The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychological\ud
and cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting and high interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study will consist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin communities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews

Nocera, Jose L. Abdelnour

English

The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychological
and cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting and high interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study will consist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin communities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews

Sammelpunkt. Elektronisch archivierte Theorie

C. Ess and F. Sudweeks (eds). Proceedings Cultural Attitudes TowardsCommunication and Technology ’98, University of Sydney, Australia, 193-195.VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AS SPACES OF SYMBOLICCONSTRUCTION AND CULTURAL IDENTITYLatin-American Virtual CommunitiesJOSÉ L. ABDELNOUR NOCERASimón Bolivar UniversityBehavioral Science and Technology DepartmentCaracas, VenezuelaAbstract. The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychologicaland cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting andhigh interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study willconsist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin commun-ities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews.1. Approaching the Symbolic Dimension of Virtual LifeThe present work has as a principal goal to assess the sociopsychological andcultural (symbols and meanings) realities of the virtual community group lifeframed in the Latin American context. Using a comparative ethnographic studyof several Latin virtual communities, the sociopsychological and culturalphenomena of the virtual group in the sense expressed by Harré (1979), will bedescribed.The specific psychological phenomena and concepts central to this work areíntersubjectivity (Fernandez, 1989), group identity, symbolic communication,social acts (and its expressive dimension) and meaning processes. There’s anobvious influence from Symbolic Interactionism, and Etogenics.More than new channels of global communication, with CMC we are facingthe birth of new social and cultural spaces of interaction for daily life. Thissymbolic and cultural meeting is a very complex and rich phenomenon thatopens a new horizon of proposals and questions. Will it be the end of the rulerideologies, or the birth of a new global unifying one? Habermass (1993) saysthat as long as there is two way communication in media, there will be publiccommunities that fight homogenizing ideologies. CMC offers this doubledirection communication.194 JOSÉ L. ABDELNOUR NOCERAIn this particular case, the project will be developed in the Internet RelayChat environment. Despite the purely textual nature of the chat environment, itoffers the versatility for the creation and maintenance of communities. Itscommands and other features make IRC a very popular and attractive mediumfor communities to live in.We define virtual community in the sense of Rheingold (1993) presented inhis book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier:“Virtual Communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net whenenough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficienthuman feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace”.To assess analytically the study of virtual communities, Jones (1997)proposes a distinction between cyberspace, within which the communityoperates (called virtual settlements), and the community itself. It is through theanalysis of these virtual settlements (objective components), that my researchwill characterize and classify the properties of a virtual community. Those arethe two faces of the same coin. The notion of interaction is central to virtualsettlements (Jones, 1997). Virtual settlements are cyberspaces symbolicallydelineated by a topic or topics of interest inside which an interesting proportionof CMC interrelationship and interaction occurs. The existence of a virtualsettlement implies the existence of a virtual community. The conditionsnecessary for the establishment of a virtual settlement are the followingaccording to Jones (1997): (i) a minimum level of interactivity; (ii) a variety ofcommunicators; (iii) common public space (where a significant portion of acommunity’s interactive group CMC occurs); and (iv) a minimum level ofsustained membership.This work assumes technology not as a determinant of on-line life, but aprerequisite for the occurrence of the virtual community social phenomena(Fletcher, 1995). Virtual environments offer a unique space for the creation andrecreation of group cultures, showing all the meaning and valorization processesinvolved in the sociopsychological interaction. The main objective is not tofocus on the community members’ intraconscious life, but on the interconscious“space” of the communities. We see the virtual community as a wholesociopsychological phenomenon created by the interaction of its members, whobelong and make their own íntersubjective dimension. The principal notion ofculture assumed is that of Geertz (quoted by Van Maanem, 1990), who definesit as “webs of significance he (man) himself has spun”. This shared symbolicand meaning delineation also explains our notion of group identity.We can say that the major part of this research is of an exploratory nature,because its main objective is to describe and to understand the virtualcommunities phenomenon. The implicit tasks are: the description andrecognition of common and proper expressive resources (culture) of theVIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AS SPACES OF SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION 195communities under study; and to discover the codes, norms and meaningstructures that shape and valorize the members’ acts.AcknowledgmentsNational Council of Scientific and Technological Research. CONICITGraduate Studies Division, Simon Bolivar University.Prof. Carlos Muñoz, MPhil.Behavioral Science and Technology Department, Simon Bolivar University.Prof. Evelyn Canino, MSc.Prof. María Teresa Urreiztieta, MSc.Social Communication School, Catholic University Andres Bello.Prof. Mercedes Pulido de Briceño, PhD.ReferencesFernández, P.: 1989, Psicología social de la cultura cotidiana, Cuadernos de Psicología. SeriePsicosociológica 1, UNAM, Mexico.Fletcher, R. J.: 1995, The Limits of Settlement Growth: A Theoretical Outline, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge.Habermass, J.: 1993, Teoría de la Acción Comunicativa: Complementos y Estudios Previos, Edit.Rei, Mexico.Harré, R.: 1979, Social Being: A Theory for Social Psychology, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Jones, Q.: 1997, Virtual communities, virtual settlements and cyber- archaeology: a theoreticaloutline, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 3(3).Rheingold, H.: 1993, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.Van Maanen, J: 1990, Qualitative Methodology, Sage, New York, pp. 19-36.

Virtual Environments as Spaces of Symbolic Construction and Cultural Identity. Latin-American Virtual Communities

Das Buch will eine Semiologie (=Spurenkunde) der Macht sein. Die Aufgabe einer solchen Semiologie der Macht wird in zwei Großschritten angegangen, erstens einer Begriffsgeschichte des Machtbegriffs von Aristoteles bis Hegel, zweitens einer systematischen Erarbeitung eines Instrumentariums der Machtspurenkunde, die zugleich wesentliche Positionen der Zeit seit Hegel aufnimmt und ihren Ertrag zu nutzen versucht; dieser zweite Teil mündet in einem Kapitel, das zusammenfassend versucht, das Wirken des Instrumentariums an einem Beispiel zu veranschaulichen: Macht der Transzendentalphilosophie

Röttgers, Kurt

C. Ess and F. Sudweeks (eds). Proceedings Cultural Attitudes TowardsCommunication and Technology ’98, University of Sydney, Australia, 193-195.VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AS SPACES OF SYMBOLICCONSTRUCTION AND CULTURAL IDENTITYLatin-American Virtual CommunitiesJOSÉ L. ABDELNOUR NOCERASimón Bolivar UniversityBehavioral Science and Technology DepartmentCaracas, VenezuelaAbstract. The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychologicaland cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting andhigh interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study willconsist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin commun-ities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews.1. Approaching the Symbolic Dimension of Virtual LifeThe present work has as a principal goal to assess the sociopsychological andcultural (symbols and meanings) realities of the virtual community group lifeframed in the Latin American context. Using a comparative ethnographic studyof several Latin virtual communities, the sociopsychological and culturalphenomena of the virtual group in the sense expressed by Harré (1979), will bedescribed.The specific psychological phenomena and concepts central to this work areíntersubjectivity (Fernandez, 1989), group identity, symbolic communication,social acts (and its expressive dimension) and meaning processes. There’s anobvious influence from Symbolic Interactionism, and Etogenics.More than new channels of global communication, with CMC e are facingthe birth of new social and cultural spaces of interaction for daily life. Thissymbolic and cultural meeting is a very complex and rich phenomenon thatopens a new horizon of proposals and questions. Will it be the end of the rulerideologies, or the birth of a new global unifying one? Habermass (1993) saysthat as long as there is two way communication in media, there will be publiccommunities that fight homogenizing ideologies. CMC offers this doubledirection communication.194 JOSÉ L. ABDELNOUR NOCERAIn this particular case, the project will be developed in the Internet RelayChat environment. Despite the purely textual nature of the chat environment, itoffers the versatility for the creation and maintenance of communities. Itscommands and other features make IRC a very popular and attractive mediumfor communities to live in.We define virtual community in the sense of Rheingold (1993) presented inhis book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier:“Virtual Communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net whenenough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficienthuman feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace”.To assess analytically the study of virtual communities, Jones (1997)proposes a distinction between cyberspace, within which the communityoperates (called virtual settlements), and the community itself. It is through theanalysis of these virtual settlements (objective components), that my researchwill characterize and classify the properties of a virtual community. Those arethe two faces of the same coin. The notion of interaction is central to virtualsettlements (Jones, 1997). Virtual settlements are cyberspaces symbolicallydelineated by a topic or topics of interest inside which an interesting proportionof CMC interrelationship and interaction occurs. The existence of a virtualsettlement implies the existence of a virtual community. The conditionsnecessary for the establishment of a virtual settlement are the followingaccording to Jones (1997): (i) a minimum level of interactivity; (ii) a variety ofcommunicators; (iii) common public space (where a significant portion of acommunity’s interactive group CMC occurs); and (iv) a minimum level ofsustained membership.This work assumes technology not as a determinant of on-line life, but aprerequisite for the occurrence of the virtual community social phenomena(Fletcher, 1995). Virtual environments offer a unique space for the creation andrecreation of group cultures, showing all the meaning and valorization processesinvolved in the sociopsychological interaction. The main objective is not tofocus on the community members’ intraconscious life, but on the i terconscious“space” of the communities. We see the virtual community as a wholesociopsychological phenomenon created by the interaction of its members, whobelong and make their own íntersubjective dimension. The principal notion ofculture assumed is that of Geertz (quoted by Van Maanem, 1990), who definesit as “webs of significance he (man) himself has spun”. This shared symbolicand meaning delineation also explains our notion of group identity.We can say that the major part of this research is of an exploratory nature,because its main objective is to describe and to understand the virtualcommunities phenomenon. The implicit tasks are: the description andrecognition of common and proper expressive resources (culture) of theVIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AS SPACES OF SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION195communities under study; and to discover the codes, norms and meaningstructures that shape and valorize the members’ acts.AcknowledgmentsNational Council of Scientific and Technological Research. CONICITGraduate Studies Division, Simon Bolivar University.Prof. Carlos Muñoz, MPhil.Behavioral Science and Technology Department, Simon Bolivar University.Prof. Evelyn Canino, MSc.Prof. María Teresa Urreiztieta, MSc.Social Communication School, Catholic University Andres Bello.Prof. Mercedes Pulido de Briceño, PhD.ReferencesFernández, P.: 1989, Psicología social de la cultura cotidiana, Cuadernos de Psicología. SeriePsicosociológica 1, UNAM, Mexico.Fletcher, R. J.: 1995, The Limits of Settlement Growth: A Theoretical Outline, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge.Habermass, J.: 1993, Teoría de la Acción Comunicativa: Complementos y Estudios Previos, Edit.Rei, Mexico.Harré, R.: 1979, Social Being: A Theory for Social Psychology, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Jones, Q.: 1997, Virtual communities, virtual settlements and cyber- archaeology: a theoreticaloutline, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 3(3).Rheingold, H.: 1993, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.Van Maanen, J: 1990, Qualitative Methodology, Sage, New York, pp. 19-36.

Spuren der Macht. Begriffsgeschichte und Systematik. 2. Aufl.

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The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychological and cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting and high interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study will consist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin communities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews

Abdelnour-Nocera, Jose

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Virtual environments as spaces of symbolic construction and cultural identity: Latin American virtual communities

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Virtual Environments as Spaces of Symbolic Construction and Cultural Identity. Latin-American Virtual Communities

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Sammelpunkt. Elektronisch archivierte Theorie

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