Wednesday, 18 November 2015

Roles of Internet in Fostering a Sense of Community

It's been about a month since I started writing a post for this blog. Today, I would like to share some of my thoughts that have recently come to my mind, that community power probably started to develop since the onset of rapid 'internet' prevalence. If, for example, there is no internet, how would you know that such a small, local-specific action exemplified in my last post is taking place somewhere? This becomes even harder when it goes beyond political or linguistic boundaries, within which the media coverage would be restricted simply because they have limited time and resources to cover everything. They have to choose on the basis of their interest which is undoubtedly influenced and sometimes even manipulated by the most powerful in society.


Figure.1 Map showing the 24-hour relative average use of internet in 2012. The levels are in order from the high to low; red, yellow, green, light blue and dark blue (Reference: SPIEGEL ONLINE, 2013)

With the widespread availability of internet (Figure.1), however, people are now free to voice their opinions, raise issues, and actively connect with those in remote whose existence would have not been recognised otherwise. It created the virtual space which is dimensionally 'non-space' but has given rise to instant, single-click communication regardless. Some people even insist that 'internet is another country', reflecting upon the fact that it has a certain degree of political power (UREG, 2015).

What such development enables the community is to share their experience of struggle outside their geographical, political arena along with drawing an international attention and support to their action. There are a sense of sorrow, sympathy, rage, generosity, and all sorts of economic and political motives that guide individual's decision. I guess what I am trying to say is that internet provides the community with a valuable opportunity to be internationally 'recognised and cared', and therefore boost its self-esteem to exercise more locally-derived democratic decision-making instead of top-down approach from the central government.

Now, let me briefly introduce an example of community-led climate action. The Big Lemon is a Community Interest Company (CIC) and runs the public bus services in Brighten, the South England. All their buses are fuelled with biodiesel from waste cooking oil from local restaurants. Their aim is to encourage local people to divert from using a private car, which exhausts 8 times more greenhouse gases than public transport (Emergent Research & Consulting, 2012). You can have a quick watch on the video below featuring their services.

Video.1. Promotion Video of the Big Lemon (Reference: The Big Lemon CIC, 2015)

Obviously, the relative contribution of their reduction in GHGs emissions in the city, and in global scale is very limited. However, what I think significant about them is that their small-scale local action plays an essential role in helping locals become more aware of the existence of 'community', and feel positive about their personal decision to use the services. With the help of knowledge and information derived from internet, people know what contributions they have made by their own actions and feel proud of themselves to be participating to climate change mitigation regardless of the scale. Here, the emphasis is not on the quantitative contribution of their CO2 reduction but on its effect on the attitude and perspective of the general public. Thereby, internet inevitably helps foster a sense of community among the people.

It's just a chain of thought without much supporting materials, so, it will be very appreciating if any of you share some thoughts or relevant studies with me. I very much look forward to your response to this post. :)

2 comments:

  1. Hi Satomi! A very interesting blog-post. I would have to agree with you that the internet is indeed a very powerful source. People are able to have their own opinion and express it relatively freely through social media. Also many pictures influence people and motivates them to take actions. I believe that social media and the internet specifically can influence and persuade people to a higher degree to take actions compared to the government. What do you believe would be most influential, social media or policies taken by governments?

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    1. Hi Maria, thank you very much for your comment. :) In response to your question, I would like to say that social media is definitely the one that shapes the attitude and perspective of people than policies. I think that it is essentially a platform in which people get connected to share ideas/opinions about a government's policy or issues surrounding them whereas a policy itself is just a piece of information and full of political jargon many of which can be very unclear to some. Also, they are not necessarily open to everyone, and even if it is it cannot prevail in public well without the media including SNS. I mean, creating&implementing a policy is still important because it gives a legal status and power to the people concerned, but it does not provide the space for them to concern, agree or disagree because there is a mere chance to integrate with others. Considering the power of collective actions which are frequently fostered by the media, it influences people more directly, I guess. :)

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