The use of social media by different communities is really all about that. The question of which makes a stronger and more connected community, a physical moving to the online (or supported by online presence) or the online presence supported by face-to-face interaction?

Phil, I wonder what you think after looking at fell running, do you think that the online presence has made the community stronger? Or do you think as you and Candance have mentioned, merely a promotion of the product? It will be interesting to see how many people in this community actually utilise the social networking tools to be connected, and to imagine now a scenario without this technology.

Thinking about space which you’ve discussed with Sian and Candace, I thought it was interesting that innov-8 had to move out of the geographical boundaries of the fell-running offline communities (the deep countryside) which is their preferred location, in order to get a broadband connection (amongst other things). But clearly this move has not impacted negatively on their status in either the offline or online community – in fact it’s probably enhanced it. Lots of blurry lines here!

I think I maybe more interested (not sure yet!) in how design (or critical design) can use these social interactions to develop new (for want of a better word) product, product in its wider sense, not applications, but designing interactions (if that makes sense). This concept must have potential for education and learning, extending learning design, and must have relation to spacial theory (as you mention).

Not quite got my head around what this looks like yet, but its on the way

I’m not suggesting you should ‘roll your own’ environments for these kinds of things, but I would encourage you to look for something a little more ‘web-like’ (rather than a digital book). Anyway, on to the substance.

I think I was associating ‘community’ with the local ‘place’ more broadly, and seeing the fellrunning as a community ritual (I think you described it this way?) that has a very place-based meaning. So my question was about how that place-based community might be shaped and changed by the ways in which the ritual has become full of globalised signs (brands) and being written about and discussed online (by participants, but also more broadly).

You’ve started to sketch out a really interesting ethnographic field here, and I can see lots of ways in which this ethnography could grow, should you ever wish it to. The focus on ‘the run’ (the movement over a landscape), and the emergence of this ‘space’ into social media environments made me think of spatial theory and mobility theory as a way of theorising what you are doing – it’s literally about many kinds of movement (of people, information, image, brand, community) across different topologies, as Candace suggests.

If you were going to pursue this further, you might find some of the writing on the topology of social space interesting – a classic to start with might be:

Mol, Annemarie and Law, John (1994) Regions, networks and fluids: anaemia and social topology Social Studies of Science, 24:4, 641-671

And in thinking about ‘mobility’, this one can’t be beaten as a starting point:

Sheller, M. and Urry, J. (2006) The new mobilities paradigm Environment and Planning A. 38: 207-226

You can get both of these via the university’s digital collection (or email me if you have any problem).

If I were to extend the ethnography it would further investigate, as you say, how the digital has grown the community through what I associated as the glamorous / humanist aspect of the sport, and how product and brand has taken advantage of that. But I do think I have addressed how the fellrunning community has changed, how that change is associated with the virtual, and how brand has exploited the ‘humanist’ qualities within that community.

Over all I like what I’ve created, It works for me, and it has moved my thinking on