Week 4 Topic1: A and B

A) p. 174 What do you think of the notion that online community can be empowering/disempowering?

I believe that the notion of belonging to an online community is empowering to alot of people. For alot of people it provides a sense of belonging to a community which shares the same values, opinions and ideas. The sense of belonging allows people to be who they really are, rather than in everyday life thye feel segregated as people do not share the same real life comunity.
As previosuly stated in other blogs the internet gives people the chance to be whoever they want to be, aspire to who they want to be, lie about who they are and convince others of who they really are. In some ways you could make up a completely different persona to who you are and the empowering thing about that is you can get away with it especially in a community where nobody really knows who you are.

b) p. 177 Does the Net provide a ‘public sphere’ where citizens can engage with each other? If so, how, and are there any limitations?

Yes the internet does provide a 'public sphere' for citizens to engage with one another this can be done in the same country or half way across the world.The technology which provides the sense of an 'online public sphere' is such things as MSN mesenger , hotmail, Facebook, forums and blogs. Some of these technologies allow for almost instant interacction.
The limitations within the internet and the public sphere boils down to a few necessary rules and regulations people's oipinions cannot contain any form of offensive, explicit nudity, violent threats etc those are the most obvious limitations however forums and blogs allow people to put their opinion across usually to do with politics or media behaviour successfully.