Mapping the Virtual in Social Sciences: On the Category of "Virtual Community"
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Lately the term "virtual" has been used more and more frequently by both scholars and journalists to refer to social phenomena and entities. Quite representative of this trend is the phrase "virtual community" which has been rapidly accepted in common language. However, its use by social scientists raises many questions. Since the words "virtual" and "community" are both polysemic, what exactly might the term "virtual community" mean? And what new kind of collectivity is it supposed to circumscribe? Doesn't it imply a sort of nostalgia for a mythical form of community, along with an idealization of face-to-face interactions? This paper attempts to offer some elements of solution to these questions by means of a critical examination of recent social science texts. Résumé Ces dernières années, universitaires et journalistes ont fréquemment recours à l'adjectif « virtuel » pour qualifier des entités et phénomènes sociaux. L'emploi de l'expression « communauté virtuelle », aujourd'hui naturalisée dans la langue courante, est particulièrement représentatif de cette tendance. Cependant, son usage en sciences sociales soulève plusieurs questions : étant donné la polysémie des mots virtuel et communauté, que signifie exactement l'expression « communauté virtuelle » ? Quel nouveau type de collectif est-elle censée décrire et éclairer? N'implique-t-elle pas paradoxalement la nostalgie d'une forme mythique de communauté, ainsi que l'idéalisation du face à face comme situation de communication ? Cet article tente d'apporter des éléments de réponse à ces questions à travers un examen critique de textes récents en sciences sociales. Resumen En estas últimos años, universitarios y periodistas han utilizado frecuentemente el adjetivo «virtual» para calificar entidades y fenómenos sociales. El empleo de la expresión «comunidad virtual », hoy naturalizada en la lengua corriente, es particularmente representativo de esta tendencia. Sin embargo, su uso en ciencias sociales plantea varias cuestiones : teniendo en cuenta la polisemia de las palabras virtual y comunidad, qué significa exactamente la expresión «comunidad virtual »? Qué nuevo tipo de colectivo pretende describir y esclarecer? Esa expresión, no implica paradójicamente la nostalgia de una forma mítica de comunidad, como también la idealización del frente a frente como situación de comunicación? Este artículo intenta aportar elementos de respuesta a estas preguntas a través de un examen crítico de los textos recientes en ciencias sociales.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.067 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.020 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".