Journal 1: Community

Not too long ago, the word “community” was often associated with a defined population, as in towns or cities.  More recently, the word community has been used more broadly and frequently, often to define groups of people with a common interest or purpose.  For example, as a new student at Florida State, I could now be considered to be a part of the FSU community.  My parents, due to their professions, would be in the health care community.  My brother, who spends much of his discretionary time on x-box, would definitely be associated with the online gaming community.  As a consequence of the word community being utilized more broadly, individuals belong to numerous communities, not just the one they physically reside in.  Besides belonging to the FSU community, I also run cross country, therefore I’m also a part of the running community.  The forum people use to communicate within all of these new communities has also evolved.  

The proliferation of technology has also afforded individuals the ability to associate themselves with more communities and share experiences or information within those communities regardless of geographical confines.  Despite these advances in technology, the most common way to communicate within a community remains the written word.   Many people still learn of the happenings within the community they reside by reading articles written in their local newspaper.  But they also get their news in less formal ways, and the style of writing in those forums has definitely changed with the technology.   Those in the Twitter community receive some of their news written in 140 characters or less.  The hand-written letter to a colleague has been replaced with email.  Regardless of the form, it remains the written word, although in some cases far more succinct and definitely less formal.  The style of writing my parents use to report on new processes or findings within their health care community is vastly different than the writing style I may deploy when posting updates on the running club blog I participate in.  No matter the forum used to communicate within a community, and despite massive advances in communications technology, writing has remained the most common method to convey information between people, and within communities.