How might communities evolve online to better meet our needs?
Michelle Barker
Director | Consultant | Open science policy, digital research infrastructure strategy, data science workforce & skills, scientific software community, AI-driven research tools, partnerships. Intuitive.
I’ve been pondering how we might re-imagine communities in an increasingly digital world.
It’s not surprising that a report on how COVID-19 may impact life suggests that we will rely more on digital connections in day to day life (Pew Research Centre & Elon University).
What is interesting is what new community structures might arise online, and how these could innovate to further enhance the connections and collaborations that any community can enable, not to mention the significant benefits to psychological well-being of belonging.
Communities are important; the OECD Expert Panel on Digital Capacity Building and Skills for Data Intensive Science that I chaired made recommendations to member states in 2020 that community development was one of five key areas that needed addressing. COVID-19 is also highlighting their importance, and the need to accelerate the evolution of online communities.
Whilst online communities have long demonstrated that a shared physical location is no longer required, it’s been challenging to apply this to some aspects of our work and education. The vision for 2030 of “Universities without walls” from the European University Association is a good example of how quickly some sectors are responding to the need to move communities substantively online.
As more and more of our communities are digitally transformed, what opportunities will arise? What boundaries might be overcome? There are already significant social media platforms that enable diverse groups of people with common interests to engage together within established norms and structures (which some consider communities) – but could our online communities advance very differently?
For example, how strongly will online communities continue to maintain connections with their physical origins? Geographically dispersed communities such as the Tibetan Buddhists whose prayer flags are shown in the image above have recreated their community structures outside their homeland, but still maintain active connections with Tibet.
With online communities able to spark innovation in a multiple of ways, I’m interested to see what innovations they will apply to their own evolution.
Interesting article Michelle, thank you. Being physically connected in real-time is almost certainly the best case for a community, at least in its formative stages. But given that is impractical for a variety of reasons, it's interesting how technology is "closing the gap". We are moving along the connectivity spectrum from audio (1D) to video (2D), and into VR/AR, avatars etc (3D). I'd be interested in experimenting further with this in Australia through something like AltSpace.