Visitors and Residents of the Online City
For many reasons it is hard to compare the Internet to any existing thing, medium or place. However, the best comparison I found relates the Web to a City (Searls, 2012). All Internet users are inhabitants of the virtual town. They (may) work, shop, and spend their free time in various districts. The city is related to them too, it grows through well-being and initiative of its residents. Surprisingly, White and Cornu proposed similar categorisation of our online presence: Residents and Visitors.
A Visitor is using some specific features of the Web for his own purposes. He is not engaged in sharing and creating the online community, but sees it as a tool. An example may be a person who uses Google Search and Wikipedia to search for information. In other words, he leaves far away from the Online City and needs a good reason to travel there.
On the contrary, Resident is a part of the community. He consumes the Web, but he also helps to create it. This may be understood in various ways: both authors of Wikipedia articles and Instagram photographers find themselves in this category. Resident shares, uploads, collaborates, likes and/or tweets.
As David White points out, it is necessary to think about Visitors and Residents as two extremes, with a continuum between them. In fact, most of us will probably find themselves somewhere in between. Our attitude may also depend on a specific area of the Web– a Resident on Facebook may be just a Visitor on Youtube. In the video below, David White describes a way to visualise our personal web experience, called ‘mapping’.
Adding the second dimension, the Personal-Institutional axis, certainly helped to describe my experience online. However, in my opinion these two terms are too broad. Hence I thought about extending this method by adding specific categories of online presence. On the new map, the centre of the circle corresponds to a Visitor, whilst the ‘residential’ attitude lays at the end of each arrow.
Such construction certainly complicates the picture, but at the same time it allows to distinguish the areas of one’s presence on the Web. In my case it turns out that I am closer to becoming a Resident in Social and Professional activities and at the same time I am a Visitor when playing games, watching videos or shopping online. It would be interesting to hear what you think about this idea!
References
- Searls, D. “Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge”, Harvard Business Review Press, 2012
- White, D. S., & Cornu, A. L. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9).
- White, D. S. Not ‘Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’. TALL Blog, 23/07/2008.
