Online environments have become a fact of life for education and business life, but participants do not always experience virtual space as a place where they truly belong. This case example illustrates some ways that social construction concepts, particularly the “communication perspective” of the coordinated management of meaning (CMM) theory, were applied to the development and enactment of an inclusive collaborative online learning program. This online interactive space was envisioned as a “virtual home” and support group for fellowship participants for the development and presentation of their individual projects. Perspectives of program participants and organizers are both represented in this case example to help shed light on the way that the group space evolved over the course of the fellowship and lessons learned from the process. The use of concepts from CMM theory is underscored to reveal the dynamics of communication theory as a source of adding life and dimension to an online collaborative space, contributing to a sense of belongingness.
TopIntroduction
In this chapter, we discuss ways that online communities can be built, shaped, and enacted in ways that enhance a shared sense of belongingness by focusing attention on the dynamics of the communication process. As we spend more and more of our time online, it is increasingly evident just how much the quality of our social experience is shaped by the ways that we interact in virtual space. The online environment is particularly notable as a human construct, and therefore subject to the creative and constitutive input of participants to shape the quality of the experience. The notion of social reality as a human construct has been recognized in the human sciences for some time (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). The approaches to building community and belongingness online described in this chapter are informed by principles of social construction, and further draw on a body of communication theory referred to as the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) (Pearce & Cronen, 1980). Unlike more traditional models of communication, CMM theory views communication as a dynamic and interactive process, not just the conveying of information from a sender to a receiver (Pearce, 2007). This approach, referred to as the “communication perspective” can be applied in helping groups to look at their processes of communication as the grounding for their experience of online social reality. By better understanding this process, and their role in it, members of a group can take ownership for creating a group space that is welcoming, inclusive, and creative. Communication with the group is then experienced as a constitutive process, in that the very act of communicating creates the meanings generated by the people involved.
The Virtual Social World
Technology and uses of new media have greatly expanded the complexity and scope of our social worlds. Today’s information technology systems work at an exponential pace - we have emerging news, accumulated knowledge, and more at our fingertips and available online 24/7 to interact with whenever needed. We can anticipate that technology will continue to impact the field of education, business, and politics, and that forms of communication will continue to become more complex. There are no more limitations of distance, we are now free to connect with those many miles away, and discuss issues that transcend our local boundaries and social horizons. More than just reflecting the current events in our social worlds, these new forms of media can themselves become the message (Mcluhan, 1995), in the sense of adding to the capacity to amplify, conceal, or distort conflicts, affinities, and trends – whether positive or negative. Additionally, our expanded online social worlds let more diverse “others” into our lives, and along with them come the influences of other cultures, ideologies, and life experiences. This raises the possibility of needing more nuanced, or “cosmopolitan” forms of communication that allow for the accommodation of more richness, the toleration of ambiguity, and include more reflective space to promote deeper listening before responding (Penman, 2021). In this sense, the quality of our online experience can be shaped by the interaction of the characteristics of the space itself, and our ability to navigate this complexity. We may well ask ourselves how we can live in harmony within this expanded social world? Will we “belong” more simply by assimilating more information through media technology? Is it possible to mirror face-to-face interactions with others in the online environment, and will this evoke the same engagement and emotions? This presents some other practical questions: will individuals be able to bond effectively with each other at a distance? Will it be the same as for individuals who interact daily in person and share common experiences? To answer these and other emergent questions, it is helpful to look more deeply at the communicative processes of forming of relationships with diverse others, and making shared meaning of new information in conversation with them.