Political Communities

Ive been reading through the week 9 tutorial and lecture transcripts, and its got me thinking about political communities. That is to say, communities that are created and affected by online information.

In some respects, the Internet as a communication medium has opened out eyes to a lot of different ideas that we may not have had access to otherwise. The only way that smaller political parties, such as the UK Independence Party, can get their views out to a mass audience in a cost effective way is via the Internet – they do not have the same access to the media that the Labour party may have. It also gives them the opportunity to push their own propaganda on people – some would argue this is wrong, but it’s the same thing mainstream parties have been doing for years, only via the Internet rather than the Press / TV.

On the other end of the scale we see the darker side of online communities. I for one am all for free speech, as I believe the only way we can find out the truth about anything is to allow people to TELL the truth. However, after the July 7th bombings, reports begin to come in about websites praising the bombings, and others addressing their ‘followers’ to claim a success against the West and encouraging others to do the same. This isn’t so much as expressing a view, as it is inciting violence.

These communities may not be based online, but for many of them their following may be. Supporting the UK independence party and voting for them is very real, but your support of them will most likely be from online communications, such as emails, as they have no other way of reaching a mass audience.

COOL forums revisited....

I wont lie, I haven’t been the most active member of the COOL forums on WebCT… perhaps its partly the info I was given about the forums on previous years, and partly due to the lack of interest I had in it after the first couple of weeks… But I HAVE been making an appearance, be it a mainly covert presence.

There’s no doubt about it, interest in the forums is certainly flagging. Considering the number of posts I was met with after I logged on for the first time 3 weeks into the module, 6 weeks after that and the seriousness of posts has gone down, the level of people actually posting for the benefit of others has deteriorated, and it seems most posts are now related around off topic and general personal conversations. I get the feeling that in the initial panic in the few weeks, and after being told in lectures that participation is being noted, people posted for the sake of posting. I could well be one of these people – I tried to get involved, but I couldn’t see anything worth getting involved in.

What does this tell us? Perhaps it suggests that people can’t be forced into a community – individuals have to have a good reason to commit their time to others, and a university module may not be a good enough reason. Perhaps with some of the abuse that was thrown around at the start, people were less inclined to post. Perhaps the conversations being mainly personal meant that people found it more difficult to get involved. It could even come down to language barriers – looking at the list of people on the module, its possible that many of the students are from non-English speaking backgrounds and may not have the same grasp of typing the English language as others. This is purely speculation of course; the fact that my surname is Chrisostomou could suggest to others that perhaps I’m not from an English background…

One things for certain, I don’t think I’m likely to take anything useful away from the COOL forums from this point on. I’ll keep checking regularly, and hopefully I’ll have a more positive update come 5-6 weeks from now, but right now I can’t see it going anywhere other than downhill.

Pornography - a community of its own?

I surprised even myself when I went on a search to get an idea of how many communities there were based around pornography. Of course I knew there’d be a lot… it’s one of the few things everyone worldwide has in common – the appreciation of the opposite (and sometimes the same) sex!



Every Google search for different terms brought up a whole new list of possibilities. These ranged from people posting amateur pictures of themselves (or so they said), to message boards sharing general porn pictures they’ve found, as far as entire communities built on sharing candid photos of nude celebrities. Whatever you’re into – there’ll be a community of people into the same thing!

One in particular that I clicked on was http://www.celebforum.co.uk . The point of this site was simply for users to post pictures of celebrities on a message board format, nude or otherwise. It was intriguing the way the community operated, in that an entire message board had been set up for people to request photos of people and there seemed to be several people that must have immense private collections of pornography, simply replying to peoples messages and posting the relevant photos. The interaction was there between the different people, and the more active of the members seemed to take great pride in supplying the photos that everyone wanted.

The arguments have been made in the past that pornography on the web was just a place for perverts to hide. But when you consider it, what’s more natural than sexual urges? As well as the myth that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, all the Internet has done for this is to digitalise photos and create a place where users can find pictures relating to their fetishes, likes, etc, without it being shoved in the faces of people that don’t like it. Think of it like this, what’s more likely to catch the attention of a child – a website with age restriction, or the porn magazine that sit on the top shelf of every newsagent in the country?

From what I’ve seen after checking out a few of these sites is that they’re no different to any other community, except that they have a goal – to share photos. Arguably, that’s more than be said for general chat rooms, full of inane chatter about what the person had for dinner last night…

Bit Torrent – a community of pirates?

Bit Torrent is a protocol developed by a man called Bram Cohen as a way of distributing files of large sizes across the internet to several people at once. Its not surprise then that this was quickly adopted by the file sharing community as a way of sharing large files, such as videos. It also allows for downloading entire folders of data, so entire TV series can be shared with a single download.



I’ve used this service for years as a way of getting hold of TV shows only shown in America, or even catching up with my favourite shows I’ve missed for whatever reason. I’m even slightly ashamed to admit I once used this service for Eastenders… ;)

I’ve never really bought into other file sharing communities, such as Kazaa or Edonkey, partly because of the spyware risks associated with many of them, but this method seemed different. Rather than using the software in an anonymous self contained way such as Kazaa does, whereby the client software does the searching, compiling of search results and downloading in a way that means you never need to know who you got it from, ‘torrent’ files used to initiate the download can be made by anyone and are distributed mainly via message boards or search engines, such as http://www.isohunt.com or http://www.uknova.com . The bonus of this is that you can request a file/program/song you want, and someone else can create a tracking file for you to download it straight from them. This allows for a level of interaction between users, but also allows for downloads to be public or private, depending on who you give the torrent file to or if you publicise it.

Obviously, there are legal implications with using these types of file sharing methods – many organizations, such as the MPAA (motion picture association of America) have got involved and taken individuals to court over persistent ‘sharing’, but has thus far been able to affect the overall ‘community’, or dissuade them from using the software.

Organisations such as the MPAA will always have difficulty putting an end to things this. Unlike Kazaa users that rely on the central Kazaa-run ‘Fast Track network’, Bit Torrent is more decentralized and so difficult to attribute the blame to any one person or company. The community has been developed and thrives on support from each other, which it receives. And it’s hard to imagine that while DVDs still retail at £16.99 each, and people are restricted to watching TV broadcast on local TV channels, anyone will ever manage to convince users that Bit Torrent is a bad idea.