User:Stonecoil/Virtual community

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Grammar/Wording Changes
Virtual communities are used for a variety of social and professional groups; interaction between community members vary from personal to purely formal. For example, an email distribution list could serve as a personal means of communicating with family and friends, and also formally to coordinate with coworkers.

MOVE INTERNET BASED SECTION TO TYPES SECTION

Ultimate Goal of Software[edit]
User Experience is the ultimate goal for the program or software used by an internet community, because user experience will determine the software’s success. The software for social media pages or virtual communities is structured around the users’ experience and designed specifically for online use. User experience testing is utilized to reveal something about the personal experience of the human being using a product or system. When it comes to testing user experience in a software interface, three main characteristics are needed: a user who is engaged, a user who is interacting with a product or interface, and defining the users’ experience in ways that are and observable or measurable. User experience metrics are based on user retention, using a consistent set of measurements to collect data on user experience.

The diverse use of the Internet for social participation in virtual communities raises new issues for researchers and developers trying to ensure the best overall user experience. The human-computer interactions that are measured during a typical usability experience test focus on individual user performances as opposed to virtual ethnography. The success of online communities depend on the integration of usability and social semiotics. Usability testing metrics can be used to determine social codes by evaluating a user’s habits when interacting with a program. The information provided during a usability test can determine demographic factors and help define the semiotic social code. Dialogue and social interactions, support information design, navigation support, and accessibility are integral components specific to online communities. As virtual communities grow, so do the diversity of their users. However, the technologies are not made to be any more or less intuitive. Usability tests can ensure users are communicating effectively using social and semiotic codes while maintaining their social identities.

On Identity
In 1997, MCI Communications released the "Anthem" advertisement, heralding the internet as a utopia without age, race, or gender. Lisa Nakamura argues in chapter 16 of her 2002 book After/image of identity: Gender, Technology, and Identity Politics, that technology gives us iterations of our age, race and gender in virtual spaces, as opposed to them being fully extinguished. Nakamura uses a metaphor of "after-images" to describe the cultural phenomenon of expressing identity on the internet. The idea is that any performance of identity on the internet is simultaneously present and past-tense, "posthuman and projectionary," due to its immortality.

Doctor Sherry Turkle, professor of Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, believes the internet is a place where actions of discrimination are less likely to occur. In her 1995 book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, she argues that discrimination is easier in reality as it is easier to identify as face value, what is contrary to your norm. The internet allows for a more fluid expression of identity and thus, we become more accepting of inconsistent personae within ourselves and others. For these reasons, Turkle argues users existing in online spaces are less compelled to judge or compare ourselves to our peers, allowing people in virtual settings an opportunity to gain a greater capacity for acknowledging diversity.

Nakamura argues against this view, coining the term Identity Tourism in her 1999 article Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet. Identity tourism, in the context of cyberspace, is a term used to the describe the phenomenon of users donning and doffing other-race and other-gender personae. Nakamura finds that performed behavior from these identity tourists often perpetuate stereotypes.

Gender
The gaming community is extremely vast and accessible to a wide variety of people, However, there are negative effects on the relationships 'gamers' have with the medium when expressing identity of gender. Doctor Adrienne Shaw notes in her 2012 article ''Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity,'' that gender, perhaps subconsciously, plays a large role in identifying oneself as a 'gamer.' A study published in 2000 found that men were the most likely group to identify themselves as 'gamers', with no other category of identity (race, sexuality, religion, education, age, platform) showing such a contrast. This has an effect on the demographic that video games are marketed to, as well as the kind of games that are produced. This is not because there is no market for gamers that are women, transgender, or genderqueer. Rather, the marketing to men becomes illogical as there are a wide variety of potential consumers, who become distanced from the medium due to its marketing.

Notes and References
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