Two communities I thought would be interesting to compare for my blog post this week are my organization at Penn State, The Multicultural Undergraduate Law Association, where we help to prepare minorities for the law school journey. And my online community I am apart of via group me named “Black Girls Do Law”. These two organizations are very similar in which they provide resources and help minorities navigate the law school journey. The only differences are that one is specifically for women, and one is completely online and the other is in person (except for this year due to COVID).
I can personally say that these two organizations offer me different things. According to the reading this week states “participation on social networking sites promotes a sense of ‘networked individualism’ rather than a true sense of community” (Gruman, 2016). I definitely see this when it comes to my online community. There are about 2,000 women in the community chat I am in from across the world. When I joined the chat, I didn’t know what to expect. As I have been going through my law school application process, I realized they are a social support group. If I have any hardships or any questions about the process I can write in this chat and someone will get back to me within the next few seconds. There are also 2,000 women who attend different law schools from around the world that can be a great source of networking. In a few years, I will be able to give those answers to the new women in the chat who needs help as I did.
This online community differs from my face-to-face one in the sense that I initially joined it to make friends that had similar interests as me. I wanted friends to socialize with and although we would be talking about law school, I wanted a friend where we could hang out and do other stuff as well such as go out to eat, paint, watch movies, etc. In the reading it states “members of social networking sites tended to have large friend networks, their networks contained a number of people they didn’t know or knew on a very limited basis, and many of their “friends” did not know others in their network” (Gruman, 2016). From personal experience this is true. In my in person community, we do bonding events where even if I don’t personally know someone, I know somethings about them. In online communities, I pick and choose who to interact with.
Evidently, both my organization have its perks and things that may not be so great. However, the mission is carried out within both.
References:
Gruman, J. A., Hart, K. E., & Ianni, P. A. (2016). Applying Social Psychology to Personal Relationships. In L. M. Coutts, J. A. Gruman, & F. W. Schneider (Eds.), Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (pp. 525-547). SAGE Publications.