Couchsurfing: Virtual Community and Community Development

The assigned article for this week by Carter (2005) focuses on Cybercity as a social platform where a whole of virtual community was developed online, people are free to come and interact within this online social space. The author observes how members interact with one another and what are the underlying values that allow and enable members to become so engaged with the community.

The notion of virtual community includes a group of people who tend to build relationships with one another via computer-mediated communication, regardless of geographical distances (Rheingold, 1991)

In brief, a virtual community is perceived as a cyberspace system in which people with shared goals and needs are engaged regardless of where people are located.

As a traveler and an individual who has a significantly offline and present life, the only virtual and online community that I actually am a part of is Couchsurfing. By definition, it is an online platform for travelers all over the world to get in contact with another, it also encourages communications between prospective travellers and potential hosts at destinations. The primary purpose is travelers finding free accommodation offered by the hosts while exchanging culture, language, stories and experiences. That has entailed with many other by-products such as friendships, meeting with local people, a new genuine way of traveling, etc.

Different from Cybercity, Couchsurfing's online platform is only the initial stage of social interactions whereas most of the main interactions are moved offline and take place there. However, in order for members to actually meet offline, a significant part of identity, self-presentation and trust has to be involved. Members who wish to meet with fellow Couchsurfers have to carefully go through their profiles with pictures, details of preferences, personal philosophies and a system of validation through references left by those who have interacted with them before. Thus Couchsurfing is said to have both a virtual and real element of community, we must look at how virtual and real communities are defined.

Relating to one of the main findings in Carter (2005)’s articles, participants of the Cybercity virtual community find it valuable and important that: You get to know each other from the inner person and out [online] – in real life you know people from outside and later inside. So in that way the two are composite. And knowing the inner person first – you see that looks aren’t that important.

This is also especially true for the community of Couchsurfing, it has evolved to be more than just free accommodation, in order for the surfers and hosts to have a pleasant experience, both parties have the initiative to look for and carefully scan the profiles of one another to ensure that the other parties are compatible and have at least some potential of connection when interacting. Thus, looks and appearances don’t play a big factor in connecting people

And while interacting, topics such as knowledge, traveling experiences, cultural and language exchange often come up. It also takes a certain level of trust, kindness and openness for most of people to actually join the Couchsurfing community (opting out those who treat the site as a dating platform or any other different purposes). Thus it can be an opportunity to empower individuals and groups of people by providing them with the social skills, life experiences that they can harness to effectively change their own community (in this specific regards, the hospitality and kindness towards others), fitting in with the concept of “community development”.

Specifically, empirical evidence based on a virtual community (CouchSurfing.com) demonstrates that the opportunity to de-velop relationships between potential travellers and locals has gradually increased.

Community development should be understood as being more than economic empowerment: it is the recognition of the solidarity of communities to act in order to better their circumstances, whether the communities are real or virtual, and whether their circumstances find them in the global north or the global south. A CSer perhaps put it best: "Couchsurfing helps to eliminate the "us" vs "them" in the world. It creates a world of "we"." An overwhelming majority of respondents said that couchsurfing.org had “changed their lives.” It is no small coincidence that these are the words used to describe this virtual travel community. Couchsurfing.org is an intriguing project that could have important implications for the future of travel and cross-cultural exchange.