In this tutorial, I joined up to the Petstar online community, www.petstar.co.nz
This is a New Zealand based online community where "eccentric" pet lovers can create alter egos for their pets. This online community allows them create pet profiles and make friends with other pets.
The services that are provided include:
- Ability to contribute pictures and stories about their pets, create a profile for their pet
- Sharing of information about the care of animals, news articles
- rate other pets
- Directory for animal services
- Can advertise animals to buy and sell
- send messages to other members of the community
People choose to contribute to this community because they have an interest and a love for their pets. As I identified before, this online community allows the member to create a profile for their pet and create a personality for their pet.
This is an example of the topics being discussed in this online community:
A news article "we are what we eat -so now are our pets"(This news article a slightly long to add to this blog posting so I will summarise what the article covers). This article discusses the idea of feeding your pets healthy food, maybe even putting them on a vegan diet. The article includes statistics about the pet food industry and that more and more pet owners are choosing to feed their pets gourmet pet food.
This online community does not appear to have any potential ethical issues however there are many other online communities in which ethical issues may arise. Participating in an online community does not come with the consequences of traditional social interaction. Some members will use an online community to bully other people. This especially occurs between teenagers and because they are at a delicate time in their development, this bullying may seriously affect their self esteem along with other things.
This online community gives its members the ability to connect with other people of similar interests as well as providing connections over great distances instantly. The traditional community does not generally provide opportunities to make profiles for your pets. Most people may view this as an odd occupation therefore this online community provides a safe environment for people to be themselves and enjoy their interests.
Like other online communities this community lacks the face to face social interaction that the a traditional community can provide.
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