I am in a fraternity. By its nature, I am very close to the other members of my fraternity. We exhibit what Tonnies would describe as Gemeinschaft. We are "a collective based on strong interpersonal ties, face-to-face interaction, a shared focus and common purpose, language and identity, all largely associated with an ideal of the pastoral village." Assuming you change the pastoral village to a fraternity house, that is almost an exact description of what a fraternity consists of.
I live in my fraternity house. We are able to live together because we share common ground. Rush and pledging made sure that we fit in with the group that we were joining. Although we are all of different backgrounds, and have a wide variety of majors, we share common goals, ideals and interests. Our shared focus and common purpose is to create a smaller community at Cornell where we can thrive, to create a house that will survive for many years and allow future members to reap the benefits, and to uphold the same values as our other chapters.
There are arguments in Haythornwaite both for how online communication can help and how it can hinder communities. If anything, I would say that CMC helps our community. An important part of our house is our alumni. While some live close enough to meet face to face, most do not. Without CMC we would not be able to communicate as easily with our alumni who besides offering financial support can offer advice and share past experiences. The fraternity is a community with a large social capital. I can trust the other members and can gain new connections that I would not have had otherwise.
CMC does not just help with older alumni. It allows us to stay in touch with recent alumni. While people do not really leave the community (they are still members, even when they graduate), the people that we can have FTF communication with changes every year with new members coming in and old members moving away. In addition, most members that are still at Cornell do not stay during the summer and winter, but we still need to stay in touch. CMC allows for communication during those months that FTF communication is not possible.
SNA shows that we exhibit characteristics of social capital. We share common ground, networking, and reciprocity. Although the community could continue without CMC, CMC allows us to be stronger and to use the community to its full potential.
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7 comments:
A fraternity is not something that I would have immediately associated with existing to some degree in CMC. But from reading your post, I realized that CMC has definitely helped fraternity alumni stay connected and is a critical part of the community. It sounds like being able to keep in touch and make new connections so easily has considerably increased the cohesiveness of the fraternity. It's definitely a great example of an online community brought together by its common ground.
I agree with you that the fraternity setting is a good testing ground for the community theories mentioned in class. I think CMC is especially helpful here because it allows you to keep in touch not only with strong ties, but also weak ties. Since weak ties are often the source of the most advantageous information, CMC facilitates discovery of opportunities. CMC also seems to be a highly effective way of getting in touch with weak ties, to whom a phone call might seem intrusive.
Josh, great post. I can't believe I didn't think of fraternities as I prepared to do this assignment.
You correctly point out that fraternities exhibit many of the main attributes of a Gemeinschaft, and go on to support that statement using course materials.
I also think that Emily did a great job in her comment to summarize your final paragraphs by including some of the course vocabulary. Many of the contacts that we make through fraternities and sororities consist of weak ties, or will soon become weak ties once we leave college. In this sense, CMC facilitates continued friendships and advantageous professional contacts, both of which originated in a (largely) offline social network.
Josh,
This is a very strong post. Like the other comments, I love how you explained how CMC helps and benefits your community. By bringing in alumni and how the use of CMC contributes to keeping in touch hith them definitely strengthened your post.
I also really liked how you related your fraternity and its various aspects to what we've been studying in class. You covered every topic very well.
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Hi Joshua,
I really liked your post. I think you did a great job of showing why your community is Gemeinschaft and how your community has common ground. Not only did you show that common ground plays an important part in the network, but you also discussed why common ground is important in keeping the network together and allowing you to live together with one another.
One thing that I think you could add to the post to make it stronger would be to discuss strong and weak ties and how it plays out within your fraternity. It sounds like the alumni are an example of weak ties as you do not talk with them frequently. This also relates to Haythornthwaite's argument about the strength of weak ties. You wrote in your post that through these alumni, your fraternity gains social capital and connections.
Danielle
Radical post Josh,
I, too, am in a fraternity here and I share your view that CMC plays a very important role in my community. I live out of the house this year so my strong ties with my brothers is already hampered. I don't see them nearly as much as I did last year. Through Email and instant messaging, I can stay much closer with them than if I had to rely on going to the house or seeing them on campus. The CMC interaction definitely helps me maintain strong ties with my brothers.
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