it to anyone like we like you so much, we'll beg you to stay or that we'll pity you. This is as bad as your "why do you all hate me?" post. And like EBF said, you did your fair share of bringing negativity to this board. BUt good riddance and please while you're gone, do some searching and find yourself a better personality and a better brain. LMAO.
All three people that are cited above seem to spent much time on the forum, because they know and remind the posts of the others in the past. From their quotes you can say that members clearly form opinions of others through their posts on the message boards.
Although MTV Online has clear regulations about impersonating other persons on the site, comments about the programming of MTV seem to be allowed. In the message board section All Things Indie someone had started the post “I never see indie on mtv I just see rap and crap”. In the responds to this post, it even goes further, because people recommend this member to see indie music at other places than MTV. ‘FlameChic64’ says that “MTV sucks and is all about the getto-ness”. She goes online to watch yahoo.com instead. Another member suggests watching the channel Fuse. In the end there’s also someone who stands up for MTV too though. He/she recommends to look for MTV2’s subterranean on Sunday nights. But or this ‘alcoholic7487’ is a true member of the community or an employee of MTV, we will never know.
The members of the MTV-community seem to have quite some freedom within the message boards. The different message boards are given by the site, and the way the profile is arranged, but apart from that people can fill in everything on their own. Not everyone participates very often, but a little group of people do. When you go online at the time that the United States are in its afternoon or night, there are always several other members online too. After a while the most active members seem to get to know each other a little, be it only through text and sometimes a picture.
In the end, the most important thing that has to be asked of this community is or you can speak of a sense of virtual community. Are there feelings of membership, feelings of influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection among the members of the MTV-community? I don’t think that only the feelings of membership can occur for the members of this community, but it will end there. The subjects that these message boards focus on are most of the time not very intimate so people probably won’t let their heart out. This would be different in a community on a site about AIDS or something. People who visit that community will feel more connected because they are in the same condition.
The community of MTV doesn’t really encourage social bonding between its members. They just talk about fun stuff, and sometimes find someone to chat with or send an e-mail from time to time, but this all comes forth out of interests about a sort of music. For example I received a private message from someone who calls herself ‘Babygirl9261’, because she had found in my profile that I liked Harry Potter. I haven’t even replied to her message, but still she has rewarded my profile by putting it on second place on her favorite profile list. This shows that the contacts between the members of the MTV-community are merely very superficial, although it can always grow out to more of course. Still I don’t think you can speak of a sense of community, because most members only chat about celebrities and gossip.
Notes to Part II
[1] Bernard Warner, ‘MTV Online adds local content, looks to push’, Brandweek, Vol. 38, Issue 11 (March 1997)
[2] Matthew J. Smith, ‘Strands in the Web: Community-building strategies in online fanzines’, Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 33, Issue 2 (September 1999)
[3] Warner, ‘MTV Online adds local content, looks to push’
[4] Carla Hay, ‘MTV Networks unites its digital, online ventures’, Billboard, Vol. 110, Issue 32 (August 1998)
[5] …, 'Community guidelines’, MTV Networks (2002)
[6] …, 'Community guidelines’
[7] …, ‘Privacy statement’, MTV Networks (2002)
[8] …, ‘Terms of use’, MTV Networks (2002)
[9] Chris Willis and Shayne Bowman, ‘The Rules of Participation’ (2003)
Posted at 05:31 pm by Saskia
§ 3 VH1 Online
In 1995, VH1 has joined its sister music channel MTV in cyberspace. From the start, the music network aims to capture the attention of its computer-savvy viewers with exclusive online editorial content, transcripts, message boards, downloadable music videos, and audio sound bites from the channel's news segments. Terri Kennedy, VH1 director of interactive, of the graphics-intensive project at least in 1995, wanted the VH1 Online experience to fit with the look and feel of the channel. Music plays the central role on VH1 Online, so all of the features should revolve around the music. They wanted to establish a global electronic source of information on music.[1]
Like its MTV Online counterpart, VH1 Online eventually wanted to contain regularly scheduled online chat sessions that discussed the content of the VH1 programming. VH1 president in 1995, John Sykes, thought the online world offered an excellent opportunity to
“extend the VH1 brand beyond the television set. (…) It will offer more insight to our viewers about our programming and artists, and it will tell us more about who is watching. We want to use it to drive viewer ship and awareness of VH1.”[2]
In the following paragraphs I will describe the rules that VH1 Online impose on its visitors. After that the community itself will be discussed. I should note here too that the quotes that I used for this paragraph, have been literally cited, that means including the grammatical mistakes and maybe unclear expressions.
§ 3.1 The rules of participation at VH1 Online
At the site of VH1 the rules of the community aren’t to be found as easy as at MTV Online, but eventually everyone will be able to find them. Although the Internet department of VH1 works together with MTV, the guidelines for the community aren’t entirely the same. But overall, they come down to the same thing. According to the ‘Community Rules’, VH1 does not allow postings which contain:
- Personal identifiable information (excluding user names and e-mail addressee);
- Impersonation of any other user, artist, celebrity or any other third party;
- Personal attacks on other users;
- Language that endorses drug or alcohol abuse;
- Language that violates the law;
- Information off-topic or repetitive in nature;
- Slanderous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, threatening and harassing comments;
- Other information that VH1 deems in its sole discretion to be inappropriate for this site.[3]
Very different from MTV, is that immediately after this list of rules, VH1 claims that they don’t assume or have any responsibility or liability for any postings or for any claims, damages or losses resulting from their use and/or appearance on this site. But after that they recall the same things as MTV has done in its Privacy Statement, about the way in which they can collect and use the information that user’s give them.[4]
Unlike the community guidelines, the ‘Terms of Use and Privacy Policy' that VH1 offer are exactly the same as the ones on MTV Online. Therefore I won’t discuss them anymore.
§ 3.2 The VH1-community
Although VH1 talks about their ‘Community Rules’, they don’t recall this term for the part of the site that contains the message boards. This part is called ‘Interact’ instead. Still, it works kind of the same as with MTV Online, which means that you have to become a member to have full access to this part of the site. When you have joined the site, you can play games and quizzes, join competitions, download ring tones, see what VH1 has to offer for people with Virgin Mobile, subscribe to newsletters, edit your profile and of course post things on the message boards. The possibilities for members of the VH1-community are thus quite the same as on MTV Online. The only things that differ very much in their content are the profiles and the message boards.
While on the MTV site the members have lots of possibilities to show others what they’re interested in, a profile on VH1 doesn’t really contain interesting information. It is restricted to your name, date of birth, and zip code – which you have to make up when you’re not from the United States. But most of all, it’s not accessible for other members. This means that no one can see what your real name or date of birth is. They will only know you through your nickname and your posts on the message boards, and they can’t get in contact with you any other way.
The most striking difference of the message boards on VH1 is the way that they are organized. When you click on ‘message boards
’ you don’t come to a page that contains a limited list of subjects within which messages can be posted. Instead, the page you get gives a disordered view of different possibilities. The most popular message boards have a clear link, but these are just a few out of too many boards. Broadly the message boards are subvided in obvious categories: artists, shows, VH1 classic and music news. But when you click on the categories ‘artists’ or ‘shows’, they appear to be subvided again in every possible way. Within the section of the artist boards, every musical celebrity has his/her own message board. It’s the same story at within the show board. Shows from now to far in the past are represented in this section. This results in easily finding a board that interests you most, although most of them aren’t used very often. Some of them contain only two posts. On the popular boards however, several topics are started every day. Most topics don’t get many responses, while others get more than twenty. It merely depends on the name of the topic. Especially topics in which an opinion is asked about a celebrity – a topic called “Do you support Bush” got 107 replies – or about comparing celebrities seem to be very popular.
The message boards don’t get overshadowed by advertisements. When you surf the site though, sometimes an advertisement suddenly pops up at the screen. The message boards are opened in the same window as the original VH1 site itself. Within every message board, members can create their own topics, which results, on the popular boards, in a long list of diverge but sometimes quite the same topics. When you want to read these items, you have to click every comment separately to look at it. This means that it takes more time to read through discussions than at MTV Online, which could be frustrating.
Not all message boards are always used for what they were originally meant for. On the ‘Jennifer Lopez’ board for example, ‘kamjam 1’ had started the following topic: “Yay! Holland made it!!!” This person clearly was very happy that Holland made it into the quarterfinals of Euro 2004 and he/she just picked the most popular board on the site and posted his message. And the post got 11 replies of people who were all happy about Holland getting through too, so nobody really seems to care about the wrong place of the message. However, overall the topics are about the subject of the specific message board. Thus most of the time people do stick to the content of the board.
On the ‘VH1 Classic’ message board I jumped into an interesting post too. Someone who called himself ‘ignatz_2’ had posted a topic called “Report abuse here”. In his post he kind of attacks VH1 for playing the wrong versions of music videos, cutting of the beginning and end of videos, and for having to pay for a service that hardly ever works. He proposes that people, who have seen abuses by or have been abused by VH1, should post them in this topic. In a later post the same member tries to make himself more clearly by saying that this topic is meant for deliberate programming abuses done by VH1C employees.
Other members think that this post doesn’t belong on a message board on VH1 Online though. ‘Iggydog_55’ for instance has posted the following reply:
Ignatz2, You are walking on a very thin line when you ridicule VH1 staff. You may want to remember what happened last year and learn from it. Just some friendly advice.
He is not the only one reacted negatively to this post. There was even someone who suggested to the starter of the topic to get a life. There is some negative activity on another message board too, where ‘Ankatk’ has started a topic called “VH1 sucks MTV rocks”. This person even shares with us that the whole site of VH1 “sucks”. Probably other members don’t agree with her, because she hasn’t had any responses. They might have recognized this person immediately as a ‘hater’, and decided to ignore this kind of messages.
The members of the VH1-community have quite some freedom to post their topics. Messages that don’t really mix with other topics on the list aren’t removed immediately and the same goes for critical posts about VH1. Besides posting topics members can’t really do anything to contact others though. The profiles of other members aren’t available, so you can’t go searching for someone with the same interests. Beside that there’s no possibility to send private messages. The only way to get in touch with others is to post a topic or respond to them. I didn’t really get the idea that members had got to know each other. They seem to be more focused on just discussing what they want to discuss, doesn’t matter who. This is probably the result of the organisation of the site, and their restricted possibilities for contact among members.
Because of this you can absolutely not speak of a sense of community on VH1 Online. There are no feelings of membership, no feelings of influence, no integration and fulfillment of needs, and no shared emotional connection. There are people who warn each other or have heated discussions about certain topics, but in the end everyone stays anonymous for the other members. The focus of the site on music is therefore not the main reason why there is no sense of a virtual community. The main reason lies at the organization of the site.
Conclusion
A striking difference between the message boards of MTV and VH1 lies in the organisation. MTV has a list of 12 subjects. Within these subjects everyone can post whatever they want. It should be related to the subject of course. At VH1 there’s not such a clear overview. There are many different message boards, so you have to be more specific about the subject you want. The result of this is that some message boards get very little posts. There is always a list of the most popular boards, and most of the time that are the boards of the artists who are much in the spotlights at that time.
Another big difference between the community of VH1 and that of MTV, is the way in which they give their members the possibility to present themselves through a profile. When you become a member at VH1 Online, you get a profile, but no one else can see this but you. At MTV it’s the other way around. The profile you can fill in is very extensive and members can contact each other easily by sending a private message. VH1 clearly aims only at the message boards and rejects everything else.
This lack of personal touch makes the community of VH1 less interesting in my opinion, because there is absolutely no sense of a virtual community in this way. At MTV Online this feeling is still a little bit superficial, but members do feel more connected. They can read about each other and contact members with the same interests. This makes it easier to get to know other members better and create nice contacts. The main difference between the MTV and the VH1 community is therefore that VH1 does nothing to create a sense of community, while MTV does by making its members with their own interests accessible for other members.
Notes to Part III
[1] Brett Atwood, ‘VH1 Online takes vid net to cyberspace’, Billboard, Vol. 107, Issue 41 (Oktober 1995)
[2] Atwood, ‘VH1 Online takes vid net to cyberspace’
[3] …, ‘Community rules’, VH1 Online (2000)
[4] …, ‘Community rules’
Internet Sources
- http://blok4.blogdrive.com
- http://www.mtv.com
- http://www.psych.uncc.edu/alblanch/SOVC.pdf
- http://www.vh1.com
Bibliography
- Atwood, Brett, ‘VH1 Online takes vid net to cyberspace’, Billboard, Vol. 107, Issue 41 (Oktober 1995) pp 9, 2 p
- Blanchard, Anita L. and M. Lynne Markus, ‘Sense of virtual community: Maintaining the experience of belonging’ (2002) See: http://www.psych.uncc.edu/alblanch/SOVC.pdf
- Dodge, M. and R. Kitchin, ‘Geographies of the information society’, Mapping Cyberspace (London: Routledge 2001) 32-36
- Dodge, M. and R. Kitchin, ‘Geographies of cyberspace’, Mapping Cyberspace (London: Routledge 2001) 54-64
- Foster, Derek, ‘Community and identity in the electronic village’, Internet Culture (New York: Routledge 1997) 23-27
- Hay, Carla, ‘MTV Networks unites its digital, online ventures’, Billboard, Vol. 110, Issue 32 (August 1998) pp 6, 2 p
- Hof, Robert D. and Seanna Browder, ‘Internet communities’, Business Week, Issue 3525 (May 1997) pp 64, 8 p
- Smith, Matthew J., ‘Strands in the Web: Community-building strategies in online fanzines’, Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 33, Issue 2 (September 1999) pp 87, 13 p
- Sullivan, Mark, ‘The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier’, Magill Book Reviews, Vol. 0 (November 1994)
- Warner, Bernard, ‘MTV Online adds local content, looks to push’, Brandweek, Vol. 38, Issue 11 (March 1997) pp 52, 1/3 p
- Wilbur, Shawn P., ‘An archeology of cyberspaces: Virtuality, community, identity’, Internet Culture (New York: Routledge 1997) 5-22
- Willis, Chris and Shayne Bowman, ‘The rules of participation’ (2003) See: http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php?id=P40
Posted at 05:17 pm by Saskia
Friday, June 25, 2004
After some more copying and pasting I got the font right, so that's all good. But the research paper still ends somewhere in the middle and there is no link or something with which you can read the rest of it. At least, I couldn't find it.
If anyone (S.?) knows how I can post the WHOLE paper on the weblog, please let me know cause I'm getting pretty desperate. Thank god I've handed in the printed version right on time. I'm going to quit trying to get this online version right too, cause I'm totally brainwashed of spending so much time behind a computer this week. I really need to get outside and I don't think I could solve this problem anyway. So I'm going to get some fresh air and look for a new pair of trousers (it's sale!) on the way :)-
Posted at 04:12 pm by Saskia
I just posted my final research paper on this weblog, but it didn't work quite properly. Half of it doesn't show up on the weblog and the font isn't everywhere the same (the site didn't want to do that, though I asked it very friendly a couple of times...). So I'm a little frustrated now because I wanted it to be perfect and now it's not. I have to print the final paper now so I can hand it in at the tutor, so I hope I can try to work the weblog out in half an hour. I really want to get it right.
So I'll be back later!
Posted at 02:36 pm by Saskia
In this post I had posted my final research paper, but it didn't work properly (for more info see the messages above).
I thought it would be just a waste of space, so I deleted the part of the paper that was in this post. For the whole paper, look higher on this weblog!!
Posted at 02:31 pm by Saskia
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Wet dreams coming true :)-
You might think, what the hell do I know about your wet dreams, and I must say I don't, but I'm giving it a try. And Singles: Flirt up your Life is getting very much in the right direction for some people I guess...
'Singles' is already available and it lets you focus on two virtual characters who live together in one apartment. The whole game is about making them happy about different important aspects, and building up a relationship between the two. And that is what I think is the most fun of The Sims from the first time I played it! So for me, this new game is like a dream coming true. Well, maybe I'm a little overreacting, but I really think the game is fun. Must get it somewhere soon.
Posted at 09:27 pm by Saskia
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
There is an online game called "There", in which you can create your own avatar (=character) that can do whatever you want. You can join a club of whatever interests you, visit bars, shop for clothes, buy and decorate a house, give parties, and etcetera. Unique of this game is that the system uses a 'real-life' economy. For every object you buy, or clubs you join you have to pay money. For one dollar you get 1787 Therebucks on your account so you can go shopping. This system works the other way around too, so you can trade your earned Therebucks for real dollars. Because of this some players earn a little extra by selling selfmade objects and clothes. You can also earn Therebucks through winning certain events.
Big companies like Nike and Levis have discovered There too. They've made a deal with the producers of the game so you can buy Levi jeans and Nike shoes in the stores for your avatar. The economic system that There uses seems to work. The average There player spends seven dollars a month for their avatar, but there are also people who spend more than a thousand (!) dollars.
The online game There is not available for free, unaffortunately. To activate your personal avatar you have to pay twenty dollar, and after that you have to pay five dollar per month or fifty dollar per year. Anyone who's interested can try it for free (or immediately subscribe) at the official site.
Source: PC Gameplay (Vol. 100, p. 112-113)
Posted at 02:42 pm by Saskia
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