BuInspiration

Literature Review – Authors Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock

Hooi Kah Suit

Title: Relationship of Facebook online community

The One Academy of Communication Design

‘Communities in Cyberspace’ is a book mainly about the virtual communities in the Internet. This literature review will only focus on chapter 7 that discussed about ‘Virtual communities as communities’. In one of the section study about ‘is online relationship narrowly specialized or broadly supportive’. This topic is important because it provides different debate among different researchers. Therefore, it provides broader knowledge and different prospects to study an online community.

The author’s research project mainly focuses on analyze Facebook as the virtue community platform. Facebook considers one of the top online social network sites that provide different kinds of support. Yet, information is one of many social resources that are exchanged on the online world.

According to Kling mentioned that online community could be quite narrow if it focuses on specific topic and existing for information exchange (Smith and Kollock, 2003). This study is true when Facebook group is only focuses on a common interest and the online relationship could be narrow specialized when there is a policy that form by the organizer itself for member to follow. In contrast with Wellman and Wortley study, argue that people do get all kinds of support from community members but they have to turn to different ones for different kinds of help (Smith and Kollock, 2003). A particular strength of this is it focuses on the relationship of the members instead of the whole organization community. For this matter, it encourages individual in building bond with each other in order to get all kinds of support like companionship or emotional aid.

The information is reliable because it was published in book and the information cannot be simply modified too like some other online article. In addition, the author of this book is one of the sociologist and an associate professor. The source is objective where it provides different perspectives of the argument. Besides, this source can be use for the author to identify what kind of relationship or support that the Facebook community provide.

Reference

Smith, M. and Kollock, P. (2003). Communities in cyberspace. London: Routledge, p.168.