Electronic Tribes: The Virtual Worlds of Geeks, Gamers, Shamans, and Scammers

CHAPTER 9. “Like a neighborhood of sisters”: Can Culture Be Formed Electronically?

T he Internet opens portals into interpersonal and intercultural relations on an unprecedented scale. Interpersonal interactions are multiplying in cyberspace, where disembodied minds meet to discuss shared interests and seek information. When such individuals interact for prolonged periods, do they begin to organize themselves socially? The processes have been widely studied by which individuals come to see themselves as sharing an identity as they join together according to race, class, age, interests, ethnicity, religion, or ability, to name a few.1 When an assemblage of individuals meets nowhere but on a few electronic pages, however, some may doubt that they form a group, much less a tribe or culture. Yet, looking at such a phenomenon may provide insights into the essence of culture, especially if one accepts the notion that culture is primarily a mental construct.2 Looking at a Web site for middle-aged women, this chapter examines how participants socially construct their experience, define themselves, and describe their communication, and seeks to determine whether such interactants can be said to comprise a culture. Interpersonal and intercultural theory about identity formation, group cohesion, and communication rules inform the study. Literature Review Tonnies distinguishes between society (public life) and community (intimate , private, and exclusive), which he further classifies as kinship, locality , and mind.3 Community is often used to describe people’s sense CHAPTER 9 “Like a neighborhood of sisters”: Can Culture Be Formed Electronically? deborah clark vance 144 Emerging Electronic Tribal Cultures of sharing, oneness, and commonality.4 Communication theorists commonly use the term culture to describe shared practices and identities within groups.5 Like Tonnies’s community of mind, cultures emerge among groups of individuals who share something—a sociological category (African American culture, gay culture), workplace (organizational culture), or hobby (surfer culture). This chapter prefers the term culture—“a negotiated set of shared symbolic systems that guide individuals ’ behaviors and incline them to function as a group.”6 Individuals become accustomed to cultural communication patterns and try to predict others’ behavior to ensure their physical and psychological safety. When strangers first interact, they focus on demographic information, then explore mutual attitudes and opinions as they work to reduce uncertainty.7 In cyberspace the personality is fluid.8 In this space, where physical safety is not threatened and demographic information may be lacking, does uncertainty reduction take the same form as in interpersonal encounters? Just as group culture should be regarded as constructed rather than given, the same holds for individual identity.9 Identification begins with imitation and derives from developing an emotional tie with someone.10 If an individual perceives an influential person as trustworthy and of good judgment (like a parent or minister), he accepts her beliefs and integrates them into his own value system; the power source embodied in the influential person garners compliance by effecting reward and punishment.11 Identification with such a figure begins to define belonging , as individuals adopt the beliefs and values of the group to which the influential person belongs. Forming identity involves twin processes—perceived similarity and association.12 Individuals seek similarity in beliefs, values, education, and social status, communicating more with others they perceive to be similar.13 Finding that the other shares a similar attitude also leads to expectations of positive appraisals.14 Identification based on a common reaction to or bond with a leader or an ideology provides group stability. Outsiders can identify with group attributes if they share similar attributes, but not with other group members unless they bond with the group’s leader or central tenets.15 Cultures interpret situations and behaviors idiosyncratically.16 Ingroup meaning exchange develops into a shared epistemology: Social reality thus constructed comprises an expression of a group’s, as well as each individual member’s, identity. Normative rules appear necessary “Like a neighborhood of sisters” 145 to group functioning: Group membership derives in part from shared symbol use, meanings, norms, prescriptions, and worldview.17 This cognitive common ground leads to patterned behaviors which acquire values that become reinforced, resulting in some patterns being accepted and others considered deviant.18 By identifying all tacit and explicit rules of a group, one could reconstruct its culture.19 Developing customs and a collective awareness of its nature helps a group stabilize and perpetuate itself. Sharing a worldview creates a feeling among members of belonging to the group as distinct from being affiliated with those outside the group, a distinction that...