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Sociology of Digital Communities: Bridging the Gap between Theories of “Internet Spectatorship” and “Rule System Theory”
Abstract: Social life is regulated by rules. The order of norms regulating human behavior is considered as the central aspect of society by various scholars. Durkheim considered ‘social fact’ primarily in normative terms. Here in this paper we try to explore the relationship between theories of ‘axionormative’ order worked out by Tom Burns and his group broadly under evasion of rules and theories of internet spectatorship. The relevance of these theories to the emerging discipline of Sociology of Digital Communities is discussed. Broadly, normative changes refer to the replacement or modification of one or more components of the normative structure: norms, values, roles, institutions, institutional complexes. The change of established norms from one state to another is a normative deviation leading to normative morphogenesis. One of the ways through which normative morphogenesis occurs is via norm evasion. There are various mechanisms through which norm evasion occurs at a societal level. One such modality is norm substitution. This primarily occurs when old norms remain in force but evasion occurs because of the magnitude of its scale and occurrence. In the contemporary era, self imagery plays a crucial role in the axionormative order of the society. The quest for a homophiliac search among digital communities has been pointed out by a few scholars. In this context digital content and internet has become a site for structural elaboration through modalities of spectatorship. Based on our field interaction with different actors involved in the use of an ICT facilitated Knowledge architecture in the agricultural domain, we argue that the process involved in the structuration of digital communities involves principles of normative evasion based on certain rule systems of digital communities. The structural elaboration principles that are likely to set up an emergent ‘digital communities rule system’ are mediated both through the observational power of the spectator (internet spectatorship) and knowledgeability of the agents.
Keywords: sociology of digital communities, rule system, morphogenesis, internet spectatorship, deal
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Presented in Session 2: Networks, sociology, and coordination on Tuesday October 7th.
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