Abstract

The Internet provides new bases for the enhancement of social capital in local communities. The development of both personal and community identity involves social interaction and a process of social comparison. The development of the Internet and other forms of electronic communication are helping to divorce community from the constraints of space and time. Online relationships provide the foundation for the development of virtual communities. Where these are harnessed to local interests they enable an enhancement of local social capital. The development of community, online as well as offline, requires ongoing patterns of interaction, common identity and the evolution of group norms. Community building requires an effective focus: eLearning provides one way in which this may be attempted. As part of an EC Project investigating the use of the Internet for collaboration online, an eLearning module has been developed which attempts to build community through the presentation of community portraits. Initial runs of the module in geographically marginal areas have suggested that the approach possesses considerable promise. Developments in information and communications technologies are leading to a further diminution of the power of geography in the determination of community and the latest incarnation of Community Portraits largely eschews geography in favour of a socio-cultural basis of identity. In the future it is suggested that community may have more to do with cyberspace than with geography..

Introduction

The relationship between the Internet, and social capital has recently become a topic of considerable salience. Putnam (2000: 180) adopts a neutral position:

“the Internet will not automatically offset the decline in more conventional forms of social capital, but it has that potential. In fact it is hard to imagine solving our contemporary civic dilemmas without computer-mediated communication”

A few writers, in the early days of the Internet, suggested that the growth of computer-mediated communications might be at the expense of community involvement (e.g. McClelland 1994). The more general consensus is that the Internet provides another potent avenue for the development and maintenance of social relations. Wellman (1997: 179) points out that “when a computer network connects people, it is a social network”. A number of empirical studies suggest “that rather than weakening community, the Internet adds to existing face-to-face and telephone contact” (Wellman et al. 2002: 151). Arnold (2003: 83) goes so far as stating that “for the ordinary citizen, social interaction is the 'killer application' of the Internet”. This has wide implications, affecting not just social capital, but the very bases of community and identity.