How Governmental Web Sites Can Improve Community Out Reach with Virtual Communities
Federal, state, county, and local governmental web sites can develop virtual
communities to help promote community outreach programs and foster citizen participation.
On-line discussion groups or forums are a great way for the public to discuss
ideas about a particular governmental proposal or program.
In addition, public comments or rating of informational articles on governmental
web sites is a great way to gauge whether the particular information is helpful
and also lets the citizens know that the government is responsive to their needs.
Using Virtual Communities to Help Build Your Non-Profit Organization
If you have a non-profit organization, building a virtual community is a great
way to encourage public involvement and interaction with your organization. The
virtual community model has been well proven in the open source software community.
For example, Linux, which was originally created by Linus Torvalds, has developed
and matured by a community of talented software developers who are all interested
in building a solid and free Unix operating system for the PC. Linux has proven
to be far more reliable than Microsoft’s Windows NT and Windows 2000.
Many non-profit organizations can benefit from community building elements
like on-line discussion groups, free classifieds for members and even moderated
chat sessions for sponsored events.
For example, National Public Radio (NPR) has on-line discussion groups for
their nationally broadcast show, Talk of the Nation. This on-line discussion group
is used to build community among talk of the radio listeners and allow more people
to be involved in the show’s topic of discussion than would ever be possible
from just call in listeners.
Anther good example is the virtual classroom environment now being tried at
many public universities. Students can sign-up for and attend live classes, retrieve
class assignments, turn in their work, and attend virtual study sessions all from
the comfort of their own home. In many instances, virtual classrooms have allowed
students to participate in classes that would be impossible for them to attend
otherwise.
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