The Online Potential for Group Formation in PEG TV

In New York Law School Professor Beth Noveck’s article, “Democracy–The Video Game: Virtual Worlds and Collective Action,” from The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds, she talks about the promise of virtual worlds, like Second Life, in fostering new forms of group participation in democratic practice. She explains that while the “First-Generation Internet” has reduced the cost of becoming a speaker, it “also eliminates the familiar structures and rules of real space that contribute to sustaining groups over time” (261). As a result, individuals remain largely disconnected from groups which she defines as “an intentional collective that creates a sense of belonging to something and manifests a shared purpose” (259).

Virtual worlds (or the “Second-Generation Internet”), Noveck explains, puts place back into cyberspace. Virtual worlds make real-time, visual interaction and group formation possible. She writes that a user’s avatar “is akin to assuming the role of citizen.” They represent “public characters, personalities designed to function in a public and social capacity” (269). Further, when people see themselves through their avatars, and the avatars of others, this makes “it possible for people to see the groups to which they belong and participate in them more effectively by sharing tasks via a computer network” (276).

What does all this have to do with public access TV?

As I mentioned in a previous post, others have commented on how the “first-generation Internet” impacts physical group formation as individuals spend more time online, ultimately resulting in what Barry Wellman has called “networked individualism.”

What I am interested in exploring further in Noveck’s article is the following claim:

There is no substitution for the fellowship of the Kaffeehaus in cyberspace. Not only do people who want to sustain groups have to work harder to maintain their bonds, but also there is no way to cultivate allegiance or attachment to a place . . . There is another impediment to group life online. The absence of any connection to “real-world” institutions and power disconnects the social space of cyberspace from what we think of as the public sphere. (264)

Now if we consider that an increasing number of public access centers are implementing social media tools (e.g., Drupal websites, blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc.) to enable individual and group participation online, I believe this puts place back into cyberspace because it focuses group activity back towards a physical location–the community media center. Before jumping to virtual worlds to restore this missing element, I would argue that the promise of public access media for group activity (in the first-generation Internet) is the grounding nature that the community media center provides to its members in this way. As a result, public access media centers assist in enabling unique opportunities for individuals in local communities to join and sustain groups over time across both virtual and physical space.