Online Communities and Their Impact on People of Different Age Coursework

There are so many interesting topics to investigate, and each topic requires its approaches and research. I want to present a kind of research that will be interesting to students and adults and will touch upon the issues, which turn out to be burning nowadays. I am going to analyze the influence of online communities on people of different ages. So, the purpose of this study is to comprehend why people may spend so much time online and use different online communities to communicate and find out interesting and useful information and can easily forget about all those real-life routines, which have been so much significant for them not long time ago. It will be a research purpose I set up for my study. Nowadays, there are lots of forms of online communities, and people have different levels of intimacy within any of them (Farkas, 2007, p. 88).

Another purpose of my study is to evaluate the reasons why people prefer online communication to real-life communication that may help to improve people’s real-life communication and promote the vast majority of people not to forget how wonderful reality may be. Many people have already concluded that they can do much more things online and achieve better results in many spheres of life (Lazar, 2002); however, they forget that their life is not all about computers. Fresh air, blue sky, and feelings – this is what makes this life complete. So, the practical purpose of my study is to gather as many opinions as possible and analyze what holds so many students in front of their computers.

Online communities take an important place in many people’s lives: some people cannot imagine a day without checking their mail and communicating with distant friends, and some people may even become angry if another person does not answer his/her e-mail within a short period. Mostly, online communication has some kind of purpose, so persuasion plays a significant role even here (Janoschka, 2004). And persuasion may cause unpredictable reactions and emotions. With time, people become advanced enough to express their emotions. Even a simple ’emoticon’ may present much information (Rule, 2002). If a person does not know how to react to this or that icon, the results may be unpredictable as well. People write, ask questions, comment on others’ messages to achieve certain purposes. However, the chosen ways maybe not be comprehended by another user. This is why online communication may considerably influence the human physical condition and even self-evaluation. To my mind, the focus of my study is how exactly online communication and communities affect people’s lives, and why people cannot even notice that their passion for computers may become a kind of sick. So, now, I can define passion for computers as one more human obsession that may lead to serious problems in near future.

The locus of my study will be identified taking into consideration the above-mentioned focus. So, the locus may be different types of communication between people online, people’s reactions during the exchange of letters, and decisions, made as to the result of online communication. To conduct good research, it is necessary to consider both research and practical purposes, underline once again the focus and locus of the study, and then start thinking about the best ways to get the answers.

In general, communicating online means some kind of communication that happens between people, who cannot see each other in the exact period. However, the examples of the use of communicating online demonstrate that its usage may have quite different meanings: “I like communicating online with my friends” or “Communicating online with my colleges provides me with an opportunity to save time”. Each example has one thing in common – a person under consideration does not have a chance to talk face to face with another person, this is why communicating online turns out to be a good decision. However, this communication may be on different levels: professional or some close relation. Interpersonal communication is a “well-established area, complete with a base of knowledge, theories, and research” (Wood, 2009, xi). When people are communicating online to solve some problems or because of business affairs, they have to be impartial, strict and do not use any emotionally colored words or signs. When people, who have close relations or do not have any business affairs with each other, are communicating online, they may use any style of communication. In this case, communication may be free; but still, certain measures have to be minded in order not to offend another person and make him/her take wrong actions. From first sight, such a simple thing as communicating online may cause no difficulties and no misunderstanding. However, if we look closer and closer, it will become clear that people have to follow certain rules and remember about communication ethics to be a proper part of this world because communication ethics must be “more than a hollow skeleton of worldwide code and rhetorical declarations” (Wilkins & Christians, 2008, p. 66). This is why communicating online will be always interesting and useful to research.

Reference List

1. Farkas, M. G. (2007). Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.
2. Janoschka, A. (2004). Web Advertising: New Forms of Communication on the Internet. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series. 131, p. ix-227.
3. Lazar, J. (2002). Managing IT/Community Partnerships in the 21^st Century. Richmond, US: Idea Group Inc (IGI).
4. Rule, C. (2002). Online Dispute Resolution for Business: B2B, E-Commerce, Consumer, Employment, Insurance, and Other Commercial Conflicts. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
5. Wilkins, L. & Christians, C. C. (2008). The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics. Taylor & Francis.
6. Wood, J. (2009). Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2009.