Week 6: Community and Culture in the Blogosphere. It's not Small Small World

For this weeks post i had to stray from the underpinning theme of my blog, instead, delving into the inter-connectivity of the real and online culture via the blogosphere.

Here goes...

To everyone out there who was raised by the likes of Walt Disney and his magic, im sure you’ll all be aware of the painfully beautiful, yet very repetitive line

‘It’s a small world after all,’

Video From:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxvlKp-76io

From a young age, i personally, as I'm sure is the case of many other Y's, grew up sheltered under the belief that the world, with its ‘one moon and one golden sun’ was a single domain. One which wasn't going to grow any more than Arnold Schwartznegger's biceps.

Anything on the internet was not considered real, it was always part of cyberspace, or an online realm separate to the thoughts and behaviors of the real world. 

With recent online innovations, and trends such as blogging, i have come to believe that the distinction between what is real-world, and what is cyberspace is slowly disappearing from our understanding of reality, and it can largely be related back to culture.

A culture is something that defines one group of people from the next, through behavioural characteristics, beliefs, and understanding of the world around. Generally, culture is shared through the interaction of people usually with in a particular geographical region, and often is a way of defining one nation from the next. 

The blogosphere, according to Merlyna Lim, ‘connects familiar strangers based on ‘old’ and traditional boundaries.’ (Lim, M; 2012) It allows for the flow of culture between the real and online worlds, connecting people not only in these worlds as separate domains, but also, to an extent, personifying what we know to be the internet.

It is with the support of the blogosphere that real life culture can be shared between different geographical locations, as well as peoples online presence, individually and as part of an online community.

The Blogosphere means that ‘conventional boundaries and barriers can be transcended’, it forms a bridge between our everyday thoughts and the online world, creating a dystopia which makes me question my childhood belief that in fact 'it's a small small world.'

References

Merlyna Lim (2012) Life Is Local in the Imagined Global Community: Islam

and Politics in the Indonesian Blogosphere, Journal of Media and Religion, 11:3, 127-140, DOI:

10.1080/15348423.2012.706144