Tutorial Six

The topic I have drawn from my fieldwork experiences is the topic of Stroke.


These are the three online community hyper links that I have chosen:
http://www.stroke.org.nz/
http://www.everybody.co.nz/page-25f0b03c-63f4-45ef-95e4-ca0e727c98f5.aspx
http://www.medhelp.org/forums/Stroke/show/62


Stroke.org.nz is a website which is run from The Stroke Foundation of New Zealand.  The purpose of this community is to provide help to the people and their families who have had a stroke.  It has a lot of information about strokes, including recognizing a stroke, living with a stroke and preventing strokes.
Everybody.co.nz is an online community which is dedicated to health.  It has all sorts of health topics that people can look in to and it has all sorts of useful information on the topics, including a great amount on the topic; Stroke.
Medhelp.org is a website which has a section called troke Community.  It provides a forum for any person to write on and ask question for the world to answer, regarding strokes.  Any person can ask the questions, whether they have had a stroke themselves, they suspect a stroke, have had a family member or friend who has had a stroke, or even someone who has come across the forum and has no idea what a blog is and would like to know.


All sites are very interactive.  Everybody.co.nz is more factual information for a person to read rather than to gather and share thoughts from the people that come across the site.  Although, as well as the other websites, they offer hyperlinks to explore things said in further detail.  Stroke.org.nz and medhelp.org are very interactive with the reader or onlooker.  People using the website are able to interact by submitting questions and can read stories that other people have contributed, in which then the readers are able to relate to or ask more questions, or comment on. 


I think that people choose to contribute to each of these communities because it is somewhere anonymous that they can go to to find out information on the topic, to ask anonymous questions and in return can get different peoples opinions, answers, views, and takes on what has been asked.  People can find connections to other people who share similar needs and interests, and can confide confidence in each other when they may not be able to find it in people in their daily physical lives.  


An example of topics that are discussed through online communities are ones such as on the Medhelp site. Here is a clip that I copied from a forum:

"My dad had a stroke and now has aphasia.  He is physically ok and lives on his own, but struggles with reading, writing, hearing (comprehension) and talking.......... I'm looking for ideas to keep him talking as much as possible (I was even hoping to find some software to get him talking more) and improve his language skills in general.  Something to help him understand numbers would be a plus too." 
Retrieved from http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Stroke/Recovering-from-Aphasia/show/1418759

Unfortunately, there are always potential ethical issues that may arise in these communities.  For example, if a person talked about other people on the forums and used their real names without asking them then they could be disrespecting their privacy and allowing other people to see and read personal information about them.  Another ethical issue would be if a person asked for medical advice on a forum.  If a person who was not a doctor answered and gave them some advice, this could be very dangerous and unethical of that person to do so.

Online communities provide benefits over traditional geographical communities.  Some of these are that because the internet is world wide available, then people from far away are able to contribute to the online communities.  This can provide more of a selection of information which can regard different cultures and can incorporate different ways that people deal with things due to place; ie where they are living and what they have access to.  This can be helpful and provoke thought between people within these communities.


Although, there are a few things that the online communities lack too.  Obviously, it lacks real face to face conversation.  And although there are now webcams on computers that people can use, not all people choose to use them and for the people that do, it is still not completely real or the same as being face to face in real context, because, for instance, facial expressions that can really say a lot, can sometimes not be seen through webcams.  Webcams are also able to only show the face of the other person if chosen to do so, and this could have a different effect to the information being shared between the two people than it would be if you were able to see the whole person and watch all of their body language.