Internet Group

I joined an online forum titled “worship central.” Since I lead a music program at a local church I thought I’d search out a topic I may be able to relate to; I’m not sure if that made the assignment easier or harder. If I had no personal experience I could maybe have gained some more objectivity in my observation through distance. However the interactions I was able to develop were more meaningful due to my ability to relate a shared experience to the other users. That experience was based on the fact that this group is  a hodgepodge of people, mostly from England, who are actively involved in their local churches music programs.

Assimilation was a bit awkward. For the first week or so I didn’t see much interaction at all. After following the forum for several days I quickly discovered certain users would gain more positive affirmation than others. This led me to understand that even this online forum was governed by certain social norms. Given the religious nature of the forum, flaming was non-existent. Things were mostly upbeat. People tried to offer a respectfully positive spin on every observation even when there were disagreements. Though I can vouch for the extreme of “respectfully positive” as feeling dry and fake I felt people allowed themselves to be a  bit more raw when displaying their thoughts in the online forum than I’ve experienced interpersonally (generally speaking) in church. Granted, in any group there are exceptions to social rules and norms. But I have sensed many people feel awkward projecting a negative view of life and their involvement in religion and society. So it was interesting to see how CMC acted as a mediator, a place for some people to express themselves and their frustrations. I’m not positive but I do think this was a positive result of how CMC may remove social context cues from communication.

I didn’t find much interaction until I posted a thread asking, something like, “why does ‘Christian music’ sound second-par to ‘secular music’?” That question/post seemed to strike a vein in many people and it was a hot item generating a high number of posts relative to the other threads in the forum. At that point I discovered the other members of the forum seemed to engage me and my responses/requests a bit more. Whereas before I would post and not gain a response from other users I now had a greater probability for interaction. Being directly addressed in the forum in someone else’s post seemed to be a key element of assimilation. Until then I didn’t have much interaction, it felt a bit more like voyeurism than communication. Because of how acceptance and interaction came slowly and with certain qualifiers I can say this internet group felt a lot like a typical group I’d describe as “cliquish” in my physical communication experiences.

Now, for a positive observation; my observations the past few weeks have been more harsh on society and technology (even the authors!). I think some of that is due to the overwhelming nature of the topics this class is engaging. In some way’s I think I have engaged the negative aspects of these topics to “thin the heard”, because if something is wrong or bad it doesn’t become as immediate a threat to my own worldview. If all these ideas and topics are correct or good then I’ve got a lot of processing to do! Anyway, for the positive side of this assignment (This exercise, being self imposed and  “therapeutic” to my negativity must say something about how I’m just a stones throw from needing some sort of CMC therapy! J)

Anyway, I’ll race to the positive before I digress again. Once assimilated into this group I was shocked to discover how much the group cared. There are a few threads where people are asking for support on various issues etc. and the group had numerous responses of support for those people. Through the negatives tied to CMC loosing some aspects of communication, despite it often being blamed for trite and shallow conversation these interactions seemed very meaningful for all involved. This aspect challenged my initially negative assessments of the internet as a communication medium. Another facet of meaning unique to the internet, or maybe it is that I discovered our humanity expresses itself though various mediums. Perhaps it is just another aspect of technology, like writing and the phone which humanity will adapt to and conquer as it is mastered.

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