Thinking about online community

 How do online communities intersect with one's day?

This is a question I set out to answer for myself yesterday, exploring a day in the life and then also considering what didn't happen during that day that might happen on other days.

Before I get into it, I want to talk about what a community is (and isn't). The baseline definition is that it's a group of people who share something -- interests, geography, values, experiences. There's always something uniting a community. If the shared thing is too broad, general, or vague, it's difficult to perceive community. Marketing companies have tried to create brand communities, for example, but I feel no particular kinship with others who eat Siggi Skyr. I breathe air, but so does everyone else. We're not community. ISLT feels like community to me. Just this week I got a message from an advisee who just graduated, who met one of my advisees who graduated a decade ago. They're collaborating! The ISLT community helped facilitate that.

Narrowing to online community, it can be a space where people belonging to a community in the physical realm congregate, or it can be an entirely online group -- people who've never met.

Here we go, day in the life:

• Bleary morning Facebook check. Two communities of note:
• My "Fake Internet friends" - a group of women I met online in 2002. We've traveled across platforms together. We're about 250-strong. Some of us have met in real life (I think I've met 4-5 of them). I feel like I know many of them, and their families. Our group is a private one. There's a Monday check-in and I reviewed it on Tuesday morning.
• Gardening group - it's a local online group. I don't know these folks, but we share geography (or should I say growing region, weather, and nurseries?)
• At the desk:
• 9-11, my online writing group. We're all FSU-affiliated, we meet on Zoom, we co-write and commune. These are sort of pop-up groups, and this one will last at least for this summer. We already seem to have some in-jokes.
• Slack - checked in to see if my research group folks had anything to share. It connects us when we are apart.
• Taking a break:
• Back on Facebook (I'm old ...). I'm in local groups (geographic community) but largely ignore them. Still a useful source of info from people I'll probably pass on the street but never meet. I also see a message from a subgroup of my Fake Internet friends (those of us who talk about our teens and the road to college)
• A high school friend has created a new group focused on wellness and has invited various of us into it. I finally clicked accept on the invitation. Why not?
• Professional groups:
• Checked in on a proprietary tool space for a group I belong to. I don't know everyone, just a smaller cohort, but we share a bond. I like to see what people are posting, and specifically I was looking for some book recommendations.
• Checked on a group space for another professional group, just seeing if there were updates.
• Checking email:
• It occurred to me that two listservs that have been active lately are online communities. I checked out some calls for papers shared on one, and on the other there was a conversation going on about ethics. People say listservs are dead, and I know the tech is old, but it's an easy way to keep a group that shares a professional interest connected. The opt-in nature of these lists and the groups they represent makes them quite different from employee email groups I'm a part of.
• Nextdoor. Sigh. Train wreck, I know, but I get email notifications and I just can't stay away. It's neighborhood-based and city-based and for the most part I don't know these people (although you get familiar with the names of habitual posters). I can't say that I feel like it's community, but at the same time it claims to be?
• Got an email from my neighborhood group. Folks are rallying to protest changes to city zoning. I don't really know that many folks who are active in the neighborhood group, although I know most of the people on my block and recognize others (yay, walking the dog). I see that there was a post in the neighborhood Facebook group, too. It's weird ... we all interact more there than anywhere else.

That's it. In about 16 hours, those were my online community interactions. I didn't really post, just read. I will post in the Fake Internet friends group on Thursday (another check-in of sorts). I'll probably be in slack, and I'll meet with the writing group. Else, I'm feeling pretty lurky right now in terms of my online communities. (Not counting classes, which are temporary communities.)

I think I have less energy for the groups because of how much energy I have to devote to email. I really want to do more with one of those professional groups, but being an active member takes time.