Human relationships in the virtual sphere: an ethnographic approach

DENISE CARTER 'LIVING IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IN CYBERSPACE'

Denise Carter exposes the results obtained from her research on the relationships in a ''cybercontext'', from an ethnographic perspective, and through a field study consisting on the use of diverse methods, as participant observation, collection of qualitative and quantitative data, and the application for analysis of such data through a filter of theories, which actually correspond to the theories used previously for other authors in traditional relationship studies.

‘’Living in virtual communities:  an ethnography of human relationships in cyberspace’’ approaches the new circumstance in which society finds itself in the twenty first century:  the presence of an online sphere, result from the emergence of the new media technologies and the Internet world wide web. This virtual reality, different from the traditional reality, qualifies people to set up relationships, but are these relationships based on the same schemes and patterns as the face-to-face traditional relationships?

The research field study is made in a virtual community called Cybercity, and it is carried out by Denise Carter participating on the community and trying to find the mechanisms that operate when making friendships and having relationships in the online world.

First of all, she realized that the online members of the community, considered this virtual sphere as an integral part of their everyday life, which means it is not separated from the real world, as long as they considered that space just like any other place to meet people. This could be confirmed by the fact that many of this relationships often moved to the offline world, as Carter checked. What the author states from this is that the relationship networks are being extended, not changed.

These relationships have similar characteristics to the traditional relationships, as they are usually informal, personal and private, and based on elements of trust, which eventually bring up disclosure to flow up intimacy to the relationship. But the mechanisms may be different, although the elements are similar, because, as Giddens points too: in cyber-relationships, the logic of the interaction is from the inside to the outside, since the participants don’t have the face-to-face barriers, the external social factors which appear first in the offline world relationships and make them ‘’colder’’. In the virtual world it is easier to set up a free-floating relationship, different to the traditional one.

As Carter understands online and offline relationship logic, it appears that this model shows two paradoxes: first, the pure-relationships that lack the external social influences, and that flows from the inside personality of the person without the face-to-face barriers, eventually may move to an offline relationship. In this case, the meeting in real life brings up again the traditional character to the friendship, because the visual contact makes appear the social categories, which without them it was possible to have a pure online relationship.

Second, as the author experiences this online-to-offline step, she notices the need to trust without external referents is balanced by the desire to externally validate the truth. ‘’Trust can be maintained even when external validation has failed’’, is how Carter explains the relationship was pure, because of the inside-outside logic, and the external validation may be only a matter of instinct.

In one way it seems the new technologies enlarged the relationship networks among people, and the virtual world is offering a scene where there are no geographical barriers, where the social stigma of the image and appearance is saved, and where it is possible to build up consistent friendships based on other reasons apart from the space or social need, which means based on personal and not institutional reasons.

Space for social interaction has been enlarged, but the same people use these spaces. Virtual communities may enlarge or complement the old fashion social networks, but as it is only an extension, and the external validation in real life is anyway present, I do not think this online context will be able to change the nature of relationships in reality, as well as society’s nature, but it will only complicate and enrich the social communication which compounds our society.