Online vs. IRL: how online communities are more like your face-to-face groups than you’d think
We live in a digital age — virtual communities are becoming our primary way of communicating with one another, from social media platforms, to virtual chat rooms, and a plethora of ways to send and receive information digitally. And as the world combatted Covid-19, the Pandemic expedited the integration of digital communication into our sense of normalcy.
These online communities are more like our face-to-face communities than you’d think. The dynamics, the substance of talk, etc. are all the same, you simply skip having to travel anywhere to have those conversations and can have them from the comfort of your individual homes instead.
So — how exactly can we effectively replicate our groups IRL to these online communities? Here are some key pillars to help build successful online groups:
Treat online community members like real people.
When online communities think and treat members “not as pixels on a screen but as real people with real needs, pains and interests” then the dynamic of the online community will be substantial enough to be successful. Essentially, in digital forums, keep in mind the person behind the screen.
Have the same community goals online as you would in person.
Online communities are all about using the power of digital communication to do 3 things:
- Build personal relationships and networks of trust.
- Bring people together with common interests.
- Engage these specific groups of people.
Groups in real life have the same objectives, simply going about executing them in different ways.
Groups are centered around providing a support system — IRL and online.
Groups also give us a support system. As Ashley mentioned, this is built on the concept of family, conversation, nurture, comfort, and acceptance. These are great pillars for us to lean into when trying to build and maintain healthy groups both in the “real world” and online.
This also has to do with “Me to We behavior.” As Fabian explains, “everyone enters a new group with a pure personal identity, the Me identity, curious to find out more about the group.” Overtime, if that behavior transforms into a We identity, a level of collaboration, trust, and group-oriented mindset helps the group as a whole and its individuals reap the benefits of community.
Overall, we as people are group-oriented. We need to be a part of community for our own health and well-being, and those communities can come from face-to-face or virtual settings. Both operate very similarly and serve the same purposes. This is important to remember when building and sustaining online communities — they are only successful in curating meaningful conversation when they function as they would in-person.
