Tutorial Six: The Internet and On-line Communities

Overview of On-line Community - Beth's Brain Injury Blog - http://blog.brain-injury-online.com/

This blog was set up in July 2008 by Beth Jameson and her husband Larry. The focus of this blog is to provide information on brain injury. The posts are chatty musings by Beth on her life as a brain injury survivor together with helpful hints and references to her book 'The Survivors Guide to Brain Injury'. Other services provided are links to web sites on Brain Injury information, attorneys, associations, resources, veterans information, news and events and memory improvement games plus a few advertisments by Google. Each post allows for comments from readers which Beth replies to as can any one else if they wich. There are numerous links to other relevant sites and also provision for uses to publish their own brain injury stories.

People who choose to access this blog generally do so because they have some connection with brain injury - this could be that they are survivors themselves or their family members. Others could be like myself, looking for increased understanding of the impact of brain injury; issues faced, rehabiliation ideas and living with brain injury.

The following is an example from Beth's Blog where she reminises her life:

I’m about to have a birthday so I’ve been reminiscing a bit and thinking about how my life has played out so far. I sometimes play the “what if” game. Have you ever done that? If you do, you’ll probably find some irony in a number of the circumstances.

What if I had gone to college?
What if I had been rich?
What if I had been born into a family that didn’t show their love?
What if I had not sustained a brain injury?

Of course I can’t go backward and I can’t change what my circumstances were years ago. I can only learn from my mistakes and go forward no matter what my current stage is in life. In most instances I would not want to change my past. I think of all the people who would not be in my life today if things had gone a different direction and it makes me so thankful. I definitely would not change that part of my life.<

Potential eithcal issues are that names or images of people could be published without their consent. Another issue is that Beth is discussing infomation that she has written about in a book. This is ethically sound but other people may use the infomation she publishes and pass it off as their own. Another concern is that may use the blog rather than seek porfessional help.

In the past support for people with brain injury (or any other affliction)has been restricted by geographigical distance to local community but blogs like Beth's and other online formats have provided world wide access to information and support for individuals with and their families. Instead of being local, communities can be world wide because of the internet.

Like all communities whether it be large like United Nations or the local scout group there are benefits and drawbacks. Some benefits of world wide communities are that they can compliment and enhance 'real-life' communites and provide large amounts of information in many different formats covering a huge range of topics. Individuals are able to just look at this information or they can choose to participate more fully. There is no great cost to most of these communities and all individuals regardless of age / ethnicity / education etc have equality.

There are also some drawbacks - on-line communities are only available to those with access to the internet and have the right technolgy. It is open to misuse (virus / pornograhy etc) and can be a way of avoilding interacting in the 'real world'. There has been a phenominal growth in on-line communities and this can lead to problems of administration and also that there is more and more out dated infomation 'out there'.