Community and Social Media

What sort of community does social media engender?  Deriving from a very transient media that prizes immediacy over deliberation, the sense of community that social media produces is large on appearance but short on substance.  Perhaps this helps explain how mobs of individuals can suddenly band together as if they are a single organism without any real, substantive intention.  

The same superficial sense of community that can be ignited in a flash mob can also easily be exploited by politicians, disaffected groups, terrorist enterprises, and corporations seeking to manufacture tastes among consumers.  

If the immediacy and speed with which community can form in the internet age is the persona, then perhaps  violent, mindless collective actions like those displayed by a mobs, the Tea Party activists, terrorists, or youngsters attending a rave are shadow aspects of communities in the internet age.This discussion stirred some thoughts concerning the sort of community that social media engenders.  Deriving from a very transient media that prizes immediacy over deliberation, the sense of community that social media produces is large on appearance but short on substance.  Perhaps this helps explain how mobs of individuals can suddenly band together as if they are a single organism without any real, substantive intention.  

The same superficial sense of community that can be ignited in a flash mob can also easily be exploited by politicians, disaffected groups, terrorist enterprises, and corporations seeking to manufacture tastes among consumers.  

If the immediacy and speed with which community can form in the internet age is the persona, then perhaps  violent, mindless collective actions like those displayed by a mobs, the Tea Party activists, terrorists, or youngsters attending a rave are shadow aspects of communities in the internet age.