Virtual culture: Identity and community in cybersociety

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Reviews

The organization of Digital Image Access & Retrieval makes it possible for researchers to study the papers in sections according to their interests or to study the work in its entirety. This remarkable, well organized and well defined collection of papers offers a comprehensive look at imaging technology. Librarians, computer scientists and computer engineers will find it a rich resource for future research in the field of developing database imaging technology. The wealth of references, illustrations, diagram images, and charts aid the reader to comprehend the concepts and issues presented throughout the work.

Jones, Steven G., Ed. Virtual Culture: Identity and Community in Cybersociety. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997. 262 pp. $26.96 (paperback). ISBN O-7619-5526-7. Reviewed by Wayne G. Lutters, Research Associate, Department of Information and Computer Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3425 . In CyberSociety Steven Jones (1995) posited that the “new forms of community brought about by Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) [sic]” (p. 2) warranted a new term and coined “cybersociety.” That landmark collection of essays then endeavored to explore the diversity of social interaction that forms the foundation of these new “social formations.” In many ways Virtual Culture is tightly related to CyberSociety, an update exploring some similar themes with a number of authors reprising their roles, yet it also ventures into new territory. Jones explains this shift in his preface, “whereas CyberSociety concentrated on the nature of online communities and social formations, Virtual Culture converges on the nature of social and civic life online, and asks (fairly begs) the question: What is it about life offline that makes us so intent on living online?” (p. ix). The 11 essays that comprise Virtual Culture attempt to answer this question through a variety of perspectives, some providing new voices and others elaborating on themes raised by canonical CMC texts. Cybersociety is explored from both the individual perspective, well represented in Turkle’s (1995) line of research including her recent Life on the Screen, and the interface of real and virtual communities, as highlighted by Schuler (1996) in New Community Networks. Less frequently explored frameworks include a feminist deconstruction and a legal analysis of online interaction. While this collection of essays is bookended by three engaging theoretical pieces, Virtual Culture’s most significant contribution is contained in its body of eight articles. The CMC literature has long suffered from a dearth of empirical studies of actual online collectivities, so these are a valuable asset. Each of these essays is an examination, with noticeably varying degrees of robustness in evaluation, of a collectivity in cyberspace. The diversity of investigation is refreshing,

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including the notion of boundaries as evidenced in an ethnicly-themed Usenet group (Chapter 3), the political evolution of social action on Santa Monica’s famed PEN system (Chapter 4), the cyclic interactions of the on- and off-line fan communities for a touring rock group (Chapter 5), the propagation and reinvention of norms in the gay community between traditional meeting places such as bars and chat channels (Chapter 6), and the social interaction which envelops the well-known Tele-Garden project (Chapter 7). While there is a high tone of optimism running throughout most of the essays, often accompanied by frequent quotations from Rheingold’s (1993) The Virtual Community, many of the studies are honestly even-handed, a welcome trend as the field of CMC research matures. In particular, Jones must be commended for the inclusion of three essays (Chapters 8, 9, and 10) which provide a much needed balance in perspective not only by exploring where utopian expectations have failed, but also by examining new problems which have been raised by online interaction itself. The three involve gendered interaction, affordances for the fostering of subversive groups, and an exceptional piece exploring the nature of crime and punishment in CMC environments through a discussion of current legal practices and some case studies grabbed from recent headlines. With its firm theoretical grounding and engaging vignettes, Virtual Culture is an apt starting place for the reader seeking an introduction to the study of CMC. For those familiar with the research domain Virtual Culture serves as a meaningful update to the dialogue on some critical issues and provides a snapshot of state-of-the-art research.

REFERENCES Jones, Steven G., Ed. (1995). CyberSociety: Computer-mediated communication and community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Schuler, Douglas. (1996). New community networks: Wiredfor change. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Turkle, Sherry. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.