Worldwide Online Communities - Essay Example

Online Communities

Technology continues to change the world, and it does not show any signs of slowing down anytime soon. Apart from making the world a global village, it has moved socialization to another level where people are not limited to interaction through digital communities. In this type of community, people have formed a particular interest where members can join through via web links. In such groups, members can freely engage in meaningful discussions, drop comments, or provide opinions via chat rooms or discussion boards (Salaverría, 2019). Journalism has utilized this opportunity to improve their service delivery to its clients. The online communities already provide the essential platform that journalists or community members can easily share information. This type of community niche has made journalism easier since there is no need to make huge prints of news for clients. Instead, news reassembled and shared in a sing file, either audio, video, or images (Hamilton, 2017). This kind of innovation is considered to have democratized the old ways of presenting new through radios, newspapers, and television. To add to this, it is considered the safest and more trustworthy way of sharing information since the news holder still bears the powers at hand. This is unlike in the old was of news presentation where the third party can easily manipulate information.

The Internet has spread further to its audience in different areas via numerous social media and networking platforms. The creative one has utilized this chance to popularize themselves through them. The fast and quick sharing of information has made the Internet a place for creative people to become celebrities through different activities and attributes in society (Fisher, 2019). Gaining popularity through the Internet is a little bit simpler nowadays, which has become the most to become internet kings in modern society. Entrepreneurial bodies have majorly utilized internet celebrities as influencer marketers in a wide range of goods and services. Businesses in fashion, automobiles, entertainment, politics, and many more areas have been using online celebrities due to the great influence these celebrities have on the audience. Online communities majorly began as discussion boards for scholars with a common interest in various disciplines (Salaverría, 2019). Despite being an arena for online scholars, video gamers, and other entertainment sectors, recently, it has emerged as an area for the scramble for the most powerful one between journalism and celebrities. So currently, who is the most use of the current community? The discussion focuses on the extent of these two entities that have advanced on the online community platform and their respective impacts.

Online communities have brought up both positive and negative impact on the journalism industry. Journalism has brought readers a more unique and more engaging way of reading news. In the old way, the included newspapers, televisions, and radios could not have a chance to comment or ask a question a particular reading of the news presented. This is not a similar case to the online community, where members can easily read and comment on the news presented to them. The platforms allow discussions to take place on the news, and at times storytelling sessions can take place on the same platform (Witschge, 2016). Online community members are the earliest to be informed with the breaking news since they arrive in seconds after the scene. At times, live delivery done an experience that is more captive than waiting for long hours before news presentation in the old ways. The custom of articles and blogging has become more common in the modern culture, which has improved the educational and more informative content to the readers, which has improved the critical thinking of their readers (Geng, Wang & Chen, 2019). Although the advantages of the online community are many, some disadvantages have been identified in the highly evolved world to blogging. For example, the readers are only exposed to what the writer knows, but they are not maximally exposed to new ideas. Another challenge that can be seen is that there has been a massive change in the journalism industry was older journalists being eliminated. This has caused unemployment to many as they are replaced by young techno-savvy journalists who can work in the modern setting environment. Even though there are few disadvantages, generally, online journalism has changed the reader's experience massively.

The emergent of online communities has resulted in a strong impact on publishers. Digital news has caused a massive impact on publishers majorly in a negative way. A change in the publishing industry was seen when New York Times evolved to digital news presentation to cushion the effect of digital journalism, which saw a significant drop in buying newspapers. Many publishers have been forced to close down the business due to a steep fall in the sale of newspapers that cannot sustain the business (Hamilton, 2017). Companies trying to survive have been forced to shrink the business by laying off some workers or closing down some of its branches. Some companies have reduced the content or partnered with other companies to reduce costs. Even though some older journalists are willing to move from print to digital journalism, most say that the change has been too quickly that they cannot quickly adjust to the digital ways. Experts in publishing have been the most heavily hit by digital journalism as they have caused a total loss to them; most of them have been forced to look for jobs elsewhere (Deuze, 2017). This shows that despite digital journalism is one of the best; it is slowly wasting some other professionals in the same industry. It has also forced young publishers to quickly learn digital journalism skills, which is the only way to survive.

Despite the online communities bringing up a huge change in the modern lifestyle, ethics have to be maintained and keenly monitored. Online celebrities have become a prominent figure in the modern world. The Internet has minimal boundaries, and celebrities can comfortably move from one platform to another as they look for more audience. Some will be registered on several community platforms to carry out online marketing influencing activities. These celebrities need to be keen on the content they deliver in the media to maintain society's ethical standards. An online survey indicated that most of the population in the online community is 66% of the people are below the age of 40 years (Hamilton, 2017). This is a youth bracket age that has to be well looked at by the society in terms of moral behavior. Nowadays, underage young people are likely to be affected if the quality presented by celebrities is not observed. Young people are likely to imitate these celebrities' behavior, which might affect their overall moral behaviors.

Online communities need to exercise their powers on the privacy and security of their users' details. Many online communities have set up registration requirements, which entail a piece of detailed personal information from the new user as a qualification to open an account in either one of the platforms. In most cases, it requires legit personal information, which is compromises the privacy of the account holder in case of data leakage or loss. Therefore, it's recommendable for online communities to give assurance of security on the user's personal information during submission of it. Security threats have been another risk in which some user accounts are hacked, and credential information was stolen. Data leakage has been a major threat in the media industry due to the daily emergent of new tricks to break into data systems. A study done in 2015 discovered that despite many people being attracted to these user-friendly platforms, they are also a bit scared during filling up the registration forms, which are more demanding on personal information. Some new users don't choose to sign up due to the question of the assurance of personal information. From an online survey done by Facebook founder and the CEO, Zuckerberg discovered that the users had greatly increased sharing content online than they before more social networking platforms emerged. Even though some users can keep their profiles private, the content shared with friends is accessible on the web, which compromises the security of the user. Most security departments have used online data to trace the suspects' activities and what kind of information he engages in with the rest of society. Therefore, this calls for assurance of privacy on user's data since it's critical for security purposes.

Cyberbullying or trolling is another important aspect that has to be looked at keenly and investigated. This happens when prolonged and intentional trolls are subjected to an innocent victim. From a study done by the Open University, 38% of individuals in the US have been once or severely subjected to cyberbullying. This is a serious case that needs close attention and intervention from various legal bodies. Cyberbullying had taken another hype, as seen by the death of Amanda Todd, when she explained her ordeal on YouTube before she died. Flaming is another cybercrime that has prevailed in the techno-savvy world. This is a way of communication using threats in comments or discussions in the media platforms. A study done in 2018 showed that people are likely to talk harshly on media, unlike when they faced each other. Also, it indicated that social networking groups created a niche in which people are prone to talking harshly since they don't know each other. This clearly indicates that despite online communities improving communication, it’s also a bit distractive for ethical communication.

Generally, online communities need legal intervention to curb bad habits in online community platforms. Due to a significant rise in online cases, the federal government made the communication defense act that protected online community users' rights. The act allows the users to post and remove the content from online platforms at their own will but can be charged by law is a case is raised against the content. It also avoids financial benefits to websites that infringe the law. Even though the legal procedures for online communities have been put in place by various governments, the law has to be fair enough without infringing the users from the freedom of speech. The most talked about by various professionals and scholars is cyberbullying, which has to be addressed in schools, politics, news, and more platform to help reduce it. Technology continues to evolve daily, and new tricks in data management and security risks continue to come up. Social scientists have come up with significant data on demographic trends, especially. Armed with such helpful information, governments should monitor these trends and try to provide tentative strategies towards them. More so, the laws on online communications should be regularly changed to cope with changing online community environments.

Reference

Hamilton, W. L., Zhang, J., Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C., Jurafsky, D., & Leskovec, J. (2017, May). Loyalty in online communities. In Eleventh International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media.

Fisher, G. (2019). Online communities and firm advantages. Academy of Management Review, 44(2), 279-298.

Salaverría, R. (2019). Digital journalism: 25 years of research. Review article. El profesional de la información (EPI), 28(1).

Deuze, M. (2017). Considering a possible future for Digital Journalism.

Witschge, T., Anderson, C. W., Domingo, D., & Hermida, A. (Eds.). (2016). The SAGE handbook of digital journalism. Sage.

Geng, R., Wang, S., & Chen, X. (2019). Internet Celebrity Endorsement: How Internet Celebrities Bring Referral Traffic to E-commerce Sites? In PACIS (p. 193).

Lin, S. C., Tai, Y. M., Lin, W. K., & Chiu, L. J. (2017). A study on Impressiveness Management of Internet Celebrities.