As we were saying, people are now well-versed in living the individualized life. But in terms of what is happening online, the interesting part is how we go about individualization these days. It seems that while individualization - as a way of life- has matured, it has done so almost to the point of transforming itself as a concept. Today, ironically, it seems the most efficient way of making sure one’s individual needs are met is to collaborate with others!
Building online communities to meet individual needs
We wanted to know more about the reasoning behind why people contribute online and maintain online communities. Some interesting comments have been made on the blog about people contributing online purely to boost their personal ego and seek online fame. While it did emerge from our ethnography sessions that a sense of personal gratification was gained from sharing one’s personal information and opinion, the motivation seemed to go much further than a simple case of ego-boost.
In a world where we are so accustomed to being bombarded by information and manipulated by spin doctors, the uploaders are seeking to inform themselves and others in order to reduce the risk of bad decision-making that might negatively impact on their lives. The best way of ensuring you are one step ahead of the rest is to have the maximum and widest range of knowledge possible at your fingertips so that you can learn from other people’s mistakes and in turn improve the existing data for future reference. This is why uploaders consult more sources of information on average. In short, knowledge collaboration in communities optimizes efficiency; it is best survival practice and is of equal benefit to the individual and the community.
But while it is true that for a community to remain on top of things all members need to feed in, some people seem to be feeding more than others. When profiling uploaders and their motivations, we found that uploaders hold a special social function. They are undoubtedly social leaders and were proven to possess more opinion leadership on average, but they were also strikingly community-minded as they are members of more online AND offline communities, and are more driven by personal values.
We might conclude that while uploaders evidently do what they do out of personal interest, in this day and age personal and community interest seem to be fused. In this sense, today’s context means that the more community-minded a social leader is, the more effective they will be.