The most important thing Dr. Markman told us that we would ever learn in the class is that the internet does not make us anti social. There is no research to support that statement. Chances are when someone is on the internet, they are communicating with one another either through social networking or even dating sites which is becoming normal now a days. Another thing that’s changed that I really hated to see change was when people started writing journal entries on their computers instead of a nice hard back journal with a pen. I used to write a lot and would write the bulk of my stuff on paper and then type it up into a word document. I also do not think it’s as personal when you keep a journal online. The second important thing I have learned is that anything that is put on the internet can stay forever. You really have to be careful about what you put on there because there can be repurcussions depending on what you have put out there. The third important thing I have learned is that with all this new technology we can either adapt and grow with it or we can be close minded and remain in the dark. I would rather try to learn it and grow with the technology. I would rather the technology help us than hold us back. With the internet, I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

In the BBC interview with Danah, she talks a lot about how teenagers are interacting a lot differently today then they were before the internet came around. She speaks of a time when teenagers would meet up at the mall or the movies to be with their friends and have their social interactions. Now a days, a lot of this social interaction is taking place online through Twitter, Facebook or other SNSs. Teens are still seeing each other in person, but they are also talking about what they are doing online. Danah mentions a privacy issue. If you were running for political office, you wouldnt want people to find out stuff you did as a teenager online. She said in this age. you can go online and see how people were as teenagers and that can be embarassing to some people. Used to you would just go to a school year book if you wanted to find that out. The internet gives us a bigger platform. The biggest issue with communicating on the internet seems to be privacy.

The internet makes it easier for groups to share information and also find other groups with similar interests (Rainie, Purcell and Smith). Another way the internet can benefit groups is that it allows attention to be drawn to a certain issue. The internet also allows groups to have a huge impact on a broader range of people. The internet also makes it easier for people to donate money to groups and also for the groups to keep their funding and events organized without having a filing cabinet full of different paper work. Another benefit the internet has had on groups is that it allows for groups to show their activities and also iniate them. The greatest benefit that I saw from the study was how group members can go online for news and information about their group. The internet is a fast way to let the members know what is going on and also when the next meeting is going to take place. From what I have read, the internet has had all positive effects on groups.

According to Norris, social capital can be bonded best in heterogeneous  local associations. The other benefits that can come from heterogeneous associations are building social capital, generating interpersonal trust and reinforcing community ties. It is more difficult to build social capital in a homogeneous organizations “in pluralistic societies splintered by deep-rooted ethnonational, enthnoreligious or racial conflict” (Norris 2004).

The benefits of SNSs such as Facebook allow you to reconnect with people you went to high school or college with that you may not have talked to or seen in a while. If you want to know what someone’s been up to, a good way to find out is to go to their Facebook page. Facebook also allows you to form new connections with people. I have met new people through friends I already have and it is a good way to meet people. Another benefit is that it can be used to promote events for certain organizations. If you ‘like’ a certain organizations’ page, their statuses will pop up on your page. So if they share a picture of whatever events they have coming up, everyone that’s liked the page will be made aware of it. If you’re friends with someone in the organization, it is a good chance they will share the picture too. The only negative things on Facebook I can think of is just harassment/bullying.

Boyd and Ellison define SNSs as ” (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.” I think that this is an accurate definition for SNSs. SNSs are different from online communities because a community is a group of people that share some kind of common interest. Members of online communities do not make a profile about themselves like members of SNSs do. With online communties, the focus is more on the members discussing certain issues rather then trying to ‘network’ with other people and share pictures and other things. However, SNSs are similar to online communities in the fact that both of them involve connected with other people, just in different ways.

When Rheingold coined the term “virtual community” back in 1987, he said his emphasis was more on the ‘community’ part rather than the ‘virtual’ part of the term. To Rheingold, communities are a group of people that have some kind of connection or relationship to each other. Rheingold says that the typick ‘small town’ community where everyone knows your name is important and needs to be preserved. But, we need to keep in mind that is not the only kind of community out there. Rheingold mentions that you can even have communities in big cities and New York where people find a common ground and have connections with each other. When Rheingold talks about the ‘everyone knows your name’ community, I just thought of the TV show Cheers and the show’s theme song. The theme song is famous for its line “you wanna go where everybody knows your name and theyre all glad you came…” So, if you think about Cheers then you can really get a feel for what a community is in real life. An online community pretty much has the same concept. There are several groups you can join on Facebook and one of them I am a part of is the Obion County Resale, where you can list items that you want to sell. But, I’ve also seen this community used in other ways too. Here recently, there was a family whose house got burned down and someone had posted on the ReSale that the family was needing boys clothes and that if anyone wanted to help they could bring donations to the hotel where the family was staying. There were a lot of comments where people were sympathizing with the family and wanting to help them. I saw people coming together to help this family and I think esentially that is what an online community is all about.

According to Huffaker and Calvert, 40% of blogs are written by males and the other 36% by females. Huffaker and Calvert also say that blogs are based on the authors age, demographic and gender. Also, most of the time the author’s of blogs provide all of this real information on the home page of their blogs. Witmer and Katzman did a study that  says that emoticons are used more often by females to express emotion than males are. Males tend to deny their feelings even if they are feelings of sadness. The study also showed that males also would not use emoticons when in conversation with other males, but would use emoticons when in conversations with females. It found that females use emoticons equally if they are in conversation with either males or females. Deborah Tannen believes that males have a more direct style when it comes to communicating online and that females have a more intimate and indirect style of communicating. As far as our class goes, we can tell which class members are males or females by their names most of the time or by reading their blog posts because males and females do speak in different tones online and I think that’s the whole point of the gender roles.

Turkle says that identity can be attributed to multiplicity. In other words,  our selves are multi faceted. I was intrigued by reading about the woman who had talked to a man on AOL for a while before deciding to meet him in person. She had expressed her fear about how she was afraid when got around him in person that she would have trouble being like her online self. She said that her online self was more outgoing and didn’t have as many inhibitions. I could see there being a problem when she met the guy because she would probably be shy in person and he would be expecting the same outgoing person he had been talking to for a few months. I do think Turkle is right about identity because everyone seems to have a different personality online. My blogger is a true fashionista and I have the impression she would be very interesting in person, but I have a feeling there would be some different things about her in person.

Reading the story of Peter and Trudy, really enlightened me to the positive effects of social networking and how it brings people together. At first, when I read how Peter had taken pictures of Trudy in the hospital and shared them with people, I was a little put off by that. After I read how he did it to let his family/friends know about her condition, I understood how beneficial it was to getting help with their financial and emotional situations. Through networking, Peter and Trudy were able to get donations and meals and also connect with people that sympathized with their story. This was definitely one of the good stories about the internet.

To read the second study from Rainie and Wellman about how Americans do not have confidants or close relationships with their spouses or neighbors, really made me think. I have very close relationships with my friends and family. I do not think it is right to blame the internet for that because the internet acutally brings people together. Most of the time when people are on their cell phones or the internet, they are communicating with other people.

Reading Baron’s chapter was very interesting to me because I remember when AIM first came out when I was still in elementary school. But, I never used it that much. Reading about the away messages was interesting because it is true that sometimes you can be trying to convey more than that you are just away from the computer. In one case, you could post that you may or may not be sleeping which could prompt people to message you even though they know there is a possibility you would not message back. Another example is that you couldmake it seem like you were out having fun when you were actually sitting at home. The funny thing about this is that I have actually done this on Facebook. On nights where I didn’t have anything to do or where I was feeling depressed, I would post a status making it sound like I was having the time of my life. I am an optimistic person so if you go through my statuses, I am generally always happy and in an upbeat mood. I don’t like the people that are debbie downers and constantly complaining. I prefer to confront my problems with people head on rather than wasting time posting about it on Facebook. I would rather be in a good mood on Facebook. Baron’s assumption that people can portray theirselves in whatever way they want to on their away messages/profiles is very true.