Are Participants in Mailing Lists "members of A Community"?
Participants on mailing lists such as electronic support groups may regard themselves as members of an online "community". Are they?
To provide an answer to this question, characteristics of various types of communities need to be defined and considered. For example, if one defining characteristic of a community is "self-identification as community", then virtual groups often have this characteristic. However, if "geographic localization" or "legitimate political authority" are considered to be other defining characteristics of a community, then virtual groups rarely or never possess this characteristic.
Of particular importance are virtual groups that, instead of being supportive, may endanger public health in some way. Examples would be mailing lists that attempt to promote actions that may be illegal (such as inciting race hatred), or actions that may be unpopular, but not currently illegal (such as promoting the sale of cigarettes to adults). From a perspective of Internet research ethics, judgements about the potential of particular mailing lists to cause more harms than benefits should be made by a Research Ethics Committee (or an Institutional Review Board), rather than by the researchers themselves.
Read more about this topic: List Mining
Famous quotes containing the words participants, lists and/or members:
“A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)