From: Social Science Computer Review. 1996 Spring, V14 N1:50-54.

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ABSTRACT
The paper questions three common assumptions (1) that electronic forums will certainly strengthen pre-existing face-to-face territorial (and other intact) communities; (2) electronic forum will replace them with comparably pro-social forms and (3) "market forces" will naturally foster electronic forums that are prosocial. It proposes a strong research program that examines how the social design/organization of electronic forums strengthen or weaken group life in workplaces and communities.

KEYWORDS: Electronic forums, community, social capital, communication. THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ELECTRONIC FORUMS AND COMMUNITY LIFE.

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INTRODUCTION

Cyberspace symbolizes a new American frontier -- full of unexplored opportunities, that stimulate high levels of excitement and fears of chaotic semi-organized activity. Much of the recent flood of books and articles about computer networking, information highways, virtual offices and Cyberspace are infused with technological utopianism and anti-utopianism (Kling, 1994). Some of the most interesting technologically utopian works argue that computer networking can revitalize a sense of community in North American cities (see Rheingold, 1994; Schuler, 1994)

The search for "a sense of community" has been an enduring theme in U.S. culture (Fischer, 1991). Ironically, the technologies of freedom -- trains, cars, and airplanes; telephones, faxes, and computer networks -- have enabled us to be on the move, and to live, work, and do business with more people with whom we share very limited parts of our lives. Further, a t a time when community life in North American cities is unraveling -- some analysts hope that people can meet and enrich their social lives at work and at home via computer networks. In the mid-90s, there are a dizzying number of diverse and evolving experiments with free-nets and electronic commerce on the Internet.

Enthusiasts for these electronic forums argue that they are building new forms of community life. But social scientists observe that not every collection of people who happen to talk (or write) to each other form the sense of trust, mutual interest, and sustained commitments that automatically deserve to be labeled as communities (Kling, 1995b; Jones, 1995) . Communities refer to groups of people who share some values and who have some significant sense of caring or mutual obligation.

Here I sketch of an argument that questions the comfortable assumptions that electronic forums will certainly strengthen pre- existing face-to-face territorial (and other intact) communities, or replace them with comparably pro-social forms. I also want to question the popular assumption that "market forces" will naturally foster electronic forums that are prosocial .

The limited evidence shows that some ways of organizing electronic forums may b e more pro-social than others. A key focus of research would be to understand how the social design of electronic forums leads them to enrich or undermine face-to-face community life. Social design refers to the socio-technical configurations that structure the ways that people can access and use a technological system (Kling and Jewett, 1994). A specific technology can be organized with different social designs -- differing social arrangements for who can access to which feature, how fees are charged for usage, the kinds of control of information content, etc.

The ways that people work and communicate via computer networks destabilizes many conventional social categories. For example, I referred to "social lives at work and at home" in the second paragraph as if they refer to distinct places as well as webs of social relationships. But telecommuting and virtual offices enables people to work routinely while they are in their homes, and blurs these boundaries. The ways that people work and communicate vi a computer networks also destabilizes our traditional distinction between public and private spheres. The ways that pluralistic communities developed (and were contested) through face-to-face interaction, correspondence, publishing, telephones, email, and computer conferencing has varied across places in any particular time period. These lifeways -- face to face, an d via various media - are very context dependent and ill-understood.

The innovative efforts that drive the development of Cyberspace today come from several sources. The early efforts of social and technological enthusiasts, have been amplified by governmental and private initiatives. Increasingly, the moral frameworks for organizing social relationships in Cyberspace have been best articulated by libertarians (with a focus on privacy) and market enthusiasts who argue that market forces alone should shape the nature of on-line services (see, for example, Dyson, Toffler, Keyworth, and Gilder, 1994). There is a significant push by some commercial information services to draw subscribers by promising that they can provide socially rich forums (ie., chat rooms and conferences). Some of these forums are have little controversial content (ie., hobbies). Some can be about politics. And some can focus on very sensitive personal pains. For example, Prodigy, Compuserve, Genie and America Online all offer domestic-violence discussion groups (Magid, 1994). At their best, these forums can enrich the lives of participants by enabling them to contact potential friends at odd times of the day or night and who they normally would not meet.

However, these electronic cafes do not offer the protection for privacy that could be found in some of the traditional face to face public spaces -- low persistence, low permeability, and relatively high control of messages. There is risk of loss of confidentiality - - even by participants (Fogelman, 1994; Kling, 1995b). While a face-to-face group might ask members to maintain confidentiality ("what you heard here stays here") they can't enforce it. But the typical risk might be one of hearsay, where one participant tells a friend that she saw Joan at a battered woman's group and perhaps some aspect of Joan's plight. Participants in these forums on Prodigy, Compuserve, Genie and America Online now can have verbatim transcripts of Joan's revelations to print out and share with their mutual friends. These electronic services compete with public places, if only because few people can (or will) simultaneously log in to an on-line service while simultaneously participating in a face-to-face group meeting outside their homes. If the enthusiasts for electronic communities and virtual communities had their visions come true, these services would be so active that they could shrivel many existing traditional face-to-face forums. They would be like the lively regional mall drawing trade away from the dreary old down-town (Kowinski, 1985; Kling, Olin and Poster, 1991; also see Sennett, 1977). But systems operators could close down forums that they find to be controversial. Since these important public spaces would now reside on private disk drives, system operators could - at their own initiative -- abridge the range of effective public discussions.

Robert Putnam, a political scientist, has been developing the concept of "social capital" to help understand the characteristics of vibrant civic communities: Economists often refer to physical capital. A screwdriver is a form of physical capital: by investing in a screwdriver, one becomes more productive. About 25 years ago, the economist Gary Becker used the term 'human capital' to refer to the fact that education can have the same effect. Investing in training -- 'human capital' -- enables one to become more productive.

Some social scientists are beginning to speak of 'social capital' -- networks and norms of civic engagement. Conversely, in some modern countries -- in America' s urban ghettoes and suburbs, for example -- the last several decades have witnessed a silent erosion of social capital. There are more empty seats at PTA meetings and church masses, for example, and fewer of us spend time on public affairs -- particularly political activities. Compared with earlier generations, we are less engaged with one another outside the marketplace and thus less prepared to cooperate for shared goals. This decline in social capital helps explain the economic and political troubles of our own democracy. (Putnam, 1994)

A society that relies on generalized reciprocity is more efficient than a distrustful society, for the same reason that money is more efficient than barter. Trust lubricates social life..... Networks of civic engagement also facilitate coordination and communication and amplify information about the trustworthiness of other individuals. .... Dense socialties facilitate gossip and other valuable ways of cultivating reputation--an essential foundation for trust in a complex society.... Stocks of social capital, such as trust, norms, and networks, tend to be self-reinforcing and cumulative. Successful collaboration in one endeavor builds connections and trust--social assets that facilitate future collaboration in other, unrelated tasks. As with conventional capital, those who have social capital tend to accumulate more--them as has, gets. .... Unlike conventional capital, social capital is a "public good," that is, it is not the private property of those who benefit from it. Like other public goods, from clean air to safe streets, social capital tends to be underprovided by private agents. This means that social capital must often be a by-product of other social activities. Social capital typically consists in ties, norms, and trust transferable from one social setting to another. (Putnam, 1993)

On-line community networks might help build social capital by bringing together people who also develop off-line social relationships. (Wide-area on-line services are more ambiguous in this regard because they draw people away from their immediate communities into national forums). But, as Putnam points out, the social capital that undergirds lively civic life rests upon high degrees of trust. And trust is at risk in on-line discussions when participants fear a loss of privacy or being harshly flamed.

TOWARDS A RESEARCH AGENDA

This is a time when community in the U.S. is particularly fragile. Computerization, if it is to be a social good, should help build more lively communities, or at least not further erode their social bonds. We need a systematic research program to help understand the nature of social life in electronic forums and their interplay with actual communities -- whether they are geographically intact (ie. "Blacksburg Electronic Village"  http://crusher.bev.net/index.html, or Santa Monica's PEN system reported in Van Tassel, 1994) or geographically dispersed, as are many scholarly communities. The earliest research on social relationships in electronic forums has tended to focus on the forums' participants and their on-line relationships. There is a little research that examines the relationships between work on-line, and life in the organization "off-line" (for exceptions, see Li, 1990; Hess, Kiesler and Walsh, 1993; Markus, 1994). This kind of research should be extended into studies of community life: to what extent do people who participate actively in on-line services engage more or withdraw from other forms of face-to-face community life (the relationship could be curvilinear). We need a strong research program that examines how the social design/organization of electronic forums strengthen or weaken group life in workplaces and communities.

REFERENCES

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Dyson, Ester, Toffler, Alvin, Keyworth, George, & Gilder, George. (1994). "Cyberspace and the American dream: a Magna Carta for the knowledge age." Progress and Freedom Foundation. (http://www.pff.org/position.html).

Fischer, Claude. (1991). Ambivalent communities: how Americans understand their localities. In Wolfe, Alan (Ed.). America at Century's End. Berkeley. University of California Press.

Fischer, Claude S. (1993). America Calling: a social history of the telephone to 1940. Berkeley. University of California Press.

Fogelman, Martin. (1994). Freedom and censorship in the emerging electronic environment. Information Society 10(4), 295-303.

Hess, Bradford, Sproull, Lee, Kiesler, Sara, & Walsh, John. (1993). Returns to science: computer networks in oceanography. Communications of the ACM 36(8), 90-101.

Jones, Steven G. (1995). Understanding community in the Information Age. In Steven G. Jones (Ed.) CyberSociety: Computer-mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks, California. Sage Publications.

Kling, Rob. (1994). Reading 'All About' Computerization: How Genre Conventions Shape Social Analyses. The Information Society 10, 147-172.

Kling, Rob (Ed). 1995a. "Computerization at work" in Kling (1995c) Kling, Rob (Ed). 1995b. "Social relationships in electronic forums: hangouts, salons, Workplaces and communities" in Kling (1995c)

Kling, Rob (Ed). 1995c. Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices (2nd edition). San Diego: Academic Press.

Kling, Rob, & Jewett, Tom. 1994. The social design of worklife with computers and networks: a natural systems perspective. Advances in Computers 39. San Diego: Academic Press.

Kling, Rob, Olin, Spencer, & Poster, Mark. (1991). The emergence of postsuburbia" in Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster (eds.), Post-suburban California: The transformation of Orange County since World War II. Berkeley, California. University of California Press.

Kowinski, William Severini. (1985). The Malling of America: an inside look at the great consumer paradise New York. W. Morrow.

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Markus, M. Lynne. (1994). Finding a 'happy medium': the explaining the negative effects of electronic communication on social life at work. ACM Transactions on Informat ion Systems. 12(2), 119-149.

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Marx, Gary. (1990). The case of the omniscient organization. Harvard Business Review. (March-April), 4-12.

Putnam, Robert D. (1993). The prosperous community: social capital and economic growth. Current, 356(Oct), 4-9.

Putnam, Robert D. (1994). What makes democracy work? IPA Review 47(1), 31-34. Rheingold, Howard. (1994). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Addison Wesley.

Schuler, Doug. (1994). Community networks: Building a new participatory medium. Communications of the ACM 37(1), 39-51.

Sennett, Richard. (1977). The Fall of Public Man. New York. Knopf. Van Tassel, Joan. (1994). Yakety-yak, do talk back: PEN, the nation's first publicly funded electronic network, makes a difference in Santa Monica. Wired 2.01, 78-80.

NOTE: Rob Kling is Professor of Information Science and Information Science at Indiana University. Dr. Kling's current research focuses on the ways that computerization is a social process with technical elements, how intensive computerization transforms work, and how computerization entails many social choices.