The New Imagined Community

Abstract submitted for:
NMDS.5004: Understanding Media Studies Fall 08
Professor Shannon Mattern, PHD

Fox, Steve. The New Imagined Community: Identifying and Exploring a Bidirectional Continuum Integrating Virtual and Physical Communities through the Community Embodiment Model (Journal of Communication Inquiry 2004) pg. 47 – 62

The internet has become a routine cultural practice that is no longer limited to the realm of specialization. “We are moving away from a world of Internet wizards to a world of ordinary people routinely using the Internet as an embedded part of their lives” (Wellman and Haythornwaite 2003).

The result of widespread adoption of the Internet has been the development of virtual communities that behave in a manner very similar to physical communities. In this article Fox proposes that we should utilize a Community Embodiment Model (CEM) framework that is similar to the frameworks used to analyze physical communities and that there is a physical/virtual continuum that exists that is based upon a common perception of the ‘imagined’ community. This continuum represents a further extension of man and is bidirectional in nature.

The article establishes a basis for comparing virtual and physical communities by first looking at early social research beginning with Durkheim’s (1933) ideas about a ‘collective consciousness’ which was further developed by Tonnies’ (1957) organization of ‘community’ and ‘society’ as two overlapping social spheres ‘Gemeinschaft’ and ‘Gesellschaft’. ‘Gemeinschaft’ was the term used to describe a tight- knit community and ‘Gesellschaft’ described the individualistic aspects of society based upon social status, power, and wealth. Turkle (1995) further argued that the technology of modern society was creating a more fragmented culture through the use of computer mediated communication technology. However as the Internet gained a cultural critical mass online communities began to ‘retribalize’ society by “forming even smaller communities of interest.”

Finally, Fox points to the seminal work of Anderson (1991) that introduced the concept of the imagined community. Anderson pointed out that the number of people we have fact to face encounters with in a community is so small, yet we imagine members of the community to exist in a similar manner as ourselves. Virtual communities are just an expansion of ‘imagined’ physical communities. This ‘imagined’ community is the basis for support of the Community Embodiment Model (CEM). Therefore, utilizing this CEM model is seen as an important tool to analyze the way in which virtual communities overlap with physical communities.

The latter part of the article points to a pilot study that involved surveying participants within and online community and measuring their level of participation within a physical and virtual environment, and their level of satisfaction with each mode of communication. Two important themes emerged from the data. First, virtual communities utilize cues such as emoticons and topics of thread discussions to help a participant to define the space between themselves and the people they are communicating with, which is a process that mirrors the physical world. The data confirmed that virtual communities are embodied by the imagination through a set of features and characteristics.

Secondly, the variety of preferences expressed between communication in a face to face manner or an online manner supports the idea that there is a bidirectional relationship between the physical and virtual community.

Finally, the research showed that when online members of a community have not met in person they create an image of the ‘other’ in their own likeness, just as Anderson described the imagined physical community.

The theoretical connections between the physical and virtual community are interesting. However the research done so far is very limited based upon the CEM model. Only ten participants were surveyed within a single corporate community that the author is a member of. Further research is necessary.

However, should the CEM model become widely accepted as a means of establishing the link between virtual and physical communities, it may very well alter how we structure the physical community through our recognition of its virtual extensions and we may see an equal expansion of government in cyberspace.