On February 16, 2017, Mark Zuckerberg published a manifesto titled Building Global Community, where he discussed extensively the impact of the global community connected online and how his company Facebook is ready to achieve that enormous but man-serving task. However, five years later, I am thinking about how effective this has been to mankind and the possible shortcomings it might have.
In other words, as I read through the manifesto five years later, I kept thinking about how far the actualization of this global community manifesto had come on human interaction.
In essence, this article will be focusing on the disparities between online and physical communities, how important they are, and if online communities can override physical communities.
However, in order to properly dissect the discussion of technological invention and its impact on humans globally, it is important that we begin to analyze each term of discussion. And the first is the online community and how it has affected human communities.
Definition of online community
According to Nicole B. Ellison, Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan," an online community is a virtual space where people with a shared interest or purpose communicate and interact with each other. These communities can be found on social media platforms, forums, discussion boards, and other online spaces where people can connect and engage with one another."
From Nicole's definition, an online community focuses on people with shared interests just like offline communities. And this is also what Zuckerberg explained when he noted that, "online communities are a bright spot, and we can strengthen existing physical communities by helping people come together online as well as offline. In the same way, connecting with friends online strengthens real relationships, developing this infrastructure will strengthen these communities, as well as enable completely new ones to form."
Online Communities are essentially provided to serve humans and even connect them across the world or space creating a single global community of netizens. It can then be inferred that the sole purpose of the online community is connectivity. This further pose another question: how connected are human with each other online?
In mentioning the goal of the global community, Zuckerberg noted that "our goal is to strengthen existing communities by helping us come together online as well as offline, as well as enabling us to form completely new communities, transcending physical location. When we do this, beyond connecting online, we reinforce our physical communities by bringing us together in person to support each other."
Hence, the essence of the online community is to strengthen the physical community. A union human has often had, even from the period of the hunters and gatherers. However, this novel global community looks into making sure that humans' physical relationship is sophisticated by using online groups/community. This likewise poses another question: in some communities where digitalization is less prevalent, what is the fate of the people there? Will their community be less strengthened?
In practice, we have seen how online communities have played a role in human relationships. A global example happened in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, which affected the physical interactions of many communities. Hence, to survive this period, many people relied on online forums, social media groups, and virtual support groups to stay in touch with friends and family, share information and resources, and find support.
During this time, online communities also served as a platform for people to conduct Houseparties which were hitherto physical based.
While COVID-19 seems to amplify the importance of online communities, it should be noted that online communities have been around since the early days of the internet and one of the first online communities was called The Well, which was founded in 1985 and was a platform for discussions on a wide range of topics which was as well discussed in physical communities.
Thence, the advent of online communities is not a result of COVID-19 nor Zuckerberg's published manifesto but one could argue that they are amplified by it. An article published by Facebook in October 2020, revealed that 91% of people agreed to have given some form of support to others through a group or community during the pandemic while 86% also said that they received some form of support from others and 38% agreed to have felt more comfortable online.
In other words, we cannot quash how effective the invention of online community has been in human communication especially during and after the lockdown. However, will these online communities totally overpower the physical communities?
What is an offline/physical community?
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg defines offline communities as a "third place that host[s] the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work. These third places are anchor points in community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction.”
Offline communities have existed since the beginning of human interaction. Humans' lowest cadre of evolution, culture, ultimately shows the essence of human communities and how it consequently led to the formation of families, villages, towns, and empires. Taking the example of the world's best sitcom Friends, the major characters Ross, Joey, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, and Rachael had their meetings in a cafe called Central Perk where they got to know each other’s interests and biases. This shows that humans still function effectively with or without online communities.
Before jumping to a conclusion, and being careful of committing a fallacious point, I circulated a research question to know how humans really feel about physical and online communities.
My revelation of this discussion
In this research, I asked 31 people which of the options they would choose if they had the opportunity between online and offline communities. With 31 responses, I had my conclusion which consisted of 58.1% of people choosing an offline community and 41.9% of people choosing an online community.
While I sighed, another point grasp my view which can be noted that: while the offline community has the highest percentage, it was a drag with the closing percentage of the online community. This indeed verifies that the online community is closing in on the physical community and perhaps in a few decades, the physical community will be replaced with a totality of online community such that instead of being in a church, we all could stay at home, wear our Hi-Tech glasses and our hologram appears in one of the pews.
Back to Mark's manifesto, while reading the various communities proposed, one thing that caught my attention is the centralization of power of the company advocating this global community. We must note that the online community is cohabitating with Facebook who has control of the data of billions of people, leaving large swathes of the human population susceptible to the guidelines and edicts of whoever controls the social media titan. It is this point Eugen Rochko, the founder of Mastodon, shares with my view when he writes that “Facebook simply cannot give anyone the power to do anything, because that power will always, ultimately, reside in Facebook itself, which controls both the software, the servers, and the moderation policies.”
However, in providing answers, he notes that: “The ultimate power is in giving people the ability to create their own spaces, their communities, to modify the software as they see fit, but without sacrificing the ability of people from different communities to interact with each other.” Which means before any human can fully function as a member of an online community, they must have the power to create a quintessential physical community to which they have been so used to before. And this power focuses on them not being subjected to any guidelines they don't have a say in creating.
Conclusion
In conclusion, online communities have helped people to feel connected despite the distance barrier, and even feel belonged due to shared interests and beliefs. However, Yuval N. Horari, in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century notes that “in many cases online comes at the expense of offline, and there is a fundamental difference between the two. Physical communities have a depth that virtual communities cannot match, at least not in the near future.”
Hence, in my opinion, online communities are as great as physical communities, but if I am sick in home, my friends from another country can only wish me well but cannot bring me chicken soup to accelerate my recovery. As a result, it’s fair to say that online communities strengthening physical communities, as envisioned by Zuckerberg, is yet to close the gap.
This is because it is hard to change the fundamental nature of human core. History has thought us that physical communities were the main ingredient for the evolution of empires, and while the evolution of online communities is a good step forward in bridging the distance barrier, physical communities are still ten times important. However, perhaps in years to come, with a fundamental revolution of artificial intelligence, humanity may reach a point where the online community will be the choicest and not an option base on a global lockdown.