Local Site in the Hot Seat

I don't know what I would do if my placeblog --H2otown, for Watertown, MA -- showed up in an unflattering light in a New York Times op-ed. I'd probably hide under my bed for a week. But that's what happened to Kearny on the Web, a site/forum for Kearny, NJ. First there was the NYT article about the high school kid taking cell-cam video of his history teacher proselytizing in class. Then there were the pretty nasty comments directed towards the kid in question and his family on Kearny on the Web. The operator of KOTW's take is on the front page of the site. The editor of the local paper gets in the act. And to top it all off, the Times op-ed. Yow. That's hot stuff for the average placeblogger, the majority of whom operate their sites for no monetary compensation at all. The stated goal of many placebloggers I know is to increase social cohesion and connectedness in their community by getting people talking to one another. But not all bonding is good bonding. This reminds me of what Amitai Etzioni said in a review of Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, his study of the collapse of American community:

Putnam prefers what he calls "bridging" social capital in which bonds of connectedness are formed across diverse social groups...This approach does take us part of the way, but it does not deal with the other risks communities do pose...for instance, if the Sicilian Mafia would "bridge" with the Russian mafia, there would still be cause for concern. And if one bridges liberal communities with macho ones, one cannot assume that liberal values will win. In short, those concerned with restoring community cannot limit themselves to the study of social bonds; they must analyze the mechanisms through which new moral cultures are formed and and study what will prevent them from locking on to values that are incompatible with a free and fair society.

This is as true of online communities as it is of offline. It may be the case that placebloggers have as much to learn about creating a healthy and sustainable community from fraternal and social organizations as they do from the deliciously fractious Letters section of the nearest newspaper.

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Etzione's review appeared in Contemporary Sociology in 2001, and it's not available online (although it is in JSTOR). Check out this podcast with Etzioni.