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2005 Creating Community over the Net: A Case Study of Romanian Online Journalism Mihaela V. Nocasian

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION

CREATING COMMUNITY OVER THE NET:

A CASE STUDY OF ROMANIAN ONLINE JOURNALISM

By

MIHAELA V. NOCASIAN

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2005

The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of Mihaela V. Nocasian defended on August 25, 2005.

______Marilyn J. Young Professor Directing Dissertation

______Gary Burnett Outside Committee Member

______Davis Houck Committee Member

______Andrew Opel Committee Member

______Stephen D. McDowell Committee Member

Approved:

______

Stephen D. McDowell, Chair, Department of Communication

______

John K. Mayo, Dean, College of Communication

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above

named committee members.

ii

To my mother, Anişoara, who taught me what it means to be compassionate.

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The story of the Formula As community that I tell in this work would not have been possible without the support of those who believed in my abilities and offered me guidance, encouragement, and support. My committee members—

Marilyn Young, Ph.D., Gary Burnett Ph.D., Stephen McDowell, Ph.D., Davis

Houck, Ph.D., and Andrew Opel, Ph.D. — all offered valuable feedback during the various stages of completing this work. I am particularly indebted to Dr.

Marilyn Young for innumerable great conversations about Eastern European rhetoric, for her warmth, and patience. I am grateful to Dr. Gary Burnett for his extensive knowledge and expertise in the area of virtual communities and hermeneutics, for teaching me how to be a better writer, and for gently pushing me forward during times of inner doubt.

I would also like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my dear friend,

Richard Leagan, for his generous support and unconditional friendship. I deeply appreciated the moral support of Angelique de Jong, my Buddhist friend, and

Nada Carey, my coach. Thank you for your loving‐kindness. Many thanks go to

Yarma Velazquez, Firat Tuzunkan, and Jenghoon Lee, my colleagues and friends in the Communication Department at Florida State University, for their encouragement and for keeping me on track. The great family that is Formula As deserves recognition as without its unique solidarity and love this work would have never been written.

Finally I would like to express my gratitude to my family. I want to thank my parents, Anișoara and my step‐father Gheorghe, for their love, encouragement, and for always being there for me. I thank my brother, Octavian

Duca, for his indefatigable humor, unconditional love, and compassion. I dedicate this work to my mother‐‐my greatest inspiration.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... vi

CREATING COMMUNITY OVER THE NET: THE FORMULA AS STORY. 1 Goals of the Study...... 7 Justification of Study ...... 8 Outline of Study...... 9

THE FORMULA AS MAGAZINE CONTEXT ...... 12 An Overview of Romanian Media During and After Communism ...... 12 The Formula As Magazine...... 18

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK...... 22 Public Sphere and the Internet...... 24 Virtual Community ...... 28 Language and “Imagined Communities” ...... 44 Online Journalism...... 53 Research Questions...... 59

ARTICULATING COMMUNITY THROUGH NARRATIVE ...... 61 Formula As from a Narrative Perspective ...... 61 Formula As from a Virtual Community Conceptual Model...... 66

INSIDE FORMULA AS: COMMUNITY SELF‐REFERENCE...... 73

INSIDE FORMULA AS: COMMON INTERESTS AND GOALS ...... 96

INSIDE FORMULA AS: MEMBERSHIP BOUNDARIES...... 120

INSIDE FORMULA AS: SHARED HISTORY ...... 145

INSIDE FORMULA AS: COMMON DISCURSIVE SPACE...... 163

INSIDE FORMULA AS: INTERACTIVITY...... 182

CONCLUSION ...... 188

ENDNOTES ...... 194

WORKS CITED ...... 199

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 222

v ABSTRACT

This dissertation is a rhetorical examination of a virtual community that has developed around Formula As—a Romanian print and Web based publication that over the course of fourteen years has built a readership of eight million despite the unstable Romanian transition media environment. The purpose of this study is to help understand the manner in which the Formula As magazine brings together a geographically fragmented public into a community and explore the role of storytelling in the rhetorical construction of this community. The dissertation employs an eclectic theoretical perspective and a rhetorical‐based methodology. This study’s theoretical framework brings together concepts from different areas of inquiry such as virtual community and computer‐mediated communication, public sphere, interactive journalism, and hermeneutics. Fisher’s narrative paradigm serves as the interpretive lens that is used in this study to gain insight into the dynamic of building community among the readers of the Formula As magazine. To uncover the distinctiveness of the Formula As community, this study proposes a virtual community conceptual model containing six conditions—community self‐reference, common interests and goals, membership boundaries, shared history, common discursive space, and interactivity. One of the major findings of this study is that at a very basic level, virtual communities are quite similar. The Formula As readers are brought together in an imagined community that has social reality for them. The shared Romanian cultural memory, flexible group boundaries, and the exchange of naturistic remedies information and cooperation in humanitarian work enable Formula As participants to develop a history together. At a fundamental level, the Formula As community members sustain connections and imagine themselves and others as constituting a community through the shared practices of interpreting the community texts and making public participants’ stories of involvement with the magazine’s community. From a rhetorical perspective, this study revealed that in the Formula As community, storytelling provides participants with a safe avenue for disclosing sensitive personal information while the discursive space of the magazine becomes the locus for shaping public opinion on a series of specific social issues.

vi “Iar istoria acestui ziar este încrederea în fortele noastre,

respectul profesiei si al cititorilor nostri, neclintita vecinӑtate a bunului

Dumnezeu, care ne‐a învatat iubirea si mila, iertarea si îngaduinta,

nӑzuinta de a le ocroti oamenilor speranta si puterea de a visa” [The

history of this neswpaper has risen from trusting ourselves, respecting

our profession and readers, living in the unfaltering closeness of God

who’s taught us love and compassion, forgiveness and tolerance, the

striving to nurture people’s hopes and their might to dream] 1 (Sanziana

Pop, Director of Formula As2).

CHAPTER ONE

CREATING COMMUNITY OVER THE NET: THE FORMULA AS STORY

We tell stories, of who we are, of others, of past, present, and future, every day of our life. Stories are so enmeshed into our being and culture that we often take them for granted and rarely stop to ponder over the ways we weave them, either individually or collectively (Fisher 1999). Sometimes, those who are in the audience or the thought of them learning of our story, by whatever means, can impact our rhetorical choices, our storytelling, and why not, our whole being. In fact, stories and storytelling presuppose the existence of an audience, be it physically present or imagined. Stories are powerful because they constitute the bridge that we cast into the world so that we can understand it, connect with others through interaction, and learn where our own and others’ stories stand in the web of experience.

While the diversity of story forms can be as abundant as life itself—fairytales that mesmerized our childhood years, the “real” stories in our family history that we heard, over and over again at various family gatherings, the stories that we read (hear) in the news, movies, and books, or those that bring us closer to loved ones or perfect strangers through electronic communication ‐‐there is something almost magical about imagining the reality of a story. Imagining the narrator and the motivations in telling the story,

1 imagining the setting, the characters within the story and their actions can contribute to an expansion of our own understanding of reality. One does not necessarily need to live someone else’s life to be able to find meaning and derive some sort of knowledge about the world. Part of the “magic” of stories lies in the process of identification or empathically connecting with the reality of the story. That also means, connecting with others. Establishing invisible bonds with those whom we would like to include into our frequent storytelling experience.

The story that I tell in this study is the account of a “miraculous” publication (we are after all in the realm of magic) and its readers, a public that came into existence and has grown over the years through its storytelling practice. It is the story of my favorite magazine of fourteen years, the Romanian weekly Formula As that I, together with the more than 700,000 of the magazine’s readers outside Romania, cannot wait to read online on the publication’s web site3. The characters in my story are however, unique.

Not just because the number of those reading the magazine (in print or online) has reached eight million (the equivalent of the audience of a large‐sized television station) but also because of the strong solidarity that exists among the members of the Formula

As “family” (as they affectionately refer to their own collective experience of storytelling). In Romania, a country of twenty‐two million that until 1989 had been held captive for more than forty years within a plot that was not of its own making‐‐as with the rest of the former communist countries of Eastern Europe—reaching a readership of millions for a magazine that started with a sheer 15,000 print copies in 1991 and coping with the diverse and competitive transition media offerings environment is generally considered “out of the ordinary.” The magazine’s “ace formula”—in line with the publication’s very own name—has, over the years, been a “winning formula.” What makes Formula As unique?

The magazine’s own readers often wonder about their community’s uniqueness, in their musings that are sometimes published within the magazine’s pages, in the hundreds and hundreds of letters that contain stories from the readers who routinely talk about the generosity of this very unique social environment. Commenting on the

2 readers’ solidarity and civic spirit, one Formula As faithful reader notes that she’s “been moved to tears by the ties that you [Formula As] manage to secure among people.

Disheartened people receive help from their kin readers in the form of money, food, and clothing, as well as advice and medicines when they’re ill.”4 An intrinsic quality that readers of this magazine possess is the ability to imagine one another, to show empathy, despite the fact that they will probably never meet in person but through the stories that they share in the vibrant discursive space that is Formula As. For many, reading Formula

As has almost become a ritual, a weekly conversation with an old and dear friend; albeit within the imaginary space that is jointly created by the community of Formula As readers and through the invisible human ties that characterize this thriving social locale.

Those involved in the making and the success of the Formula As (i.e., its director,

Sanziana Pop, and the editorial staff) are also part of the Formula As story and at least partly responsible for rhetorically constructing its unique ethos in interaction with the readers. Occasionally, Formula As is criticized by mainstream Romanian publications for going beyond what one generally expects (or has learned to expect) from the journalistic act. Indeed, traditional standards of journalism, the so‐called “journalism of information” that is generally accompanied by a cacophonic discourse of expert opinion‐

‐to the effect that citizens are transformed into mere spectators rather than involved actors in the social scene‐‐is in a state of crisis even in well‐established democracies such as the United States (Merritt 1995). Tabloid‐like journalism with its penchant for scandal and sensationalism is no longer specific to a certain media outlet or cultural environment but is rather global in scope due to changes within the media industry environment as global media conglomerates battle for profits (Tumber 2001).

Liberated from the state and communist party‐control and enjoying well‐ deserved freedom, post‐1989 Romanian media outlets have been undergoing significant change in breaking away from a journalism of “manipulation” and distortion that was instrumental in creating and reinforcing a rhetorically engineered reality (Gross 1996,

20). Pluralistic, economically self‐sustaining, and independent from the state, media institutions in the “New Europe”5—the phrase that is often used to refer to the countries

3 of Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism—have nevertheless been criticized for promoting a discourse of partisanship and of opinion, of a lack of Western‐style objective reporting in a new social order that is ruled by yet another ideology, that of the free market (Gross 2002). Commenting on the trends in Eastern European journalistic culture in the transition period, Hiebert (1999) notes that “[T]he new entrepreneurs of

East/Central European journalism sometimes seemed to be more similar to the robber barons of the 19th‐century United States than to socially responsible professionals in a

20th‐century democracy” (81). Indeed, in Romania of the early 1990s for example, some private entrepreneurs, in their quest for easy money, contributed to a saturation of the print market with ephemeral tabloids featuring sex and pornographic material, scandals, and sensationalistic reporting.

Within a diverse and competitive media environment the achievement of a private initiative such as that of the Romanian weekly Formula As6, owned by poet and writer Sanziana Pop, is commendable. Looking back, with a sense of nostalgia and pride over the magazine’s achievement, Sanziana Pop writes in 2002: “It is not quite easy to survive in today’s press, without the help of sponsors, parties, and backing. We have succeeded, against all odds! Hard work has been our sponsor; the magazine’s readers were our party that has constantly supported us; our only benefactor was

God.”7 Due to the very unique type of journalism that is practiced by Formula As, the magazine’s circulation increased from 15,000 print copies in 1991 to eight million

Romanian speaking individuals in a little over a decade. As a publication that espouses the values of civic journalism and raises money from the readers through its non‐profit foundation to help those readers who solicit help through the magazine, Formula As has bypassed not only the standards of traditional journalism but also the culture of commercialism in the journalism profession. What is however, the magazine’s secret success “formula”?

Relying on “word‐of‐mouth” marketing, Formula As brings together readers from all walks of life and from a wide range of age groups (i.e., the magazine appeals equally to teenagers, mature, and senior audiences). Its readers are anything but apathetic.

4 They are actively involved in creating Formula As and feel empowered when their voice is heard. Toma Roman, the magazine’s chief editor of ten years, notes “The [Formula] As was the first post‐1989 Romanian magazine that has molded itself in accordance with its readers’ needs and expectations. (….) The As has become in fact a magazine that has been forged by its readers.”8 Celebrating the magazine’s ten‐year anniversary in 2002,

Sanziana Pop, Director of Formula As, chronicles:

The history of this neswpaper has risen from trusting ourselves, respecting our

profession and readers, living in the unfaltering closeness of God who’s taught

us love and compassion, forgiveness and tolerance, the striving to nurture

people’s hopes and their might to dream. In fact, ten years later, I believe that

we placed and won the bet of normality, modesty and naturalness, a bet with the

conviction that the mold of transition has not affected the moral fiber of the

Romanians who still believe in merit and virtue. The Romanians who during

forty‐five years of totalitarian restrictions lived deprived of [free] television and

press and found refuge in culture, literature, art, and in God. This is the real

public of our publication, a public unified along true values and whom we strove

for ten years to win (Pop, “A Miracle…,” Formula As 500).

The most valuable gift that the Romanian Formula As magazine has made to its readers over the years has been the resuscitation of true communitarian values by creating a public discursive space that helps readers interact and feel connected with one another within the Formula As readership community. Storytelling via mediated communication is the bridge that connects individual members of the Formula As community and empowers the readers in creating public sphere on a series of issues that they deem important.

Within the imagined community of the Formula As public sphere, anyone can express his or her opinion on matters that are of concern to everyone and which are often being debated within the forum of the magazine. Former marginalized voices in the Romanian society such as individuals or families who are below the subsistence limit or who are in crisis situations, Romanian emigrants and aspiring emigrants, the elderly,

5 the disabled, and animal rights groups have a forum where they can be heard and where they can contribute to the reconceptualization of the Romanian public opinion. In bringing individual readers together in the process of interpretation and debate of public affairs Formula As enables the constitution of a public. Interacting with others via public mediated communication within the Formula As discursive space has triggered a collective reactivation of traditional Romanian values such as kindness and Christian compassion, respect and love for fellow human beings and the environment, the belief in

God, and patriotism. Formula As community is a locus for sustained free interaction, trust, and bonding among the magazine’s readers and editors.

6 Goals of the Study

Constituted as a unique phenomenon in the Romanian contemporary journalistic environment, Formula As is a strong candidate for the case study inquiry. In an overview of case study research, Yin (2003) describes the case study approach as mostly congruent with explanatory research questions that deal with “a contemporary set of events, over which the investigator has little or no control” (9). In this case study I argue that Formula As champions for a recovery of the “imagined community” (to paraphrase

Anderson’s (1983, 6) notion of the “imaginary community of the nation”), of a public that is constituted rhetorically and that exists as a real aggregate not only in the Formula

As community of discourse but also in the very real influence of Formula As in the daily lives of its readers. The magazine’s readers (including the online readers from the

Romanian diaspora) are constituted in a virtual community centered on shared interests and values that is in fact instrumental in the shaping of public opinion through the critical discussion of a multitude of issues that are of interest to its members and to

Romanian society at large.

How is Formula As community constituted? What does “community” mean for the readers of Formula As magazine? In what way is storytelling contributing to the community‐ building process? These are the basic questions that I pose in this study.

To examine the manner in which a geographically fragmented public becomes a rhetorically constituted community that generates public sphere within Formula As but which has repercussions in the Romanian society, I will anchor the study in a theoretical framework that comprises notions as different as virtual communities, “imagined communities,” public sphere, and interactive journalism. Using Fisher’s (1995) theoretical concept of the narrative paradigm, this study will analyze the rhetorical artifacts provided by selected articles from the electronic edition of Formula As to gain insight into the issues that are critically debated and discussed in the forum of Formula

As and to understand the type of interactions established among the community of

Romanian readers.

7 Justification of Study

There are many reasons for conducting this study. First, a rhetorical analysis of the discursive space of Formula As will provide insight into the manner in which shared discursive practices that are built around a specific set of texts can bring about

“imagined communities” of participants whose sense of identity can be reinforced and fostered collectively. Reading and exchanging messages on a variety of topics that deal with Romanian culture enables both real and virtual readers (i.e., mostly Romanians in the diaspora) to remain connected to their place of origin and collectively participate in the creation of the Formula As ethos in a joint effort with the magazine’s staff. Today, the permanent readers within the Romanian diaspora who are spread around every corner of the world constitute more than 700,000 million of the magazine’s overall readership.

Online and print texts act as the “glue” that keeps Formula As community together triggering shared meanings and similar worldviews among the readers.

Secondly, an analysis of the community of Formula As and its rhetorical construction will attempt to explain the strong bonding and trust that members of the magazine display in their textual exchanges among one another and with the staff. For example, a great majority of the readers enjoy the magazine’s interactive features such as the “Health” forum (i.e., readers publicize alternative medicine remedies that they themselves tried or learned about from others) or the “S.O.S” section that enables readers to bring private matters to the fore of public discussion and to solicit help. Often times, the stories and issues that are debated by the readers go beyond textual existence and take on a life of their own. For example, members of the Formula As community frequently contribute with personalized donations and emotional support to all the solicitations for help that are posted in the magazine. On numerous occasions, readers actively contributed to the creation of public opinion on topics such as environmental concerns, animal rights, emigration, poor pensions, etc. While some of the issues have a more localized flavor, readers in the Romanian diaspora are often very actively involved in critically debating some of these topics and providing tangible solutions. As a magazine that practices social activism, Formula As has fostered a culture of openness

8 and positive discussion among its readers. Examining the rhetorical strategies that contribute to the opening of the private space to public opinion within the Formula As discursive space will provide a test for the assumption that the Internet in general and online journalism in particular contribute to the creation of public spheres.

Lastly, studying the discursive practices of an “imagined community” such as the one of Formula As is a new and challenging experience since few studies have examined the concept of virtual community and its relationship with the idea of the public sphere within a Romanian virtual community. Moreover, the study of online journalism from an audience perspective with the tools of rhetorical criticism is a new area of inquiry even for Western approaches.

Outline of the Study

In a nutshell, the study is organized into eleven chapters. The first four ground the study in the necessary theoretical and methodological foundation for the analysis (in the subsequent chapter) and provide a background of the Formula As community inquiry. The study’s last chapters present the rhetorical analysis of Formula As community in light of six major community conditions and discuss the implications for approaching community building from rhetorical perspectives.

Chapter Two of the study provides the necessary context for understanding the contribution of Formula As magazine within the Romanian cultural context. The chapter begins with an overview of Romanian media during and after communism that serves as a general context for the dissertation’s case study. Next, a detailed presentation and discussion of the Formula As magazine related to its community building and storytelling practices is presented.

Chapter Three comprises the theoretical framework for the study in detail. The chapter begins by surveying pertinent research in the areas of the public sphere and the

Internet, virtual communities, and interactive journalism. Scrutiny of the aforementioned directions in the literature will provide the conceptual framework for investigating the dynamic of the textual interactions within the Formula As community.

9 Chapter Four details the methodology that is used to analyze the rhetorical artifacts for the study and presents the virtual community conceptual model that forms the basis of the rhetorical analysis in the remaining portion of the dissertation. Thus, the chapter describes Fisher’s (1999) narrative paradigm and presents a general discussion of the rhetorical instruments with which to evaluate Formula As discursive practices in light of the artifacts that have been selected. To uncover the uniqueness of the Formula

As magazine virtual community, the conceptual model proposes a set of six conditions

(community self‐reference, common interests and goals, membership boundaries, shared history, common discursive space, and interactivity) as “lenses” for examining the Formula As social environment. The major questions that will be guiding the rhetorical analysis of the Formula As community in the subsequent chapters are: 1) Are the interactions that are exchanged within the Formula As discursive space constitutive of a community for its members?; 2) What does community mean for readers of this magazine?; and

3) What is the role of storytelling in the community building process?

The remaining chapters in the study constitute the analysis portion of the dissertation. Thus, each element of the virtual community conceptual model is the object of an individual chapter; nevertheless, throughout the analysis I pay special attention to the ways in which the community conditions are intertwined. Similarly, in each chapter—where appropriate‐‐ I draw on Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics perspective to discuss the role of interpretive discursive activities in building trust, solidarity, and collective identity in the Formula As virtual community.

Chapter Five examines the manner in which the magazine’s readers rhetorically construct the Formula As consciousness as reflected in their interactive cooperation and solidarity. The chapter also details the role of narrative reasoning in providing participants with a shared interpretive framework that can be adjusted for specific contexts in the process of interpreting the texts posted in the magazine.

Chapter Six investigates the relationship between Formula As individual members’ goals and group goals. In doing so, it identifies the basis of the participants’

10 cooperation in the exchange of naturistic remedies information and involvement in humanitarian work.

Chapter Seven explores the manner in which specific categories of Formula As participants imagine their community boundaries as well as individual and group identities.

Chapter Eight examines the Formula As community culture in its major components: a) the shared Romanian cultural heritage that brings together Romanian readers of Formula As regardless of temporal and spatial constraints; and b) the community’s history of interaction as it is reflected in the community norms and the storytelling practice. The chapter also includes an examination of the role of the storytelling practice in nurturing a culture of self‐disclosure and cooperation within the magazine’s community as well as empowering various marginalized voices in

Romanian society.

Chapter Nine details the ways in which participants adapt to the print and Web medium of interaction in the process of developing sociomental bonds through an examination of the most significant interpretive and discursive practices that are present in the Formula As community texts.

Chapter Ten uncovers the components of the norms of interaction that are adapted for an asynchronous environment by examining interactivity attributes derived from the magazine’s design and from the community’s interpretive practices.

Lastly, Chapter Eleven concludes the study with a discussion of the limitations and strengths of approaching community building from rhetorical perspectives and points out directions for future research related to the study’s approach.

11 CHAPTER TWO

THE FORMULA AS CONTEXT

Given that the Formula As community is constituted through the mediation of texts that are authored by people sharing a common language and cultural memory, I situate the Formula As magazine’s story within the historical and cultural context that permeates it. Beginning with an overview of the Romanian media during and after communism I contend that constituent elements contributed to the emergence of a magazine that achieved a high degree of identification with its readers. First, I discuss the relationship between government‐controlled and democratic mass media and

Romanian audiences, while paying attention to the rhetorical implications of the change in conversation styles for both audiences and rhetors. Second, I chart the Formula As magazine by detailing the publication’s path over the years and situating it within the

Romanian transition journalistic environment. The chapter concludes with a description of the publication’s mode of interaction with the readers especially as it pertains to the magazine’s most interactive sections, the “Health,” and the “S.O.S.” discussion spaces.

An Overview of Romanian Media During and After Communism

Prior to 1989, Romanian mass media (as all mass media during the forty‐two years of communist rule in Romania) was subsidized by the state, carefully controlled by the communist party serving as the communist regime’s favorite tool in disseminating the official ideology and in mobilizing the population. Romanian journalism during the communist rule stopped short of fulfilling the goals of objective reporting and informing the population on matters that were of interest to them as everywhere in the free world.

Instead, as Gross (1996) notes, Romanian journalism provided Romanians with a “diet of predigested, inauthentic, repetitive, highly limited information meant to persuade, assuage, encourage, warn, distract, and dissimulate” (20).

One of the unexpected consequences of government‐controlled mass media policies in Romania during the communist rule was that over time, a majority of the

12 Romanian population no longer trusted its indigenous media for information. Instead,

Romanians would develop oppositional readings of the official press (usually deriding such messages or looking for hidden meanings), rely on word‐of‐mouth, and most importantly, tune in to foreign broadcasts (e.g., Radio Free Europe, Voice of America,

BBC, and television stations that broadcast from the countries neighboring Romania).

For example, according to polls conducted by the U.S. Information Agency during the months following the 1989 Romanian revolution,9 “71” per cent of the Romanian population would regularly partake in the ritual of daily tuning in to foreign radio stations (Gross 1996, 46).

While Romania did not experience a strong dissident movement doubled by an underground press as Poland’s Solidarity political movement to qualify for some rudimentary public sphere (in the Habermasian tradition), nevertheless, listening to foreign radio broadcasts contributed to the nurturing of a covert atmosphere of resistance among the population. Romanians for example, would debate the news that they heard from Western media (and juxtapose such messages to other types of sources) among their own network of family and friends. In this sense therefore, the rhetorical activities of a great part of the population were in fact carving an “alternative public sphere” that was constituted mostly at the level of the private (rather than public) realm but which would impact individuals’ perception of social reality. Over time, repeated discussion and debate of the regime’s policies and of the rhetorically‐induced

“secondary” or “artificial reality” contributed to the gradual erosion of the regime’s ideology and to the population’s distrust in its own media (Shlapentokh 1986, xii).

Shlapentokh (1986) discusses how an authoritarian regime’s control over the population can be maintained, among other means, rhetorically. For example, in the former Soviet Union, as well as in the countries of Eastern Europe by extension, the regime’s dominant ideology was constituted through the interaction of the ideology’s two levels: 1) a “pragmatic level” (i.e., the social, “objective reality”) and 2) a

“mythological level” (i.e., the regime’s manipulation of language through slogans and

“myths having little in common with the ‘objective reality’” for the purpose of

13 legitimizing the social system). Overall, the ideology’s “mythological level” is especially responsible for imposing an “artificial, secondary reality” on the population who in fact, resented any imposition of values that did not resonate with their own social reality

(xii). It is widely acknowledged that living in communist regimes was at times often perceived as living a “big lie” that is, individuals would become aware of the gap between the ideology’s two levels and therefore experience feelings of alienation

(Shlapentokh 1986; Tong 1995). Individuals would cope with constraints and exigencies triggered by living in an artificial rhetorical environment for example, by choosing to dissociate between their own behavioral and verbal activities. Consequently, symbolic messages would only rhetorically indicate compliance with the regime’s imposed values and norms.

Romania and other post‐socialist countries of Eastern Europe or “New Europe‐— still struggle, more than a decade after the fall of communism, with a variety of socioeconomic and political legacies carried over from the socialist years that affect society at both micro‐and macro‐structural levels. High inflation rates, unemployment, and varying privatization pace contributed to a feeling of dissatisfaction of the population with the new elites (Bartlett 2000). Certainly, Eastern Europeans’ perceptions of transition differ across the region due to a multitude of factors, among most notably, different historical legacies, internal economic and political conditions, and external exigencies (Hunter and Ryan 2000).

The transition from state‐socialism to democracy has also meant, from a rhetorical perspective, a shift from a top‐down, ideologically‐imposed Truth that constrained individuals in their choices and interpretation of reality, to the free, consensus‐building dynamic of a plurality of public spheres where truth is a product of conversations and various rhetorical agreements with others in society. A little over four decades of state socialist ideology sent seismic aftershocks to traditional Romanian values that, in most cases during the socialist regime, were, at best, confined to an individual’s private sphere but could not be openly exposed and engaged publicly without great risks to an individual’s security and well‐being. Values associated with an

14 individual’s religious beliefs (e.g., a majority of Romania’s population is Romanian‐

Orthodox), a woman’s reproductive10 choices, freedom11 of expression and of association, and with collective dignity are but a few examples of values that during the socialist rule were either banned from public discourse or were assigned a rhetorically dormant status. The collapse of communism in Romania in 1989 not only freed the population from an omniscient and insidious ideology but also marked the beginning of a process of rhetorical realignment to the new exigencies of living in a different social order with all the foreseen and unforeseen consequences that such a process may imply.

Unfortunately, the already low credibility of Romanian media bridged over to the post‐communist years despite an understandable short period of higher confidence levels in the aftermath of the 1989 revolution. Studies on Romanian post‐communist media generally acknowledge the existence of several identifiable intervals of media development in the transition from the old regime to democracy starting with the earliest televised events of the 1989 Romanian Revolution. Scholars, Romanian journalists and media analysts note the existence of a “honeymoon” period between

Romanian mass media, particularly television, and their audiences at the beginning of the 1990s (Gross 1996). By 1993, however, Romanian audiences’ confidence in their indigenous media dropped significantly due to a variety a causes, dealing mostly with the media’s own identity crisis as well as with the audiences’ confusion in the face of an overcrowded media environment (Gross 1996, 127).

Some of the post‐communist media entrepreneurs however, succeeded in creating media conglomerates with the help of foreign investors, such as the MediaPro12 group and the Intact media empire that each own several television and radio networks, radio stations, and various publications (Ulmanu 2002). Sometimes criticized13 for not serving the public interest and for receiving backing from political parties or political elites through more or less official alliances, commercial media in Romania and by extension in Eastern Europe are nevertheless an essential part of the media systems in each of the region’s countries, therefore contributing to media diversity (Gross 2002).

15 Foreign investment, while uneven in magnitude and across the region depending on each country’s transition phase and media laws’ progress (Hiebert 2002), has generally translated into better technical and professional journalistic resources that often positioned some commercial media into leading positions in their respective markets. In evaluating the potential role of commercial media in the New Europe media systems, Gross (2002) rightfully notes “the commercial media appear to be the only media having the financial wherewithal for the technological retooling and the training, both technical and journalistic, needed to become true mass media” (153). The

Romanian ProTV, Bucharest’s most popular television station (a company that was started in 1995 and a subsidy of the MediaPro group) outruns its competitors (including the public service national television and several other private stations) through a combination of smart audience segmentation (the station caters to the younger generation market), aggressive marketing, and professionalism.

Comparatively, the Romanian public television (RTV), a strategic asset14 and major symbol of the Romanian Revolution through its live broadcast of the fierce street fighting and through providing airtime to the public during the events of December

1989, has been rather slow in restructuring its technical equipment due to its dependence on public subscription money, annual budget allocations, and advertising.

Additionally, over the years, the Free Romanian television has generated a lot of public controversy through its infighting that involved hunger strikes on the part of the television’s free union members in the early 1990s over a series of management issues but also more publicly sensitive topics such as the need for television’s independence from the political arena.

In an overview of Romanian media in transition, Ulmanu (2002), citing figures from the Romanian Statistical Yearbook, notes that in 1996, Romania had “106 dailies and 1781 other periodicals,” compared to only “36 dailies and 459 other periodicals in

1989” for a population of 22 million people. While in the early 1990s a few national dailies (e.g., Romania Libera, Adevarul) peaked circulation numbers in the 1 to 2 million copies range, by 1995, dailies’ circulation numbers plunged to 100,000‐150,000 copies

16 due to an increase in printing and distribution costs, among other reasons, against a background of ever increasing general inflation (Gross 1996, 55; Ulmanu 2002). Local newspapers (usually in major Romanian cities) often compete for readership with national newspapers and a few succeeded in providing quality information for their audiences (e.g., Monitorul de Iasi in Iasi, Realitatea in Timisoara, Telegraf and Cuget Liber in

Constanta). Not surprisingly, the quality of Romanian reporting discourse also changed over time, from a highly polemicist and sensationalist tone in the first few post‐ revolution years to a more information based orientation in the subsequent years combined with strong entertainment or infotainment undertones.

Just as with daily newspapers, the weeklies market has withered since the early

1990s but a number of such publications endured and even thrived. For example, the satirical weekly Academia Catavencu managed to increase its circulation from 30,000 copies in 1995 to 55,000‐60,000 copies in 2002. Similarly, Formula As, a health‐oriented weekly that combines social and political stories with domestic and ecological issues started with a circulation of 15,000 copies in 1991 and increased more than a dozen times in size by 1999. According to a 1999 IMAS (a Romanian market research agency) poll that surveyed more than twenty five national weeklies with circulation numbers ranging from 5,000 to 200,000 copies, Formula As clearly set itself apart with a market share of almost 17% and with a readership of eight readers per copy (i.e., 200,000 copies weekly)

(Formula As 363). The success “formula” (to paraphrase the magazine’s title in an approximate translation) for Formula As is due to a unique blend of grassroots journalism, high quality reporting and resourceful marketing policies (i.e., the magazine only started to use advertising in its pages in 1999), among other things. Since 1998,

Formula As started to place its contents online in a sister web site that, just as the magazine itself, has undergone gradual change over time to better address the needs of the magazine’s online audience that is currently estimated at 700,000 readers, a majority of these located outside Romania. The online edition of the magazine is a major avenue for Romanian diasporic communities to remain in contact with the Romanian culture.

17 The Formula As Magazine

With a relatively small audience in the 1990s, Formula As, a general interest

Romania magazine with a strong health‐related emphasis, has grown into a large publication for the Romanian audiences due to the type of interactive journalism that it promotes in its print and online editions. Actively involved in the Romanian social life,

Formula As facilitates reader‐reader interaction in its various sections and is actively involved in creating public opinion on issues that are of interest to its readers.

The online edition of Formula As functions, in terms of its communication with the readers, as a moderated discussion board. For example, information is posted in the interactive sections of the magazine through the editors who act as gatekeepers in coordinating the questions and answers from the readers. However, due to technological limitations, the exchange of messages between the readers and the editors and among the readers is not synchronous (as in typical online group communication)— there is a delayed time (i.e., the magazine appears in a weekly format) between the posting of the question and its corresponding answer. To compensate for this shortcoming or perhaps to preserve the uniqueness of the magazine and to avoid legal complications, the editors’ contribution to the interactive sessions (for both the printed and the online editions) is kept to a minimum. They mainly aggregate the information originating from the readers and post it in the pages of the magazine.

The major theme of the magazine can be summarized as “healthy body and spirit” and has been maintained over time. Sections such as “Editorial,” “Health,”

“Romanian Spirituality,” “S.O.S,” “Recipes,” “and “Animal World” have been the core of the magazine since the first issue of Formula As and they have been included in the online edition as well. The “Health” and the “S.O.S” sections, for example, are very popular as they are designed in an interactive format based on the exchange of information among readers and as an avenue for readers to bring private matters to the fore of public discussion and solicit help. Specifically, the “Health” section follows a

“questions and answers” pattern in that the readers can learn about various medical conditions, most of them life‐threatening, choose from among the alternative medicine

18 treatments posted by the readers, and evaluate the validity of specific treatment options in the “appreciation” subsection where readers express their gratitude to those whose medical advice they followed.

The magazine’s most enduring, equally captivating and yet tragic section is its

“S. O. S.” column. It is the page that holds letters from the readers in story format.

Week after week, Romanians in need and who can no longer cope on their own, be they young or old, in good health or disabled, members of the Formula As readership community or simply first‐time readers, tell their stories. These are not the average

“Letter to the Editor” kind‐of‐stories that one is often tempted to overlook in the case of mainstream magazines or newspapers but stories of extreme physical and emotional suffering, of struggle with adverse life circumstances, desperate cries for help from individuals and families who have nowhere else to turn for help. A majority of these narratives reach their target in fellow Formula As readers from Romania or abroad, people sometimes not much better off than those who write for help but who, as one reader aptly put it, “are able to endure their own destitution but cannot but take pity in that of others.” 15 Monthly, Formula As presents a detailed account of the distribution of readers’ donations16 through the magazine’s non‐profit foundation and publishes follow‐up messages to the pleas for help that had been submitted.

The contributors’ stories are real, portraying actual people, each with his or her identity and life struggle who come alive before our eyes. The letters’ authors, generally, are people who lived and enjoyed better times in their lives, but who, due to a combination of circumstances (e.g., temporary unemployment, lack of basic resources or of an informal support network, family crises, disability and extreme illness, emigration struggles, old age, to name but a few of the most common predicaments) are now unable to survive solely on their own. Sharing one’s story with the rest of the readers has both tangible, outcome‐oriented implications for those who request help but also functions as a symbolic experience for all readers. Storytelling is a way of engaging the world, of making sense of our existence; it is a rhetorical journey into our own identities and those of others. Even though Formula As readers may not be a community that follows

19 traditional sociological definitions, it is, however, a thriving social environment that comes to life through the readers’ mediated messages. The imagined community is not, however, imaginary; the stories of Formula As authors, together with its readers, represent the lived reality of different voices, often insufficiently heard, in the Romanian society.

On average, Formula As posts on a weekly basis approximately twelve to fifteen messages from each category; due to space constraints, messages might take several issues until they are finally posted in the “questions” subsection unless they are truly emergency situations. The “S.O.S” section usually features several segments following the “questions and answers” and “appreciation” pattern and an additional feature titled

“letter of the week,” that is, a narrative that presents various social topics from the readers’ perspective. The actual headings for the “S.O.S” section are as follow: “letter of the week”—occasionally titled “open debate letters,” “emergencies,” and

“appreciation.”

In the late 1990s, the magazine introduced a new section titled “Romanian diaspora” which contains interviews with successful Romanians who relocated to other countries. Similarly, the number of messages coming from Romanians who offer donations‐‐via the magazine‐‐to anyone who posts a message requesting help in the

“S.O.S” section has increased considerably. Due to the large number of solicitations and donations received, the editorial staff has become very active in posting detailed accounts concerning the manner in which those in need have used the help coming from other readers. In this way, those readers who made contributions are updated on the results of their donations. As a rule, Formula As posts feedback letters from the exact persons who requested help or sometimes expresses thanks on behalf of those readers.

In review, this chapter situates the Formula As magazine and the community that has developed around it within the broader context. Social, political, and economic linkages with both the socialist and transition frames have shaped Romanian audiences’ expectations of their mass media as well as the journalists’ own perceptions of their profession. Even though socioeconomic and political legacies that carried over from the

20 socialist years often impacted negatively the Romanian media environment, the Formula

As magazine succeeded to grow at a steady rate and become one of the most popular weeklies of the transition years. With a still growing readership, the Formula As editorial team has designed a magazine that responds to the readers’ need for exchanging information and establishing connections with one another, for becoming civically involved in their own community and the Romanian society at large.

21 CHAPTER THREE

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Technology has always played an important role in the process of constituting community by shaping our understanding of space, time and proximity. Historically, changes from technological advances in the areas of transportation, architecture, among other things, to advances in communications technologies such as the telegraph, radio,

TV, satellites, and the Internet have impacted our sense of interconnectedness and our perceptions of community. The Internet in particular, through its unique technical attributes in terms of how information is stored, reproduced, and circulated, has unquestionable potential for becoming a modality for connecting individuals and cultures and a challenge to old patterns of social interaction. Even though people continue to rely on traditional media for their information needs, the Internet has become an important competitor. In the United States for example, Klotz (2004) notes that “the number of daily consumers of online news went from less than 1 percent in

1995 to about 16 percent in 2002” (125). As convenience seems to be the driving force behind people’ s turn to the Internet for news consumption, the accuracy of the online content can pose serious threats. The author further observes that a potential way to

“reconcile the two cases appears to be that people will get their online news from traditional organizations” (Klotz 2002, 131).

Among the first to value the immense potential of the Internet, newspapers and magazines that made online versions available to their readers combine the traditional role of public opinion formation and creation of public spheres with the new interactive features of the Internet (Schultz 2000). Interactivity in online journalism generally refers to a variety of features such as the presence of search engines, discussion forums, chat rooms, online polls, and electronic mail that enable online readers to interact with the staff as well as with other readers. Providing the readers with feedback channels and archives of past issues can potentially increase public deliberation on issues of common interest and ultimately strengthen community ties.

22 Traditionally, as a form of mediated communication, newspapers address a collective audience that becomes unified through the consumption of texts that foster a common identity among individuals. To make sense of the world through access to the same disseminated material can, roughly speaking, contribute to the creation of a sense of interconnectedness among the members of an audience that is geographically dispersed (be it at a narrowly or broadly conceived level). In a study of early newspapers, Anderson (1983) observes that a readership community is linked in what he termed “imagined community,” or a way for readers to establish some form of a mental connection (6). The commonality of shared meanings brings about common purpose, collective identity, and a sense of belonging for the community members. The discursive space in online newspapers can, if adequately exploited, provide both readers and staff with the equivalent of the town square and vivid public spheres where participants engage in critical debate about issues that are of interest to the community of readers.

In light of the preceding argument it is apparent that to better understand

Formula As—a nontraditional weekly Romanian magazine that has successfully constituted into a virtual community that shapes public opinion on a series of social issues—a unique theoretical framework is needed. In response to this need, this chapter brings together an eclectic theoretical framework that contains pertinent research in the areas of the public sphere and the Internet, virtual communities, and interactive journalism. The chapter concludes with the research questions that will guide the rhetorical analysis of the Formula As community texts.

23 The Public Sphere and the Internet

The application of Habermas’ (1989) model of the “public sphere” and his theory of “communicative action” to the context of the Internet as well as discussions concerning the Internet’s potential for reviving communities have triggered much debate in scholarly circles and in the media since the 1990s. Habermas’ s (1989) concept of the “public sphere,” originally phrased as the “bourgeois public sphere,” referred to a phenomenon that emerged in the bourgeois societies of 18th century England, France and

Germany. In Habermas’s (1989) view, the “public sphere” originated in the “intimate sphere” of the bourgeois family and expanded into the literary and the political public spheres (54). In defining the bourgeois public sphere, Habermas (1989) emphasizes private individuals’ role in engaging in critical discussion:

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private

people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated

from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate

over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly

relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this

political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people’s

public use of their reason (27).

As autonomous or private spaces, the literary salons, coffeehouses, and early newspapers represented fora where criticism of public authority occurred among individuals who had equal communicative status. For example, Habermas (1989) observes that one of the main characteristics of the public spheres was that “they preserved a kind of social intercourse that, far from presupposing the equality of status, disregarded status altogether” (36).

While critics acknowledge the significance of the assumption of equality regarding the bourgeois public sphere, some recent scholarship, particularly feminist historiography (Landes 1988) questioned the validity of this claim by offering new insight into the gender relations in the bourgeois societies (Calhoun 1997). Others, such as Fraser (1997) argue that “bracketing of social inequalities in deliberation” is a

24 misleading assumption about the public sphere in that the societal context undoubtedly has an impact on the public sphere by reinforcing existing power relations predominant in society (120). The correction to Habermas’s (1989) conception of the bourgeois society would be, according to Fraser (1997), the elimination of “systemic social inequalities” so that all members in society can enjoy “participatory parity” (121).

Eliminating relations of dominance in society to ensure equality in the discursive arena can prove an important aspect of the public spheres that involve the mass media of communication. Currently, discussions about the Internet as a medium of mass communication ultimately involve both criticism and praise for the Internet’s potential in providing arenas of cultural transmission and circulation of information. Compared to other media of mass communication, the Internet is perceived less critically in terms of the type of communication that it facilitates. Due to the Internet’s interactive attributes, information flow has changed from one‐way as in most mass media to two‐ way where every participant can be both a receiver and a producer of information. For example, unlike other types of communication systems, the “dialogical space” provided by the Internet allows for the free exchange of information among relatively equal participants who can adopt multiple roles (Slevin 2000, 184). Moreover, formerly marginalized “voices” in society have now an additional forum where they can be heard and contribute to the reconceptualization of public opinion.

When applied to the context of the Internet, Habermas’s (1989) assumption about equality of status among participants within the communicative action domain leads to both utopic and dystopic views. For example, in the utopian camp, among many other attributes, the Internet is acclaimed as a medium that promotes equal access to discourse in that traditional cleavages of class, gender, and race are not reinforced in cyberspace discourse or they are made less relevant (Norris 2004). Similarly, the Internet provides visibility for individuals and groups previously marginalized in society (Nip 2004; Shaw

1997); opens up new avenues for public opinion formation through forums for free discussion and anti‐authoritarian discourse (Antonijevic 2002); facilitates unprecedented

25 circulation of information and renders an immense capacity for the development of solidarity and trust among disconnected individuals (Herron and Bachman 2000).

However, while the Internet has an enormous potential for improving communication it can also hinder communication due to the lack of regulation of its use and the relatively high costs of building new information infrastructure (Thussu 2000).

For example, some extremist groups use the Internet as a platform to propagate hate material nationally and globally. Glassman (2000) observes that Internet growth in

Eastern Europe for example, also brought a proliferation of online hate speech content denigrating various cultural groups in the Balkans. Further, the so‐called “digital divide,” that is, the inequality that pervades Internet access is a major criticism when examining the concept of the public sphere within the context of the Internet. It is widely known that Internet access reflects the asymmetries in global resource distribution. Most new communication infrastructure is concentrated in the world’s richest regions and countries while the less affluent countries run the risk of being left out of the global electronic network due to the high costs involved in building such infrastructure as well as the prohibitive costs of telephone access (UNDP 2004).

Within the global environment, the number of Internet users is increasing— although at different rates across countries and regions. The global Internet population increased from 605.60 million in September 2002 (NUA Internet Surveys) to 964 million in November 2005 (Internet World Stats). Even though the dynamic of Internet users’ growth by region has changed since 2002, that is, Europe and Asia each outnumber

North America, the rate of Internet penetration is still highest in the latter region

(November 2005 Internet World Stats). Comparatively, Africa and Middle East regions, while achieving significant growth since 2002, still lag behind the rest of the world in the global distribution of Internet users. Apart from substantiating the claim of the so‐called

“digital divide”—a statement concerning the potential of the Internet in maintaining and even deepening the gap between the information “haves” and the “have‐nots” worldwide, Internet demographics can also illustrate how, diachronically, the numbers of Internet users have changed dramatically.

26 In Europe, disparities exist between the European Union countries, the candidate states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and Turkey), and the rest of Europe. Thus, the rate of Internet penetration in the European Union has reached almost 50 percent compared to only 17.5 percent for the candidate states in November 2005 (Internet World Stats).

Among the former communist countries, Internet penetration rates differ due to the unequal growth in their telecommunications sector mainly caused by the privatization of the previously state‐owned telecommunications system.

In Hungary, for example, one of the most reform‐oriented countries in the region, the number of Internet users increased from 100.000 in 1997 (NUA Surveys 2002) to 3 million; the Internet penetration rate is of 30.2 percent in November 2005 (Internet

World Stats). Romania, on the other hand, emphasized the development of its telecommunications system, particularly in the area of IT networks only within the late

1990s. Despite delays, Romania’s Internet penetration rate rose from 12 percent of its population in 2003 (NUA Surveys) to 23.1 percent in November 2005 (Internet World

Stats) after the liberalization17 of the telecom market that occurred in January 2003.

Currently, Romania has almost 5 million Internet users (“Population

Explosion”/ClickZ). According to 2004 data, Internet access in Romania is secured from work (44 percent), home (39 percent), Internet cafes (8 percent), high schools and universities (6 percent) and friends homes (2 percent) (Roibu 2004). Although Internet access in Romania is still expensive for the average Romanian citizen, especially broadband and cable, in 2002, about half of the Internet population in Romania went online at least once a week (Ulmanu 2002). Romanian businesses, NGOs, government agencies, and media outlets are increasingly taking advantage of the Web’s features and

Romanian publications have been among the first to start an online presence.

The public sphere created through the Internet can avoid the so‐called

transformation or refeudalization described by Habermas (1989) in reference to the commercialization of the mass media of the bourgeois public sphere. In his view, the bourgeois public sphere never reached its potential due to an augmentation of the states intervention in the private sphere and the commercialization of the mass media that,

27 although it expanded access, contributed to an alteration of the public’s critical activity.

An increased consumption of mass culture lead to the segmentation of audiences that became less capable or willing to preserve their social roles. The forum of the Internet can facilitate free discussion among participants with different views as long as these private individuals and groups are not becoming fragmented entities and can exert their

critical role in maintaining accountability of the political elites. The interactivity that characterizes the medium of the Internet can prevent the “refeudalization” of the public sphere that is created over the Internet. Even when confronted with extreme commercialization, Internet audiences remain active, capable of speaking out in the public sphere unlike the audiences of traditional mass media. One of the risks associated with this type of online discourse remains the blurring of the line between private and public since anyone can express his or her views in any of the forums that exist online.

Virtual Community

Inquiry into the nature of community has a long tradition in the fields of philosophy, rhetoric, sociology, and political science and is underscored by theorizing about the nature of the human being, the relationship between reality and language, and the role of technology in society. Traditional conceptions of community generally draw on Tönnies’ gemeinschaft/gesellschaft opposing categories of human associations and emphasize sharing of a determined physical space by the community’s members and the existence of a core of activities, kinship, or some other type of unifying thread. Tönnies

(1887/1957) associates “community” or Gemeinschaft with the feeling of togetherness and belonging that develops among individuals who are tied together by family relations, similar age, custom, language, shared practices, and sharing of a physical space. Such traditional communities are considered typical of pre‐industrial societies. For Tönnies

(1887/1957), Gemeinschaft‐like relationships are most likely to exist “when those involved

… are engaged in the same activity or have the same intentions, or are united by one idea” (253). In contrast, Gesellschaft, or “society” is characteristic of the industrial world

28 and brings about a shift from solidary to impersonal relationships (Tönnies 1887/1957).

Since Tönnies, much sociological debate has ensued over the loss of traditional community ties and values due to technological changes and has informed contemporary discourse over the nature of community in the Internet environment

(Wellman 1988; Wellman & Gulia 1999).

While the Internet’s infrastructure and protocols enable the interconnection of smaller computer networks into a “network of networks” that spans the world (though unequally) it is certainly the users and their online interaction that convey a social aspect to this unique medium. Generally labeled as computer‐mediated communication

(CMC) that is, human communication that is facilitated by computers, the online exchanges occur through a variety of technologies that are supported by the Web. Text‐ based interaction, while still prevalent in e‐mail, chat, discussion forums, newsgroups, blogs, and Multi‐User Dungeons (MUDs or MOOs) is gradually supplemented by other modes of interaction such as sound, video, webcams, moving graphics that are popular with Web pages (personal and corporate) and visual chat. Community discussions however, whether in popular journalistic accounts or scholarly fields, are usually centered on the text‐based mode of interaction and span a wide spectrum of CMC genres such as e‐mail, discussion forums, newsgroups, internet relay chat and instant messaging, and MUDs.

Participants in computer‐mediated communication who are brought together by shared interests sometimes develop friendships much like those offline. The relations that are thus formed facilitate exchange of information and emotional support that, over time, given the members’ common history of interaction through regular contact creates what scholars in computer‐mediated communication call, a “virtual community.” In examining community members’ exchanges scholars pose questions that range from discussing a) conceptualizations of “virtual communities” (e.g., Baym 1998, 2000; Jones

1995, 1998; Rheingold 1993; ); b) comparisons of traditional or real communities with those that are established through the Internet (e.g., “network communities,” or “virtual communities”) (e.g., Etzioni and Etzioni 1999; Mynatt et al. 1998); to identifying c) fitting

29 determinants of online community (e.g., Jones 1997; Liu 1999); and d) the users’ characteristics and the nature of their interaction (e.g., Pew Internet 2001).

Internet visionaries, Lickleider and Taylor, foresaw as early as 1968, when the

Internet was the ARPANET network at its beginnings, that the “on‐line interactive communities” of the future will be created around members’ common interests rather than anchored in a shared geographical location:

What will on‐line interactive communities be like? In most fields they will

consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small

cluster and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of

common location, but of common interest. In each geographical sector, the total

number of users…will be large enough to support extensive general‐purpose

information processing and storage facilities…life will be happier for the on‐line

individual because the people with whom one interacts most strongly will be

selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of

proximity (quoted in Jones 1998, 19).

Twenty‐five years later, Howard Rheingold, coined the phrase “virtual community” in response to more than a decade of observing online interaction (Rheingold 1993). For

Rheingold (1993), virtual communities are “social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace” (5; emphasis mine). Even though Rheingold’s (1993) conceptualization of virtual communities attracted both fair and unfair criticism that ranges from claiming that “virtual communities” are in fact

“extensions” of real communities (Wilbur 1997, 7) to questioning the “community” attributes of electronic communities (Foster 1997; Stratton 1997; Weinreich 1997),

Rheingold rightfully identified some of the essential ingredients of virtual communities.

While scholars still debate whether the Internet supports the formation of “virtual communities” and what qualifies an online gathering to be included in the “community” category, albeit virtual, the truth of the matter is that huge numbers of people find such

30 online experiences extremely rewarding, sometimes to levels that exceed offline interconnectedness (Wellman & Gulia 1999).

A major line or argument against the viability of the idea of building community on the Web draws from a Utopian vision of the Gemeinschaft community (Healy 1997;

Stratton 1997). For Lockard (1997) and Stratton (1997), virtual community hype illustrates the “myth” that characterizes American social life, that is, the nostalgia for the traditional neighborhoods of yesteryear and the desire to find replacements as in the surrogate shopping mall community or to project the very human need for belongingness into cyberspace. To Internet skeptics, locality is a key ingredient for quality interaction as it gets people involved with each other and fosters “real” commitment. Lockard (1997) writes, “To accept only communication in place of a community’s manifold functions is to sell our common faith in community vastly short”

(225). Engaging the world via computer networks is viewed therefore as a poor substitute of human interaction, fulfilling functional goals at best.

“Social presence” theory (e.g., Short et al. 1976) and the Reduced Social Cues model (Sproull and Kiessler 1986; Kiessler and Sproull 1992) argue that a lack of social context cues such as body language, tone of voice and facial expressions leads to a low online “social presence” that makes group communication more impersonal, self‐ absorbed, and disinhibited. More recent studies of computer‐mediated commuication reveal however, that in order to make up for the lack of social context cues, online users create new forms of communication to convey emotions as in the use of emoticons, employ language more creatively (e.g., choose nicknames to evoke identity) and supplement their online communication with information that is conveyed through other channels (Walther and Parks 2002). Joseph Walther (1996), a scholar who has spent many years researching computer‐mediated communication and whose efforts materialized in advancing the Hyperpersonal Communication theory to explain why some people are more attracted to online interaction than to face‐to‐face communication, makes some very valuable observations regarding the perceptions that some users may form during computer‐mediated exchanges. For example, someone who may be shy in

31 face‐to‐face contexts may come across as articulate and loquacious online since computer‐mediated communication, especially in asynchronous channels (e.g., e‐mail) allows one more time to compose the message. Similarly, a person who may be self‐ conscious with physical appearance markers in face‐to‐face contexts can instead highlight aspects of one’s self (e.g., intelligence, special skills, etc) during online exchanges that would ultimately make that person more confident. Lastly, the Internet, through its myriad online discussion groups, chat rooms, and online gaming environments allows one more options to find like‐minded others and develop kinship with them based on the existence of perceived common similarities. Other studies’ findings (e.g., Roberts, Smith & Pollock 2000) come to support the argument that in fact, people who are shy by nature may be more comfortable interacting online.

The Reduced Social Cues Model proponents also claim that computer‐mediated communication undermines social norms and favors disinhibited behavior—a position that has been much prevalent in popular media accounts of life on the Web. In other words, people engaging in computer‐mediated communication will be less likely to be considerate and follow the specific group norms because the online medium allows users lower accountability and relative anonymity than face‐to‐face communication.

More generally, Internet critics, for example, argue that online interaction evokes aggressive verbal behavior (i.e., flaming), makes pornography widely available, and propagates hate speech. While flaming (i.e., using insulting, inflammatory language) does take place in online groups it does not constitute the norm for online interaction.

As a matter of fact, many online communities have systems in place to handle aggressive behavior either via group moderators or through reinforcing group norms.

For example, McLaughlin et al. (1995) observe that individual group members often take it upon themselves to impose group norms upon anyone who breaks them such as in any member’ s use of inappropriate language or taking up group bandwidth instead of sending replies to the person directly concerned. In a recent critique of flaming and online aggression literature, O’Sullivan and Flanagin (2003) point out the lack of

32 consensus in conceptualizing online aggression and propose a novel framework that relies on a “relational context as a key to interactants’ message interpretations” (78).

Another line of argument that is common among virtual community critics refers to the quality of bonding among members of virtual communities. With its wide variety of computer‐mediated communication genres and spaces for virtual congregation, the

Internet is at the same time a medium that reflects heterogeneity but also homogeneity.

Skeptics argue that the multitude of computer‐mediated communication channels that are further divided according to topics breeds uniformity since people form voluntary associations with others based on shared interests (Healy 1997). Fernback’s (1997) comments summarize the skeptics’ claim well:

However, communities of interest are closed places—they can become self‐

seeking, atomized, even solipsistic communities that lack a social role in the

larger collectivity…Roots in a virtual community are shallow at best; with a

small investment of time and frequency of “virtual” interaction, members can

establish themselves forcefully within the community. Just as easily, though,

they can disassociate themselves with the community by refusing to log on,

thereby leaving the community with much less trauma than what might

accompany leaving a physical community (41).

With low entrance and exit barriers, virtual communities can become places of fragmentation instead of true community. Physical communities, by contrast, are perceived as places that foster organic, heterogeneous ties among people.

However, numerous accounts describing online community members’ bonding experiences bring sufficient evidence to illustrate just the opposite. For example,

Rheingold’s (1993, 2000) stories from the Parenting conference in one of the first virtual communities, the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) detail a sense of deep communion. In their online exchanges, WELL members brought much needed emotional and material support to peers who were struggling offline with terminal illnesses and other life crises. Often, online ties can be just as strong, if not stronger, than the bonds we form with others in our physical communities for a variety of reasons

33 that deal among other things, with the larger amount of control that people have in presenting their identity online (Turkle 1995), the very voluntary nature of the relationships, and the amount of time that is spent online. In a content analysis study of online empathy, Preece and Ghozati (2001) screened an assortment of online communities from various categories such as patient support, religious, social, scientific, cultural, and sports communities. The authors of the study found overwhelming evidence that empathy (i.e., the ability to be in a person’s shoes and identify with her feelings) “was extraordinarily high in many support communities” (254) and that overall, the culture of the community had an important role in determining the tone of the members’ interactions. Other studies of virtual communities also support the idea that as a socially constructed entity, the virtual community partially constitutes its identity through the set of norms that inform the group members’ interactions and act as a common bond for the group members (Burnett and Bonnici 2001; Watson 1998).

Conceiving of virtual communities as communities of practice, that is, examining the habitual activities of the participants as they engage one another symbolically via exchange of mediated texts can be a particularly useful approach in uncovering the inner workings of a given community (Baym 2000). Focusing on the community members’ communicative practices may reveal images that the participants hold about the community, their role in it, and the symbolic construction of individual and collective identities. Baym’s (2000) study of an online fan group called rec.arts.tv.soaps

(r.a.t.s.), a Usenet group of viewers of soap operas, is a good illustration of the

“community as practice” approach. For example, Baym (1995, 2000) found that r.a.t.s. participants are engaged in the practice of interpreting the shows in ways that are meaningful to them and while doing so, group identity is fostered through the collaborative experiences. While watching the shows constitutes a shared interest, the rhetorical negotiation of shared interpretation of the shows’ messages and critiquing its various aspects are major avenues for symbolically constructing the r.a.t.s. community.

Baym (2000) pointed out that humor and rituals of “friendliness”‐‐as part of the process

34 of reaching consensus on common interpretations‐‐function as building blocks in developing group norms and a collective identity for the r.a.t.s. community.

Another line of argument related to the homogeneity of the Internet and which challenges the diffusion of virtual communities argues that Internet access, though increasing, leaves out the media‐poor nations of the world. According to a United

Nations report, 90 percent of Internet users live in industrialized countries, which contain only 15 percent of the world’s population (UNDP 2001). Globally, the average

Internet users tend to be clustered in urban areas, are young, male, better educated and with sufficient disposable income (UNDP 2001). While unequal distribution of Internet access continues to pose a problem within countries and across boundaries it is worth noting that patterns in Internet access seem similar to other past trends in adoption of media such as the telephone, radio, television, and the VCR (Van Dijk 1999, 150). In critiquing the American undertones in the globalization of the Internet, Stratton (1997) notes that “[T]he American mythologization of the Internet as a community represents a nostalgic dream for a mythical early modern community which reasserts the dominance of the white, middle‐class male and his cultural assumptions” (271). Similarly, addressing the “political geography of cyberspace” Lockard (1997) states that [T]he

Internet may be in the process of internationalization, but it remains blatantly American in its social rhetoric and values” (228). The online economy, as a rapidly increasing sector of the Web, while bringing in huge revenues globally also poses another threat to virtual communities as some companies use the “community” metaphor to boost their profits.

In reflecting upon his experiences as a member of an impressive number of online communities for several decades, Rheingold (2000) notes the changes in his own mode of relating to the world. He states:

I routinely meet people and get to know them months or years before I see

them—one of the ways my world today is a different world, with different

friends and different concerns, from the world I experienced in the premodem

days…Not only do I inhabit my virtual communities; to the degree that I carry

35 around their conversations in my head and begin to mix it up with them in real

life, my virtual communities also inhabit my life. I’ve been colonized; my sense

of family at the most fundamental level has been virtualized (xxv)

Indeed, as Rheingold metaphorically observes, we seem to carry mental tokens of others with us during our daily activities, conversations that we’ve had and interpretations of those conversations, regardless of where those conversations actually originated. In an innovative study that examines the various ways in which people establish “mental connections” with others, Chayko (2002) advances the idea of “mental networks” or

“paths” that are created when people who do not normally interact face‐to‐face resonate with each other (73). Chayko (2002) further observes that the connections that are thus established need not be mutual or occur solely in mediated environments since we can feel a certain communion with our favorite book character, a deceased person such as one’s great‐great‐great parent, or some other type of affinity that we may develop.

When applied to the online environment, Chayko’s (2002) concept of “sociomental bonds” can be extremely useful as it operates within a broader conceptualization of community that is similar to Anderson’s (1983) notion of “imagined community” which will be discussed a bit further in the chapter. For now, let us just note that the boundary between virtual and “real” communities is often blurred as individuals may switch from one environment to the other easily connecting with others who are part of that person’s network. Therefore, ultimately, the fear that some exhibit in conceiving of virtual communities as places that take up from the time that one would otherwise spend offline in “real” relationships may be unfounded.

Recent community research in sociology, the so‐called social networks perspective, may finally settle the virtual vs. real debate in community studies. Before continuing with other perspectives on virtual communities however, it is necessary to review some of the relevant social networks literature as it pertains to the online environment to shed some light into the interconnectedness between the online and offline life. As noted earlier in this study, much traditional sociological scholarship on community assumed physical proximity and boundedness as common denominators which fueled a rather

36 idealistic expectation of what community should be. Normative perspectives on community not only miss the variety of community forms (e.g., physical communities versus communities of interest or practice) but also seem rather inappropriate in explaining the shift in contemporary community structure which was brought about by economic, social, and cultural changes. For example, people continue to belong to communities and maintain a variety of relationship ties across distances using transportation and communication means to keep in touch.

Contemporary sociological studies reveal that a more fitting description of communities in the information age would be centered on the “social networks” that people maintain rather than in terms of shared physical space (Wellman & Gulia 1999).

This is a central concept for any discussion of virtual communities because it allows for a shift from the narrowly defined conception of community as geographic proximity to a definition based on the nature of our interactions with others. Wellman, Boase, and

Chen (2002) found that people develop ties with others in “ways that carry across group boundaries…and live and work in multiple sets of overlapped relationships, cycling among different networks” (160). This dynamic allows for the mobility of modern lifestyles. A person’s social network comprises relations of various intensity that range from weak to strong. An individual’s weaker ties are generally characteristic of infrequent, not reciprocated, less intimate, and goal‐oriented relations. For example, a work network may be an ideal illustration of the existence of such weak ties. Strong ties, in contrast, are frequent, mutual, maintained with close others, and supportive

(Haythornthwaite 2002). Weak ties seem to be particularly effective online as members of online groups find it easier to connect with others and exchange information and services in the absence of status and situational cues. On the other hand, online interaction can also lead to strong ties among members of groups especially in electronic communities that cater to social and health problems (Wellman and Gulia 1999). Since an individual’s network can be sustained through a variety of means of communication, both online and offline, it is generally unproductive to consider an individual’s online activities as separated from the offline life. One domain of activity blurs into the other.

37 For example, since the advent of Instant Messaging (IM) popular media have reported stories of employees who chat online while they are physically sharing the same office, working together, and who may switch interaction channels depending on their needs.

Wellman and Gulia rightfully note (1999), “It is the relationship that is the important thing, and not the communication medium” (182).

Etzioni and Etzioni (1999), in a comparative study of face‐to‐face and computer‐ mediated communications, argue that while proximity is not always an indicator of community, “bonding” (i.e, forming social ties with others) and “culture” (i.e., shared history and norms) are essential for each environment. They further compare off‐and online communities using several key criteria such as “access,” the degree of

“identification, authentication, and accountability,” “interactive broadcasting,”

“breakout and reassemble,” “cooling‐off mechanisms and civility,” and “memory” (242‐

246). Some criteria seem to enhance online community building such as access, the capability to enable group work and sending out messages to all community members instantly, and strong archiving capabilities of the group’s interactions. The authors conclude that making normative evaluations about the superiority of one communication system over the other in terms of their community building capabilities fails to account for the uniqueness of each system in creating and sustaining communities. The best of both worlds may be, according to the authors, a “hybrid system” that would combine the unique attributes of both offline and online communication modes (247).

Not only has the Internet redefined our conception of community but also triggered much debate whether the Internet fosters civic involvement in communities.

Questioning the impact of media on community is not however, an Internet era phenomenon but has been a central concern in a variety of fields such as sociology and media studies. Jankowski (2002) notes that this line of inquiry evolved together with the development of mediated forms of communication, such as the radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s, electronic community media hype in the 1970s, and more recently, the Internet era. As with more general criticism of virtual communities,

38 pessimist perspectives doubt that cyberspace can be a place for real community involvement. Some authors argue that online interactions can contribute to social isolation (Kraut et al. 1998), may alienate people from their physical communities

(Doheny‐Farina 1996) and that mediated communication correlates with fragmented constructions of identity and chips away at community attachment (Gergen 1991). For

Beniger (1987), mediated forms of communication bring people together in “pseudo‐ communities” or a “hybrid of interpersonal and mass communication” (369). Pseudo‐ community was made possible by the advent of mass media in the 19th and 20th century that altered the nature of communication. Characterized by a lack of physical, social, and other types of nonverbal cues that are conveyed together with the message, mass mediated communication brings into question the “sincerity” of the communicated content which is perceived as less sincere than in face‐to‐face communication.

Computer‐mediated communication certainly fits into the pattern as the disembodiment feature of this type of communication can sometimes make deception easier to accomplish and online participants may take longer to develop trust. Beniger (1987) therefore is critical of pseudo‐community in that he views relationships established within pseudo‐community to be impersonal and to be lacking in authenticity. Other perspectives however, argue that online communities are feasible (Rheingold 1993), and that online relationships complement offline ones (Wellman and Gulia 1999).

Some of the core concepts in the community involvement question are social capital and collective action as they represent indicators of commitment of the community members. Social capital has been defined by Putnam (1995) as “the features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate cooperation and coordination for mutual benefit” (66). Social capital can be operationalized in a variety of ways but some forms such as interaction with one’s network ties or “network capital,” “civic engagement,” and a “sense of community” have received more attention (Haase et al. 2002, 293). Putnam (1995, 2000) argues that

America has experienced a significant decline in community participation in the last few decades of the 20th century. Thus, recent generations are less involved in public life and

39 spend less time engaged in activities with friends, neighbors, or participating in associations. A major cause in the decline of social capital in American life is, in

Putnam’s (2000) view, the development of television that has triggered a shift in people’s socializing patterns from public spaces to home‐based leisure activities. Other studies note that the changes in community networks may account for the privatization of public space (Wellman 1999). Given the Internet’s pervasiveness in American life—a fact acknowledged by numerous researchers and repeatedly evidenced by studies from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, among many others—the debate surrounding the impact of the Internet on social capital is not surprising.

Communication technologies enable people to conduct a variety of activities from home such as work, banking, shopping, socializing, and leisure. Putnam (1995) is concerned that weak network ties that would be nurtured through outside the home interaction would be lost. However, social networks research shows that the Internet functions as a way to supplement existing relationships and participation in associations due to its embeddedness in social life (Quan‐Haase et al., 2002). Those who are already civically involved use the Internet to diversify their interests and exchange e‐mails with both local and distant friends to keep in touch.

From the Pew Internet and American Life Project (2001) report, it appears that the Internet facilitates involvement with others in both local and global communities in a wide range of social interactions among people with shared interest. For example, Free‐

Nets or free online computer service networks provide local community members with useful general public information in areas that can range from health care, library, education, to government, law, and recreation. In an article that discusses the

“bridging” and “bonding” potential of the Internet, Norris (2004) investigates the social function of online communities. The study draws on Putnam’s (2000) distinction between “bridging social capital” (i.e., positive capital that is built among participants to heterogeneous groups) and “bonding social capital” (i.e., capital that is built from interactions among members of homogeneous groups that may reinforce existing social cleavages) which is applied to the context of online networks. Her findings indicate that

40 the Internet “has the capacity to deepen linkages among those having similar beliefs as well as to serve as a virtual community that cuts across at least some traditional social divisions” such as gender, race, and class (40). In a study examining the role of social capital in virtual communities Blanchard and Horan (1998) found that when virtual communities are physically based (i.e., a traditional community supplementing members’ resources with electronic access) the social interaction among the community members is more likely to exhibit higher levels of social capital. When people are already involved in communities, providing them with additional resources to acquire information, maintain contact, and exchange opinions in online forums can foster a sense of community and therefore increase social capital. Nevertheless, as some note, facilitating additional avenues for civic engagement through such online forums does not necessarily guarantee community participants commitment to the community (Jones

1995).

Concerned with understanding why geographically dispersed individuals and perfect strangers exchange information and/or provide varying degrees of support to one another, a number of computer‐mediated communication studies examined aspects of online cooperation. Routinely, participants to online groups offer “help” to questions posted within the community, engage in supportive behavior (Antonijevic 2002; Baym

1995), and occasionally provide tangible forms of assistance that have offline consequences (Rheingold 1993). Conceiving of the electronic exchange of textually based contributions among virtual community members as the equivalent of real life

“gift giving,” in that it is a purely voluntary action, one can safely view online cooperation as the electronic equivalent of production of public goods. In fact, it is a manifestation of collective action for the public benefit. For example, as Kollock (1999) notes, online public goods or “digital goods” (e.g., responses to queries of information, voluntary postings of information) differ from the real life public goods in several important characteristics (223).

From a cost/benefits perspective, producing online goods is much easier than producing public goods offline. For example, the costs associated with the production

41 of the online goods are very minimal or nonexistent in many cases. Members of virtual communities can reduce the costs of the production of the online goods by collective action. Mele (1999) illustrates how social change was achieved in a low‐income public housing community, Jervay Place, in Wilmington North Carolina, whose members were able to better negotiate the renovation of their development with the local housing authority. As a result of their online plea for help, the residents of Jervay Place received architectural and legal knowledge from several specialized discussion groups that provided them with an “edge” in their offline meetings with the housing developers.

Mele’s (1999) case study also contributes substantial evidence for the often taken for granted assumption of the empowering characteristics of online networks. Once

Internet access is secured, traditionally marginalized groups such as the dispossessed, women (Dietrich 1997), ethnic minorities (Mitra 1997), gays (Shaw 1997), lesbians (Nip

2004) can freely voice their concerns in online public spaces, symbolically redefine their ethos through web sites, and often induce change within a specific community.

From a teleological perspective, online goods are practically inexhaustible that is, in Kollock’s (1999) own qualification, “nonrival”‐‐meaning that immense numbers of individuals can benefit from the good (225). This characteristic of online goods poses both technical and ethical problems as in the case of limiting or banning one’s access to the socially constructed space and implicitly from benefiting from the sharing of resources. The strategies for overcoming obstacles within the public production of goods may have to do with the group’s norms and the process of monitoring of the group’s activities (Kollock & Smith 1994). It is generally acknowledged that members of online communities establish networks of cooperation through the exchange of text based information that despite its lack of tangible characteristics fulfils important functions for the group (Smith 1992). In an analysis of the virtual community of the

WELL, Marc Smith (1992) notes that the digital goods that arise from the interaction among the members of the WELL community are “various forms of social capital,” namely, “social network capital,” “knowledge capital,” and “communion.” Social network capital is reflected in the number of relations with others who share similar

42 interests and who are part of the network. Knowledge capital can be roughly described as the information or (specialized) knowledge that is exchanged among WELL community members who provide one another with answers to questions. In fostering a culture of “gift giving” WELL community members develop reciprocity norms that ultimately contribute to a sense of communion or belongingness and trust.

43 Language and Imagined Communities

The relationship between language and virtual communities has been a major object of inquiry for studies on virtual communities. The perspectives are generally diverse but overall, a majority of the studies examine the textual interactions within various forms of virtual communities (MUDs, discussion forums, chat rooms) and attempt to identify discursive patterns that are in use by the members of those communities. Linguistic approaches to virtual communities argue that socially constructed spaces are invariably associated with specific forms of language use that may or may not resemble the discursive practices of real life communities. For example, interactivity or logical sequencing of messages, is one of the key qualifying elements for virtual communities (Jones 1997; Liu 1999) and just as in real life talk, online interlocutors follow a dialogic framework of interaction (i.e., taking turns and providing feedback but also ignoring conversational rules).

Herring (1999) argues that computer‐mediated communication language has some characteristics that arise from the users’ “adaptations to the medium,” that are different both from the real life conversations and from one computer‐mediated communication environment to another (i.e., synchronous vs. asynchronous contexts).

For example, users’ ability to engage and sustain multiple, simultaneous conversations or in Herring’s (1999) terms, “hyperpersonal interaction”, is a main difference from real‐ life conversations where the lack of a visually enhanced medium makes such a phenomenon relatively impossible. Similarly, topics in online chat and online gaming environments (e.g., MUD) may be more prone to digression tendencies than in discussion forums where the users rely on editing techniques to substitute for the logical coherence of the message.

Other investigations of virtual communities via explorations of the textual interactions among its members take into account several other aspects of electronic discourse. Such literature comprises studies that range from use of humor viewed within a norms‐based approach (Danet et al 1998), analysis of gender and race textual tracings (O’Brian 1999; Burkhalter 1999), argument structuring (Herring 1999), to the

44 choice of topics posted within the discursive environment and their related treatment

(Boyd & Brewer 1997). Particularly valuable approaches for examinations of text‐based exchanges that occur within a virtual community have been inspired by humanistic perspectives such as reception theory and Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics. While distinct in specific ways, the two approaches are similar in the emphasis that is placed on meaning production which is viewed as a dynamic process in which audiences articulate the meanings of the text through the process of interpretation. As interactive environments, virtual communities bring together participants who are involved in the process of creation and production of texts that allows them to negotiate meanings for their collective experience. In a study that investigates cyberspace as a performative space, Barbatsis, Fegan, & Hansen (1999) draw on reception theory and note that cyberspace is constituted discursively and exists as a mental representation originating from the text‐reader interaction.

Wolfgang Iser (1978), one of the major proponents of reception theory, introduced the idea of the involvement of the reader in actualizing the text’s potential.

In Iser’s (1978) view, the work as a whole has a “virtual position,” that is, it arises out of the reader’s engagement of the text through the reading process (21). In constructing mental images off the text, projections that surface out of the “what is said” in conjunction with “what is not said” and filtered through the reader’s own cultural lens, the text is brought into an ideational object (168). In comparing this scenario with that of cyberspace interaction one can observe that one’s imagination is essential in the process of articulating the virtual position of the mediated text and in developing connectedness with others across space and time boundaries. Whether the connection is established through print, hypermedia, or some other type of mediation, activating the meaning potential inherent in commonalities that we share with others remains an important aspect of human imagination.

In writing about the constitution of the nation as a community, Benedict

Anderson (1983) emphasizes the role of our imagining in the process of constructing images of self and community, nation, and culture. Thus, nationhood exists as an

45 ideational entity that rests on shared traditions, customs, narratives, and above all, on sharing a common language. Nineteenth and twentieth century history provides us with numerous illustrations of national ideologies that succeeded in bringing together quite a diverse—in terms of socio‐economic classes, political, and racial differences‐‐ body of citizenry due to the strength of the mental images that were rhetorically constructed through nationalistic discourse. Hitler’s nationalistic discourse is one such example. Even communist ideology, while generally perceived as alien to the cultural memories of most Eastern European nations during the communist regimes, occasionally triggered some form of identification among audience members and their leaders. Romania’s last communist leader, Nicolae Ceauşescu, for example, temporarily succeeded in creating a positive image for himself at home and abroad—at least in the early years of his leadership‐‐through strategic discourse that he employed on various occasions. Ceauşescu’s rhetoric of opposition to former Soviet Union’s invasion of

Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 or his disagreement with the Soviet invasion of

Afghanistan triggered a united front for his foreign policy of autonomy. Paradoxically, while most Romanians would perceive Ceauşescu’s rhetoric as hollow (i.e., employing wooden language) and removed from the contingencies of Romanian realities, on those occasions, slogans such as “social democracy,” “sovereignty,” “independence,” or “non‐ interference” in one country’s internal affairs would function as a unifying bond between the leadership and the population.

However, it must be noted that for the most part, citizens of Central and Eastern

European countries were able to resist the ideologically alien communist regimes, among other things, by keeping alive the reservoir of cultural memory. Shared narratives of pre‐communist times would create a bridge among generations as well as provide a moral compass at a time when the official ideology was altering historical facts to match the temporary goals of the regime. In my own family, for example, informal celebrations were also times of exchanging stories or memories among the elderly members of the family in front of a very attentive audience. I still remember, through my grandfather’s stories—as if I was there myself—what life was like in

46 Bucharest during the interwar years: the fascinating bohemian Bucharest life, the cozy taverns and pubs at the outskirts of the big city where my grandfather used to stop for some hearty dinner at midnight while working nightshifts as a taxi‐driver. Lived experiences from the pre‐communist past preserved in the form of shared personal narratives within one’s informal network would create, together with various rituals that could not be altered by the official vision, a sense of belonging among members of a culture that was striving to maintain its cultural memory intact, albeit at the level of private spheres. Most importantly, such collective imagining occurred through a process of interpretation of past events from different perspectives (e.g., personal and official narratives) and ultimately contributed to the shaping of a tacit collective consciousness of resistance. As Gadamer (1981) and Ricoeur (1981), among others, note, shared narratives play a key role in preserving a culture’s history and traditions. The rhetorical means of making such resistance manifest part of the public sphere were, however, different for Romanians abroad than for those living at home.

Geographical boundaries, therefore, while marking a contiguous space for a given nation and delimiting the perimeter of a homogeneous culture can hardly, by themselves, create a community. They may however be a challenge in accounting for diasporic communities that maintain their symbolic allegiance to their home country and culture despite spatial and temporal limitations. Anderson’s Imagined Communities has been of significant importance for CMC scholars in that it contributed to a broadening of perspective that eventually shifted the debate from questions regarding a virtual community’s authenticity to other foci of investigation. A virtual community, like a nation, is ultimately a symbolic entity that brings together people who share a consciousness of belonging to an imagined collectivity. For Anderson (1983), physical proximity is hardly a defining feature of community:

All communities larger than the primordial villages of face‐to‐face contact (and

perhaps even these) are imagined. Communities are to be distinguished, not by

their falsity or genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined (6).

47 Other determinants, such as a common language, practices such as sharing narratives of a group’s collective history enable community members to actualize their emotions and thoughts and foster a feeling of togetherness and a collective consciousness. Mass media are credited with facilitating connection among members of a mass audience, that is, bringing them closer to one another and the rest of the world but in doing so subtle and sometimes not so subtle influences of people’s perceptions and attitudes may occur

(Meyrowitz 1985). Anderson (1983) successfully illustrates how the early newspapers, as one of the first mass media functioned as the means through which sharing became possible and facilitated the constitution of the nation as an imagined community. For example, the early newspapers of South America, contained, in Anderson’s view,

aside from news about the metropole—commercial news (when ships would

arrive and depart, what prices were current for what commodities in what ports),

as well as colonial political appointments, marriages of the wealthy and so forth.

In other words, what brought together, on the same page, this marriage with that

ship, this price with that bishop, was the very structure of the colonial

administration and market system itself. In this way, the newspaper of Caracas

quite naturally, and even apolitically, created an imagined community among a

specific assemblage of fellow‐readers, to whom these ships, brides, bishops, and

prices belonged (62).

In disseminating information or “news” about the world, the newspaper is the bridge that brings similar images into being and thus establishing a connection among disparate audience members into an “imagined community” of readers. The sense of community is based on acquiring knowledge and constructing images and interpretations out of the events described in the newspaper.

By comparison, communities that are created over the Internet function in a similar manner in that their members establish communal relationships in the absence of physical proximity and other traditional determinants of kinship. Baym (1998) argues that several “preexisting structures” influence the “style” in which virtual community is imagined. She notes that the participants’ context (e.g., shared language, social

48 markers), the synchronicity of the communication (synchronous or asynchronous), characteristics of the system infrastructure (e.g., system usability features that may impact the nature and format of the participants’ posts), the goals of the groups’ imagining together, and community members’ characteristics (e.g., demographics of the group) may individually, or in various ratios affect one another and the community’s online interaction (40‐49). What Baym means is that computer‐mediated communication interaction is permeated with structural elements that link it with invisible threads to the offline environment, variables that may make each virtual community unique. Other scholars also noted the embeddedness of the online life in physical reality (Wellman and

Gulia 1999) to the point that some suggested that capitalizing the word “Internet” is no longer justified due to its widespread adoption in society (Jones 2004).

The domain of the free exchange among the members of virtual communities is the imaginary space of the Internet or “cyberspace” as it is generally acknowledged since William Gibson conceived of the term. While cyberspace does not fit our traditional conception of space (i.e., in a geographical sense) it is nevertheless inhabited, rhetorically. As Jones (1998) aptly notes:

Computer‐mediated communication not only structures social relations, it is the

space within which the relations occur and the tool that individuals use to enter

that space. It is more than the context within which social relations occur

(although it is that, too) for it is commented on and imaginatively constructed by

symbolic processes initiated and maintained by individuals and groups (12).

As more and more people’s lives incorporate the online interface for daily activities such as shopping, banking, working, chatting, studying, computer‐mediated communication scholars also adapt their tools in conceptualizing virtual space. Mitra and Schwartz

(2001) for example, suggest a new term, “cybernetic space” to reflect the crux between real and virtual space. While being in cyberspace people still maintain their connection with real space and the boundaries between the two types of spaces become merged into a new space, “cybernetic space” according to the article’s authors. “Cybernetic space” is a “synthesis” of the real and the virtual and any attempt to truly understand the Internet

49 and its role in our environment should consider the ways in which “cybernetic discourse” reflects both (Mitra and Schwartz 2001).

Diasporic communities, for example, represent a good illustration of the social construction of cyberspace. In the absence of geographical proximity, members of emmigrant communities can remain connected to their place of origin in “imagined communities” through consumption of national media sources and through discursive negotiation of their own imaging of “home” in online forums. Using the case study of the Indian diaspora’ s presence over the Internet, Mitra (1999) illustrates how “the

Indian use of the technology of the Internet reflects the communal experience of emigrantss in the diaspora, and the Internet provides the center where the common experience can be shared.” Indian emigrantss’ home pages contain links to content about India that in Mitra’s (1999) view correspond to the “India discursive domain” or symbolically constitute the representation of India for those in the Indian diaspora.

Such a domain is constructed through the production and consumption of India‐related text which enables Indian emigrantss to form a connection with one another and maintain their bond with their place of origin. Over the Internet, lived experiences which are articulated discursively in a collectivity’s narratives, are made available to a public audience. Information pertaining to a culture’s collective memory can be therefore circulated more widely.

Discussing cyberspace, Fernback (1997) describes it as “A repository for collective cultural memory—it is popular culture, it is narratives created by its inhabitants that remind us of who we are, it is life as it is lived and reproduced in pixels and virtual texts” (37). Indeed, as an inherently human activity, storytelling is a definite ingredient in the symbolic construction of identity and culture (Fisher 1987).

Celebrations, rituals, stories—whether conveyed through some form of technological mediation or simply through word of mouth—are ultimately symbolic markers of the ways in which a given community imagines itself and the world. In doing so, such imaginings create a sense of connectedness and historical continuity for the community. Members of virtual communities situate themselves in the world

50 through the stories that they produce and interpret. It is through discourse or

“discontinuous narrative space” as some refer to the Internet, that identities are created and cultures are shaped (Jones 1997, 15; Foucault 1972). Yet, how do participants to virtual communities transfer meaning within a textually mediated environment? How do they interact and develop bonds in the absence of contextual cues?

One particular approach that is extremely well‐equipped to address such questions is provided by applications of hermeneutics to virtual communities which‐‐ with few notable exceptions (Burnett 2002; Burnett et al. 2003)‐‐are scarce at this time.

Traditionally developed out of the study of biblical texts and employed as a method in literary criticism by questioning the relationship between the parts (e.g., specific words) and the whole (i.e., the overall work) (Potter 1996), hermeneutics is concerned with the process of interpretation. More recent hermeneutics however, while maintaining its preoccupation with understanding of meaning, has evolved into a more philosophical approach that is well illustrated in the works of Hans‐Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur and which investigates the relationship among truth, language, and understanding. A prolific scholar, Ricoeur has written extensively on the central18 ideas of hermeneutics‐‐

“distanciation,” “appropriation,” and “interpretation”—and which also bear significant potential to studies of virtual communities. As environments that are constituted through textual exchanges virtual communities subsist on interpretation (i.e., consumption and production of public texts) to “appropriate” the meanings of the participants’ lived experiences and minimize the spatial and temporal distances between them.

A major idea in Ricoeur’s (1976) hermeneutic theories is that of the virtual distance that is inherent to any type of communication‐‐ between the listener and speaker during discourse‐‐but especially apparent when the spoken word is fixated into written text. In communicating with others—whether in spoken or written language‐‐ we exchange not experiences per se, but the meaning of those experiences which we interpret according to our own worldview. As Ricoeur (1976) notes: “[T]he experience as experienced, as lived, remains private, but its sense, its meaning, becomes public.

51 Communication in this way is the overcoming of the radical non‐communicability of the lived experience as lived” (16). Once released, the utterance “distances” from its author

(i.e., speaker) and context although various aspects of the situation of interlocution such as “ostensive reference” markers (e.g., nonverbal feedback or choice of words) may contribute to avoid misunderstanding between the speaker’s intended meaning and the listener’s own interpretation of the message. Spoken language is nevertheless mediated by sound and sight and words themselves, in Ricoeur’s perspective (1976) are the vehicle for “exteriorization” of the meaning of experience (19). Once spoken, words cannot be physically retrieved‐‐although we do not often think of our interactions in this manner.

Writing, according to Ricoeur (1976), as the “full manifestation of discourse” eliminates “the human fact” (i.e., the physical presence and the nonverbal communication of interlocutors) and offers the advantage of “inscribing” the “’said’ of speaking” (26‐27). In doing so however, the “distanciation” between the author and the reader becomes apparent. The text, having escaped the intentional control of the writer and the situation of the discourse, becomes autonomous in that it is open to multiple interpretations and to readers with different horizons. Ricoeur (1976) contends though that in fact, embedded in each textual artifact are markers of the author’s presence: his or her imagining of the target audience and specific generic conventions that are part of the writer’s horizon or context. Such constraints inform not only the writer’s repertoire but also impact the readers interpreting the text. As Ricoeur (1976) notes: “a book is addressed to only a section of the public and reaches its appropriate readers through media that are themselves submitted to social rules of exclusion and admission” (31).

Such markers function as “equivalents of ostensive reference” and are part of what

Ricoeur (1976) calls the “mode of ‘as if’ (‘as if you were there’)” (35).

Noting the relevance of hermeneutics perspectives, Burnett (2002) “appropriates”

Ricoeur’s (1976) interpretation theory and provides a theoretical discussion in the context of virtual communities followed by an application to a Usenet newsgroup

(Burnett et al. 2003). Burnett (2002) notes that the “mode of ‘as if’” “seems tailor‐made

52 for the electronically mediated text‐based interactions of virtual communities” that

“directly mimics what Ricoeur calls the ‘situation of interlocution’” (166‐167).

“Distanciation” is an underlying element in virtual communities and can be overcome through the community members’ exchange of texts. Figuratively speaking, the online community is therefore sustained by each member’s proximity to the text, that is, the embedding of the process of reading and writing in each piece of written discourse, that once detached from its originator will await, in Ricoeur’s (1976) metaphorical language, for the “as if” (‘as if you were there’) or the act of interlocution (35).

It is important to note that the “as if” is constituted at the textual level through a flow of processes, namely, the creation, reception, and interpretation of texts. As in any community, the shared texts act as a reservoir of shared meanings that by virtue of the

“as if” mode exist at various levels of actualization. For example, a partial illustration of the argument could be the continuous aspect of the process of communication that makes past conversations potentially active and subject for reactualizations and development. It is not unusual for interlocutors to revive past conversations or make references to those—in contexts that resemble the lack of physical and temporal proximity that characterize virtual communities—when interacting with the participants who had originally experienced the conversation or even with others who weren’t there originally. In virtual communities the ‘mode of “as if”’ manifests discursively through various textual practices that often reflect the users’ adaptation to the medium (e.g., abbreviations, graphical representations of sequence of posts—threading conversations, use of embedded links, etc.) and enable participants to imagine the texts authors’ presence.

Online journalism

Researchers and practitioners appear to share an increasing interest in the journalism profession since the 1990s due to the sweeping changes brought along by

Internet’s dissemination into newsrooms and in society at large. The Web’s unique affordances such as hypertextuality (i.e., linking selected words or images to other

53 sections of the same text or external texts), multimediality (i.e., presenting information in a variety of formats such as text, images, animation, and sound), and interactivity (i.e., allowing for users’ input to promote discussion and debate) contribute to a redefinition of traditional journalism in empowering and challenging editors and audiences alike.

Discussions about online journalism range from theorizing about the shifting roles of online journalists through the lens provided by theories and models such as gate‐keeping, diffusion of innovation, and sociological perspectives (Singer 1998); to efforts to map existing research into the area of online journalism (Boczkowski 2002;

Deuze 1998); to studies investigating the relationship between producers of online content and ways in which audiences use online newspapers (Neuberger et al. 1998); to typologies of online journalisms (Deuze 2001); to explorations of the communitarian potential of online newspapers and the danger posed by “commercialization of the net” to the sustenance of communities of readers (Riley et al. 1998); to concern for appropriate indices for measuring interactivity of online newspapers (Kenney et al. 2000;

Schultz 1999, 2000).

The online medium is affecting journalism in all of its compartments ranging from production practices and commercialization to audiences’ consumption needs. For example, internal production factors such as journalists’ reliance on computer technology in the newsroom, use of online resources and access to archives are becoming routine practices. On the Web, compared to print, production and distribution costs are low and online journals have more flexibility in targeting a variety of markets independent of the newspaper’s caliber (e.g., local newspapers competing on national and global markets) at no additional costs.

Last but not least, audiences’ experience of online texts is in itself unique

(compared to print texts), among other things, in that users have more choice (due to the presence of hyperlinked documents) over constructing their own text and its derived meanings. For example, Landow (1997), one of the first to theorize about hypertext

(following Theodore Nelson, the initial proponent of hypertext), argues that in a

54 hypertext environment the very notion of reading a text is challenged. Not only do hyperlinks allow for a non‐sequential pattern in reading of the text but simultaneously increase readers’ involvement into constructing meaning through cooperation with the author. In other words, the power relations that are apparent in the traditional distinction between the reader, text, and its author are more equally distributed in the online reading experience while the text becomes more fluid in its multilinear format.

While employing multimedia (e.g., streaming video and audio, animation) to deliver content is frequent on the Web, online publications, with the exception of large sites such as CNN or ESPN, are somewhat slow to integrate content in a variety of multimedia formats. Moreover, content appears to be a sensitive topic for online journalism. Even today, after more than a decade of experimentation in online journalism, established media such as news services, print publications, radio and TV stations rely on “shovelware” (i.e., uploading articles from the publication’s print mirror edition) to communicate messages (Boczkowski 2002). However, exceptions to the norm exist in the form of original Web publications such as Wired, the Drudge Report, or news portals that produce content specifically adapted for the Web.

Central to Internet communication and implicitly to online journalism is the concept of interactivity. New media, such as the Web and computer‐based communication technologies such as e‐mail, instant messenger, discussion forums, and chat enable senders and receivers to exchange messages that resemble offline interpersonal and group communication. However, in a computer‐based communication environment interactivity can take different forms and exist in varying degrees depending on the nature of the communication channel that supports it. For example, to better facilitate the coherence of communication among participants and in an effort to replicate dialogical structure online, bulletin board messages are organized in topical dialogues or “threads.” These chains of interrelated messages are graphical representations of the flow of conversation among participants and contain the original query and all the follow‐up messages belonging to a particular topic.

55 Due to the unique nature of the Web medium, it is desirable that online newspapers support some degree of interactivity that not only allows for two‐way communication among content producers and audiences but also facilitates reader‐to‐ reader discussion of articles and posting own commentaries in specialized discussion forums. However, conceptualizations of interactivity vary greatly as its manifestations can account for different dimensions of the concept. Several features of the interactivity construct contribute to the extant heterogeneity. According to King (1998), these features include: (a) the quality of reactive communication between users and content producers; (b) empowering users with more choices in the process of diversifying content to adapt to online audiences (King 1998 quoted in Boczkowski 2002, 277).

Studies exploring the first dimension of interactivity generally evaluate online newspapers in terms of the interactive features that are displayed on their web sites such as presence of electronic mail links to contact the newsroom, chat rooms, surveys or polls, discussion forums, and other interactive options such as quizzes, forms etc. For example, Schultz ‘s (1999) content analysis examination of “interactive options” for one hundred online U.S. newspapers supports similar findings in that, with few exceptions, online newspapers are slow to “fully develop” the Web’s interactive features (Kenney et al. 2000; Schultz 2000). For example, according to Schultz’s (1999) study, almost all one hundred newspapers—large and small—provided generic electronic mail addresses but only “ten newspapers provided author e‐mail links as a general pattern” and “ninety‐ two out of 100 online newspapers offered no synchronous chat at all. Discussion forums were better represented in that “thirty‐three out of 100 online newspapers ran discussion forums” (Schultz 1999). In a different study, Schultz (2000) notes that very few online publications are taking interactivity to its full potential, that is, maintaining regular communication with the readers through frequent participation to readers’ online forums or simply by answering a greater number of the readers’ questions in the interactive sections of the publication. The major reasons for the existence of minimal levels of interactivity in online publications pertain to the journalists’ tight schedules, technical problems, and increased commercialization of mass media.

56 Studies from the second category examine other dimensions of interactivity such as the variety of user options that are present on the online newspapers’ web sites (e.g., search engines, navigational ease, language customization), the facilitation of users’ input of content (i.e., allowing users to contribute stories) together with the regular measures of feedback (Kenney et al. 2000). Regardless of the different ways of conceptualizing interactivity (that can sometimes cause methodological confusion over some of its dimensions) it is important to note that journalism (and specifically online journalism) has a unique opportunity to redefine itself in ways that would fulfill its original goals.

These are, apart from providing accurate and objective information for the readers, most importantly, allowing audiences to be actively involved in public life through discussion and debate of public issues, facilitating deliberation through running discussion forums where users can express their position on issues and provide feedback on the stories that they read, and promoting the values of democracy. Too often, journalists are giving in to a journalism of sensationalism and scandal triggered by, as they claim, audience’s entertainment needs, but also due to global trends toward increased commercialization of the news environment, among other things (Tumber

2001). Some, especially advocates of traditional journalism, disagree with these goals on the grounds that the journalist’s role should be strictly that of providing information.

Others, however, dissatisfied with the direction in which traditional journalism is going, advocate a new approach that provides more hope for true involvement of the citizens into the governance process and facilitating public accountability of political figures.

This type of journalism is described as a “grassroots reform movement” in the field of journalism and is known as public or civic journalism (Charity 1995, 19).

Proponents of public journalism, such as Arthur Charity, Jay Rosen, and Davis Merritt argue, enthusiastically, and with good reason, that it is in fact possible for newspapers to be profitable while at the same time fulfilling their civic role. In their quest for advertising money, the need to better target audiences, and an increase in the number of

Internet users, more and more newspapers and magazines choose interactive journalism

57 as a way to increase their circulation numbers. According to Schultz (2000),

“worldwide, some 100 TV and radio stations and about 4000 newspapers and magazines are online; more than 2000 of them are U.S publications” (217). However, out of the remaining non‐US publications, many of them thrive in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe that despite numerous hardships are catching up with Internet technology.

In Romania for example, a country with a population of 22 million, the

Romanian media outlets (print and broadcast media) quickly became aware of the advantages of going online over preserving the traditional format only. Since 1990, more than 300 newspapers and magazines, 25 radio stations, and more than ten television stations maintained their free access websites. Although print publications’ online content is best described as shovelware, an increasing number of publications such as some of the country’s top ten major newspapers (Evenimentul Zilei, Adevarul,

Jurnalul National, Monitorul, National, România Liberã, Ziua, Cotidianul, ProSport ), influential weeklies (e.g., Academia Catavencu, Formula As) and monthly specialized magazines (e.g., Avantaje, Unica, Lumea femeilor) have active web sites exhibiting fully interactive features for their readers. Chat rooms, forums for discussion, e‐mail addresses of editors, search engines, and archives generally characterize sister web sites of Romanian publications.

Unlike most mainstream online journalism, Formula As is unique in the type of interactive journalism that it promotes and in its close relationship with its readers.

Similarly, Formula As is widely circulated within the Romanian diasporic community and an initial analysis of the letters sent by Romanians abroad and posted in the online copy of Formula As describe how the magazine has fostered a sense of community among these geographically remote individuals by facilitating a strong connection with their origins.

Criticized for overlooking the role of other types of public spheres (e.g., trade unions), for excluding the uneducated, the women, and those without property from the public sphere (Garnham 1997) and for grounding his study in historical arguments

58 rather than on an abstract philosophical framework (Benhabib 1997), Habermas’s (1989) model of the public sphere can nevertheless reveal valuable potential when applied to the context of the Internet. As we have seen, while many still question the Internet’s role in reviving the public spheres due to some of the Internet’s social effects such as accentuating individualism and fragmentation of interests (Lockard 1997) there is still hope that once access is ensured, the communities that are established over the internet can be “imagined” in ways that emphasize togetherness and belonging but not necessarily limited to these. The true potential of the Internet lies in the multitude of directions in which our present understanding of interactivity, public sphere, and community can evolve.

Research questions

The exploration of the Formula As phenomenon as it is called in Romania by some media analysts is not an easy task. Formula As has acquired some degree of influence in the lives of eight million readers who have never met one another but are engaged in a weekly dialogue and whose storytelling escapes our traditional understanding of community and belonging.

Going beyond the magazine’s apparent success with the tools of rhetorical criticism to understand what brings readers together to such an extent that they develop a close relationship with the magazine itself and with one another requires a unique approach that draws upon a vast literature that addresses concepts of community and the role of language in community building, interactive journalism, and to a lesser degree, public sphere. Such an eclectic theoretical approach informs the study’s following research questions.

1) Are the interactions that are exchanged within the Formula As’

discursive space constitutive of a community for its members? If yes,

what are some of the ways in which the readers and editors are

brought together in an “imaginary” community? What rhetorical

59 mechanisms help shape and strengthen the community’s collective

identity?

2) In what way is storytelling contributing to the community‐building

process? What is the role of storytelling in the public opinion creation

process?

60

CHAPTER FOUR

ARTICULATING COMMUNITY THROUGH NARRATIVE

Formula As from a Narrative Perspective

Faced with numerous socioeconomic and political changes since the fall of communism in 1989, Romanians, just like many other citizens of the New Europe, have been rediscovering the need to question their past, cope within a climate of uncertainty caused by the clash between the old and the new, and find ways to bring about a promising future. For many, at the individual and community level, such efforts of making sense of the world came about as an identity quest that forced a reassessment of individual and communal values that are rhetorically negotiated. One timeless manner in which public perceptions are forged and experiences interpreted‐‐and Romanians’ collective catharsis in the post‐communist years constitutes no exception‐‐is through the use of narratives.

This study examines the Formula As community through its narratives. They are reflective of its culture, help constitute the Formula As consciousness or state of spirit, and influence the manner in which this community constitutes its ethos. This chapter details narrative theory and particularly Fisher’s (1999) narrative paradigm as the interpretive lens that is used in this study for gaining insight into the dynamic of building community among the readers of Formula As and of empowering its members to engage in civic discourse that “rings true” with some of their lived stories; it continues with a description of the rhetorical artifacts that were selected for analysis; and concludes with a discussion of the virtual community model that outlines the directions for the rhetorical analysis in the remaining chapters of this dissertation.

Generally associated with stories, that can be real or imaginary, narratives are considered unique avenues for understanding human experiences. Taking a variety of forms of expression as in popular culture texts such as film, television soaps, documentaries, talk‐shows, radio programs, commercials, children’s fairy tales,

61 narratives pervade our every day (Berger 1997). The study of stories bridges over disciplines such as literature, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and rhetoric.

Despite disagreements concerning narratives’ characteristics, most scholars agree on the power of narratives to bring some coherence to the various events and experiences in our lives. Narrative activity is inherent to the human nature and it provides an orientation system that is rhetorically constituted by the stories that we tell both synchronically and diachronically. That is, contextual accounts of what happened are shaped by the very stories that are part of a group’s culture (Fisher 1999).

Cognitively, narrative logic can cut across various media despite a long tradition of narrative being associated with oral and print cultures (Ryan 2002). Commenting on the social construction of cyberspace, Steve Jones (1987) acknowledges the importance of narrative in weaving both individual and group identification for members of virtual communities. As rhetorical constructions, communities—whether face‐to‐face or mediated by technology—depend on storytelling for their constitution and sustenance.

Maurice Charland (1987) for example, is a rhetoric scholar who examined the linkages between identification, narrative, and the powers of constitutive rhetoric. In a seminal study of the rhetorical constitution of the “peuple Québécois”—a phrase that entered

Canadian political discourse in the late 1960s through the rhetoric of one of Quebec’s separatist organizations‐‐Charland revealed the power of discourse in constituting particular images of community based on the narratives that its members entertain. The

Quebec political separatists’ campaign relied, as Charland described, on “constitutive rhetoric” that is discourse that called “its audience into being” (134).

In his study, Charland illustrates how the separatist rhetors addressing the francophone Canadians employed rhetorical appeals that relied on shared meanings and aspirations related to the Québécois identity. These political leaders connected with the

French Canadians through narratives detailing the history of the Québécois people as different from the rest of the Canadians and struggling to fulfill their separation from

Canada. In other words, the separatists’ rhetoric called into being a collectively held

62 Québécois consciousness—an essential ingredient in the rhetorical constitution of the

Québécois as a public.

Charland’s (1987) implications about the rhetorical effect of collectively shared narratives among the members of a specific community are particularly relevant to the rhetorical constitution of Formula As community. These will be addressed, mainly, in

Chapter Five of this dissertation detailing the process of the constitution of the Formula

As community consciousness.

Due to their situatedness (narratives are considered to be indicative of a culture’s value system) Formula As community members’ narratives provide a window into

Romanians’ transition dramas equally revealing society’s current illnesses but also a growing rediscovery of the meaning of community and civic engagement. The messages (often in the form of letters and narratives) that Formula As readers send to the magazine and that are subsequently posted for everyone to read are lived stories that generally contain a plot, a setting, a narrator’s voice, an audience, and characters. In

White’s (1981) view, “plot” refers to “a structure of relationships by which the events contained in an account are endowed with a meaning by being identified as parts of an integrated whole” (9).

Apart from plot, narrative structures also exhibit, in Fisher’s (1999) view,

“narrative probability” or coherence, and “narrative fidelity” or identification of one’s interpretation of the story with his or her own representation of reality (273). In reading the lived stories of those who send their messages for publication in the form of letters or commentaries vis‐à‐vis some of the magazine’s articles, Formula As readers collectively reassure one another of the relative consistency in regarding certain issues that traditionally have been part of Romanians’ identity. For example, texts about

Romanian orthodoxy are numerous in the magazine and often, the editors allow the readers to submit individual stories narrating various encounters with divinity.

Similarly, the vast public opinion that has been created within Formula As community around issues of civic engagement such as supporting donations for those in need has its

63 roots in traditional Romanian values that the magazine’s editors are actively striving to revive.

However, the sample of narratives selected for the study also revealed that stories that are posted in the magazine are not always consistent with the audience’s worldview, as “narrative fidelity” would argue. This phenomenon may be partly due to a clash in values triggered by the existence of a cultural memory that includes stories belonging to various temporal strata. For example, Formula As community members employ narratives as a way to make sense of a world that at the very least, contains remnants of the pre‐communist past (e.g., the traditional orthodox spirituality) mixed with mental habits from the communist period (e.g., social apathy) and presents concerns such as adapting to the new exigencies of living in a different social system.

Some narrative themes that come usually from the magazine’s S.O.S. section depict a social setting of economic and social hardships more prevalent within certain segments in the Romanian society such as the elderly, the poor, the disabled, etc. A significant number of the magazine’s readers respond (i.e., sending in donations and/or writing messages of support) to stories that may not ring true to their personal reality but which are consistent with stories experienced or heard in other contexts such as the media’s accounts of the corrupt political class, the ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor, etc. Formula As itself creates and nurtures public opinion on some key social issues by providing an alternative forum for various publics whose individual stories are being sewn in the larger social quilt.

Ultimately, although stories that are posted in the magazine may display different degrees of narrative fidelity that in itself does not make them less truthful or useful for the readers. Storytelling allows the authors of those messages to rationalize their current hardships and reposition themselves in society. For the Formula As audience in general, reading accounts of one’s extreme struggles in life and often engaging in supportive behavior or, to paraphrase Fisher, becoming involved in individual plots, constitute an essential avenue for understanding the dynamic of living in post‐communist Romania.

64 Given the large number of texts that can be selected‐‐from any given issue of the magazine‐‐as evidence to support the various arguments in the dissertation I worked on the premise of selecting representations of those texts for each of the community conditions that have been selected for this study and certainly texts that best illustrate an argument. The community conditions that are part of the conceptual model that is employed in examining Formula As community are presented in a nutshell, at the end of this chapter.

In order to understand Formula As community and the manner in which its members’ interactive messages constitute public opinion for Romanians at home and abroad, I selected messages that are posted in the magazine within a major time frame and also supplement those with messages belonging to earlier dates or outside the study’s main focus. The reason for adopting a layered pool of messages for analysis is due to my attempt to document the dynamic of the Formula As community at a micro and macro structural level. Reading through the magazine’s issues in sequence, that is, surveying the magazine’s content and especially the readers’ contributions (in the form of narratives or articles) to the various sections of the magazine over a determined period of time would enable me to identify topics and assess their role in the community building process.

Since most of the readers’ contributions are included in the magazine’s interactive sections (e.g., “Health,” “S.O.S.” “Animal World,” “Spirituality”) I will primarily investigate those areas looking for emerging patterns in the choice of topics and determining the role of readers in co‐creating texts. The traditional notion of the author is challenged by the interactive manner in which Formula As practices journalism and considering the magazine’s success one can even argue that there may indeed be a winning formula for aggregating an audience and maintaining its interest in ways other than in traditional journalism. Readers’ narratives are also be evaluated in conjunction with content that is provided by the editors (as follow up texts or new features added to the magazine to better respond to the audiences’ interests). A telling example is the emergence of several new features such as “Romanian diaspora” and “Internet

65 messages” in response to the growing numbers of Romanian readers abroad who would express their interest and involvement with the Formula As community.

The primary pool of artifacts will be drawn from online issues of Formula As that were published between January 2002‐December 2002 although the magazine’s online archive starts at an earlier date and is updated with weekly issues. However, even within this sample a significant body of evidence is very similar in structure and style so for the purposes of this study I will use those texts that work best in supporting arguments being presented in the dissertation. As discussed earlier, a diachronical investigation of topics and narratives will provide insight into the editor‐reader relationship and the manner in which public opinion is created over time. Occasionally, to provide more evidence for the claim that online messages can create public opinion I will examine a particular public opinion issue such as ecological threats to the Romanian environment from the emergence of the topic to the current campaign in the magazine’s pages (i.e, the Rosa Montana campaign). In this respect, the rhetorical choices that are made by readers and editors together in discussing Romanian environment pollution in

Formula As will be also evaluated with an eye toward detecting vocabularies of terms that shape public discourse around it. For example, Formula As’ campaign for creating awareness within Romania concerning environment pollution has attracted not just the interest of thousands of the magazine’s readers but succeeded to draw attention from key Romanian and international actors involved in the issue.

Formula As From a Virtual Community Conceptual Model

The virtual community conceptual model that is presented in the remaining section of this chapter serves as a necessary common ground for understanding the analysis of the Formula As virtual community that is conducted in Chapters Five through

Ten in this dissertation.

One assumption underlying this study‐‐and supported by the theoretical framework of the dissertation‐‐is that of the abundant diversity of virtual community forms that can be encountered in our social environments. To name but a few, the

66 variables that impact the manifestation of such virtual communities have to do with anything from the channel of interaction—whether synchronous or asynchronous—to types of goals (e.g., support groups, MUDs, distance learners, audience communities such as soap opera fans, or communities built around some form of media such as newspapers and magazines or television stations) to whether the participants are already part of a community (e.g., digital community networks such as the Blacksburg

Electronic Village) or are constituted as a community solely via their text‐based interaction (e.g., Usenet newsgroups), or both. Virtual community research, correspondingly, has been just as multifaceted in theoretical perspectives and methods.

In fact, in a little over a decade, this area of inquiry has adapted and honed its theoretical lens to render and explain the uniqueness of such variety of virtual community forms.

Formula As is a good candidate for a case study of virtual community, albeit one that is rather different than the “typical” virtual communities of cyberspace. Generally, mentioning of the 1990s virtual community buzz phrase brings to mind a specific set of images that were developed due to the virtual community hype in popular and academic discourse.

How does Formula As fit the bill for virtual community? As a devoted reader of the magazine since its very beginnings in the early 1990s, I have observed my own reactions to becoming addicted to reading the magazine every week, felt included in the great “family” that is Formula As and developed a very unique connection with it.

Adriana Bittel, one of the magazine’s editors, describes this bonding experience that the readers experience with Formula As:

I have been able to read numerous letters that were addressed to the magazine

and they all started by acknowledging that once discovered, Formula As brings

about dependency, much awaited weekly joy; people need this amount of

humanity…(Bittel Formula As 500).

One reader’s statement about her experience of joining the Formula As community exemplifies this bonding process further:

67 At the beginning, it was a glance that I cast upon a publication stand. Later on, I

was thanking you [Formula As]‐‐in my mind‐‐that you exist. I would discover

you in places that I would not expect: on the train, on the bus, in the words of

those waiting relief at doctor’s offices, among students, and even in church

where a priest was reading to some children about Jesus from the pages of the

magazine. I realized my need for and dependency on you even more deeply

when, after giving birth to my second little girl‐‐one Monday morning—Formula

As was the first thing that I wanted next to me. [the magazine] had gotten into

my heart and soul, into my blood (Iancu “Keep your heart…,” Formula As 413).

As a publication that places a high value on love and compassion, Formula As breaks through socio‐economic barriers by appealing to readers of all walks of life. For many, reading the magazine has become a ritual that brings immense joy either when conducted on one’s own or shared within families and communities. Cornelia for example, uses personification in reference to Formula As to describe the magazine’s role in her life:

My dear,

I’ve been reading you for years and you created a certain dependency in me. I

buy you every Monday and read you through breathlessly, sometimes I even

quarrel with my folks over who gets to read you first. I don’t know what you do

to us, but even after so long, we haven’t grown bored with you. I wonder why?

The warmth that you bring when we browse through your pages, your

generosity, people’s correspondence and their wish to help one another, the

destinies and unusual happenings that you bring to us, the biographies, fashion

news—they all keep us close to you. I have cried many times while reading you,

I have cooked with you, I consult with you. This is the first time I write to you

and I ask that you, my family’s magazine, never grow old! (Dancila “My

family’s…,” Formula As 413).

Associating the magazine with a female presence—generally that of a mother, sister, or female friend—is a very common occurrence in readers’ messages to Formula

68 As. As Cornelia’s narrative suggests, in referring to the magazine as “you”—Romanian language makes the distinction between various degrees of politeness in the use of pronouns—similar to the French “vous”—readers express their attachment for Formula

As. Reading the magazine brings readers such joy that some of them ration the daily readings to last a whole week until the new issue comes out. The following account exemplifies this ritual in the form of a narrative that was contributed by one of the magazine’s readers.

In a story about Aunt Ioana (nana Ioana)—a simple, elderly woman from a

Southern Romanian village—the contributing reader describes the funny incident that brought Aunt Ioana in contact with Formula As. As the story goes, Aunt Ioana—an unschooled but wise woman who “attended the school of life” by working hard and raising five children and numerous grandchildren had the habit of offering a loaf of bread that she had baked herself to her neighbor, Victoria. She would wrap the bread in magazine paper as it is customary in some households. One day, however, during one of those regular gift giving exchanges, Aunt Ioana learned from her neighbor that that particular paper was unlike any other by listening to her neighbor read to her a page from Formula As. The elderly woman started crying gently and asked her neighbor to stop reading so that they can leave some for the next day. According to the narrator of the story, Aunt Ioana, a devoted baker, gave up her baking ritual so that she would spend more time listening to her neighbor read from Formula As every day by offering to pay her neighbor for the “listening share” from her small pension.

What exactly does Formula As do that it triggers such affective bonds with its community members? After all, Formula As readers remain physically separated and scattered over large geographical areas and with no built‐in real‐time interaction as is the case in some well‐established computer‐mediated virtual communities. Reading the magazine’s content in print or over the Internet constitutes, at the time of writing this study, a major avenue of staying connected with the magazine’s editors and readers for the Formula As community members. However, readers’ texts reveal that Formula As community participants occasionally engage one another via other communication

69 channels such as email (especially readers from the diaspora or to a lesser degree, those in Romania who have access to a computer and the Internet), regular snail mail, phone, and even in‐person visits depending on local resources that are available. It follows then that the Formula As community of readers achieves its communicative goals through the mediation of texts. Upon closer examination, Formula As texts are infused with textual markers of affective bonds between the readers and the magazine as well as between readers, markers of solidarity and trust, of cooperation and reciprocity.

As in other virtual communities, Formula As texts are publicly available for the community participants in the discursive space of the magazine. The editors however, perform a certain degree of selection of readers’ submitted messages. As a form of expression, texts originating from the Formula As social environment are, most importantly, reflective of the group’s culture—both at an individual and collective level.

Based on observations of this community over time and rhetorical analysis of the group’s texts I have discovered that the Formula As community has constituted itself following its own “formula” which may not necessarily be “fitting” with more standard definitions of virtual communities.

As already described in Chapter Two of this dissertation, Formula As weekly magazine was launched in September 1991 and has, over the years, built a reputation for doing more for its readers than a regular magazine would do. According to the magazine’s director, the Romanian poet and publicist Sanziana Pop, Formula As was designed—from the very beginning‐‐as a “normal magazine for normal readers” at a time when the Romanian mass media environment was abundant in tabloids. With a

Romanian speaking‐readership that spans various generations and bridges all continents (the magazine has been available online on its sister web site since 1998)

Formula As has become the largest19 Romanian weekly and with the greatest number of readers (8,000,000). While a publication’s success can be easily “grasped” when numbers and statistics are presented, ultimately, such measures of success provide only limited knowledge of the story behind the Formula As phenomenon as a whole: its

70 unique brand of journalism and especially the connection that the magazine has fostered with its readers.

In this study, I set the analysis of the Formula As environment within the larger framework of Anderson’s (1983) “imagined community” perspective, that is, examining how people establish community connections through the imaginings of their shared consciousness of belonging mediated by technological support. Such a sense of belongingness is the outcome of a series of community mechanisms that create and reinforce both common goals as well as affective bonds between participants. For the purposes of this dissertation which, as any case study, is a situated analysis, I have selected a set of community determinants from those that have been presented in the theoretical background (Chapter Three) of the dissertation as “lenses” for examining the very unique Formula As environment. While virtual community research has identified a series of conditions which, if met, are generally indicative of the existence of community (e.g., shared goals, common norms, cooperation and reciprocity, interactivity, trust) it is also important to remain flexible in our approach to better render and explain specific communities that, at a cursory examination, may appear

“unfitting.”

Based on my informal observations of the Formula As readers’ interactions for the past eight years and as part of undertaking the task of studying this community in this dissertation, I settled on a particular mix of community conditions combined with hermeneutics and narrative approaches to render Formula As’ specificity among other types of virtual communities. The analysis portion of the dissertation will extend throughout the following six chapters and will employ rhetorical analysis of selected examples of narratives from the major sample of issues of the magazine to address the following questions:

1) Are the interactions that are exchanged within the Formula As discursive space

constitutive of a community for its members?

2) What does “community” mean for readers of this magazine?

71 In a nutshell, to uncover the distinctiveness of the Formula As environment I ground the analysis and discussion on different layers of granularity that combine both close‐up analyses of characteristics of members in the Formula As community (e.g., reader categories and staff members) with the overall community and its relationship with other components of Romanian society. The major categories of community conditions that I have selected in examining the Formula As community include:

community self‐reference (Chapter Five)

common interests and goals (Chapter Six)

membership boundaries (Chapter Seven)

shared history (Chapter Eight)

common discursive space (Chapter Nine)

interactivity (Chapter Ten)

However, occasionally, I will address additional subcategories within a few of the community conditions since such deeper probes into the Formula As community mechanisms are relevant to the arguments that I present in this study. For example, the chapter presenting the shared history of the Formula As participants will be discussed in terms of the community’s dynamic—identifying the shared experiences of the community members that provide them with a variety of resources such as specialized knowledge, material and emotional support. Certainly, as with any community, an examination of the avenues that shape the group’s identity will require some attention to the group’s norms and the types of bonds that are established between community members.

72 CHAPTER FIVE

INSIDE FORMULA AS: COMMUNITY SELF‐REFERENCE

As a community based on interpretation of written texts—reading and actively contributing texts to the magazine in its various sections—the Formula As participants develop a sense of involvement with the magazine’s goals, shape group identity through their interactions, and rhetorically construct a sense of belonging and communion. In the absence of face‐to‐face interaction, the exchange of written texts among Formula As participants becomes a major avenue for constructing impressions or images of the magazine and its readers. One image in particular—that of community‐‐has endured over the years and brings important evidence regarding the solidarity that forms the core of this social environment. A significant body of evidence indicates that Formula As participants often refer to themselves as being part of the magazine’s community and acknowledge a deep sense of identification with the group at large. In hundreds of readers’ testimonies, Formula As readers find the magazine’s content useful and appropriate for a diversity of interests which manifest in tangible forms such as cooperation especially in the areas of health and social issues. Such a constitutive aspect of the discourse of the magazine community has significant functions for the group at large. Community self‐reference in fact provides the common ground on which several other internal community mechanisms function and accounts for ranking the

“community self‐reference” characteristic in the top position among the rest of the community conditions. Readers’ perceptions of themselves as a community is reflected across several of the community’s forms of manifestation—these have been presented in the introductory section to this chapter‐‐and will be addressed individually in the remaining portion of the analysis in the form of community conditions: 1) the community’s common interests and goals; 2) its boundaries; 3) the community’s shared history; 4) the common discursive space that is provided by the magazine; 5) the norms of interaction that are adapted for an asynchronous environment. Rhetorically, community self‐reference markers can be traced in the participants’ discourse which

73 abounds in specific references about the community or some of its perceived characteristics such as solidarity and community consciousness. How do Formula As members perceive their community’s solidarity? What are its manifestations? What are the mechanisms that trigger it? These are questions guiding the remaining part of this section.

Imaginings of the Formula As community are especially visible in the manner in which its members describe their cooperation in the magazine’s interactive sections.

While the magazine appeals to a wide range of audiences through the diversity of its contents (e.g., health, spirituality, Romanian culture, social issues, Romanian diaspora, etc) an important part of the “Formula As” reputation is associated with the fact that readers can cooperate in its discursive space to achieve common goals. Humanitarian work, or as one reader described the magazine’s ethos‐‐“soothing souls who have not one twinkle of hope left, who reached the bottom of despair and who need help”20— forms the backbone of such cooperation. Specifically, it involves the exchange of naturistic treatments in the “Health” section and providing assistance to queries for help in the “S.O.S.” section. Through this type of cooperation the community members engage in the production of social capital as they form a network whose members are engaged in the production of public goods.

Generally, community self‐reference indicates the existence of affective bonds among Formula As participants. Such bonds constitute one of the major avenues by which communities develop solidarity and trust (Wellman & Gulia 1999). A simple perusal through the magazine’s interactive sections (mainly the “S.O.S.” and “Health” areas) reveals an impressive use of words such as “solidarity,” “family,” “trust,” “love,”

“miracle,” “angels” in reference to the magazine, its director Sanziana Pop, the editors, and the readers. One such reader, Maria Robertson, a Romanian living in Norway, describes her appreciation of the magazine and its editors: “You are a source of light in the darkness and despair around you!…for the warmth that inspires you to build solidarity bridges among good people (italics mine) (Robertson, “A wonderful source of light,” Formula As 550). Apart from being a pertinent representation for the type of

74 community self‐reference discourse that pervades the pages of the magazine, the

“solidarity bridges” metaphor especially when presented within the context provided by the archetypal metaphor of light and dark—a frequent image in Formula As texts‐‐is powerful in its rhetorical force and warrants some further discussion. What imagery is evoked through the “solidarity bridges” metaphor? What imaginings of community are being created through use of metaphors of this kind? First, the word “bridge” brings forth a sense of connection, a tie or bond that is achieved through some form of joined structure.

As described earlier in this chapter, Formula As readers are geographically dispersed without the possibility of real‐time interaction as the main mode of communication. Virtual community members typically engage one another through synchronous or asynchronous channels or some combination of these (and/or other forms of communication) in the absence of physical proximity. Their primary mode of interaction occurs through interpreting the community’s texts which—while detached from their authors in a physical sense—nevertheless contain rhetorical markers of their creators’ “presence” such as in the use of specific textual identification markers (Burnett

2002). Acknowledging the spatial and temporal distance separating them from one another, Formula As participants succeed in building “bridges” between them through the sense of communion that they experience as a result of their shared practices of cooperation (i.e., emotional and material support) and norms of civic engagement. One of the magazine’s functions, among several others, is to provide the discursive space for the readers’ interactions in several of its major sections. The first term of the “solidarity bridges” metaphor not only illustrates the core mechanism that underlies the Formula As community environment in which readers’ solidarity reaches significant levels but also symbolically, in that its very readers perceive their own community as conducive to solidarity bonds.

In a valuable study of social connectedness, Chayko (2002) explains the process of building “sociomental bonds” among people, that is, mental connections formed with some perceived commonality and those who share it. In her view, the bonds open

75 “mental pathways” or links among those who share them and bring individuals together in a mental network or “community of the mind” (73). Connections may be of varying intensity but once the mental pathways are open they become “reciprocal” and enable a two‐way flow for the content of the exchange (108). Lastly, Chayko notes, it is common for people to relate to specific parts or aspects of the community that resonate most deeply with their own needs. In this case the community of the mind is said to consist of several mental networks that are intertwined but which are still brought together by some “overarching, core commonality” that joins participants in what “can be thought of as mental worlds of people who cooperatively create and share something that matters to them” (75‐76).

Within the larger Formula As culture, the “solidarity bridges” metaphor symbolizes the connection that readers experience through the magazine. They are brought together through sharing a core commonality, the act of reading Formula As, a magazine that they perceive to have relevance for their own lived stories or as one reader described it, “anyone can find her own small world” which seems to have been

“almost especially created for that person’s soul.”21 The act of reading implies the prerequisite of sharing a common language or a symbol system that allows people to interpret the Formula As texts. In writing about the role of the symbol as a “mental construct” that forms the building block in any community’s imagining of its domain,

Cohen (1985) rightfully observes that symbols “provide people with the means to make meaning (…) and the means to express the particular meanings which the community has for them” (19).

Interpreting texts written in a shared language creates an image of connectedness, of others involved in a similar activity. With the magazine acting as a storytelling discussion board the mental images that participants create about the authors of submitted texts and readers alike constitute social reality and bring them together in a “community of the mind.” It is within this imagined social reality that

Formula As participants experience a sense of communion from a similar mental orientation in their perception of the magazine and its community and the world in

76 general. The practice of interpreting the community’s texts (which are frequently in a story format) serves as a mental model through which Formula As participants organize and give meaning to their perceptions of reality, become aware of others’ similar sense‐ making experiences, and actively contribute to the shaping of a community culture.

What images of community are being created through the participants’ use of a narrative framework?

In Romania of the post‐communist transition years the clash between old truths and new social exigencies generated a situation of crisis at the individual and collective level of consciousness. Economic and social triggers such as aligning the country to the economic standards imposed by the European Union, doing away with a paternalistic role of the state that created an artificial sense of security in some, and the abrupt switching from egalitarianism to elitism led to a painful economic, political, and social transition. A particular sore point in Romania’s transition society for the past fourteen years—also debated within Formula As’ discursive space‐‐is related to the increasing gap between the political and financial elites on the one hand and the rest of the population on the other. Vladimir Pasti (1995), a Romanian sociologist, observed that during the

Romanian transition: 1) the majority of the Romanian population has experienced a plunge in their standards of living; 2) there are few substantive signs of the rise of a middle class; and 3) the political and financial elites have continued to accumulate power and wealth well beyond the level of the average population (36‐37). It comes as no surprise therefore that Formula As readers interpret the personal narratives that are shared in the magazine’s “S.O.S” forum as an accurate social barometer for the manner in which the transition has impacted average and below average Romanian families.

Storytelling, as rhetorician Walter Fisher (1989) observes, is an inherently human activity that enables people to make sense of their own lives and also to communicate with others. Fisher’s (1989) assumption that “all forms of human communication can be seen fundamentally as stories, as interpretations of aspects of the world occurring in time and shaped by history, culture, and character” may not encompass all forms of human communication (57). However, there is great truth to his observation that people

77 become socialized and make meaning of their own experiences through storytelling.

Fisher further claims that audiences employ narrative rationality in the stories that they live, tell, or interpret and evaluate those through the tests of narrative probability (the coherence of the story) and narrative fidelity (the perceived truthfulness of the story).

Narrative logic, as a universal expression of understanding our existence and its intrinsic dramas, enables those who are caught in the larger Romanian transition drama to navigate in an uncharted and ambiguous environment. A majority of those who submit messages to the “S.O.S.” forum do just that, that is, try to anchor their lived stories and balance the tensions arising in a struggle between prior beliefs and ways of relating to the world and new realities. Storytelling, apart from addressing specific needs, helps readers acquire some form of self‐understanding and order the new truths.

Fisher (1987) for example, observes, “Any story, any form of rhetorical communication, not only says something about the world, it also implies an audience, persons who conceive of themselves in very specific ways” (75). Analysis of “S.O.S.” forum query

(request for assistance) texts reveals the existence of a certain amount of tension in individuals’ own mental lenses in perceiving society and their role in it. That is, the narrative rationality in these individuals’ old stories is challenged due to the exigencies of the transition context. Submitting the narratives to the public forum helps the authors make meanings of their personal quests and eases perceived guilt in their inability to cope on their own.

To many, contacting the magazine’s community is a last resort form of coping as acknowledged by this reader who confesses that “I wrote to you at the height of my despair because I have never tried to beg.”22 Some critics may even say that the readers’ aid is a temporary fix to personal situations. However, in a majority of cases, according to the forum’s texts, the assistance that is offered through the readers’ network exceeds the material possibilities of the aid recipients on their own. Here’s how one reader,

Maria, a simple mother of nine, described her reaction to the community’s solidarity:

People I have never seen or met helped us when we were at the height of our

despair. My dear madam [Sanziana], when I received the money that you sent I

78 became scared. (…) I have never seen this much money together (Oloeru, “I

have never…,” Formula As 407).

Symbolically, through the act of sharing personal experiences with the Formula As community the “S.O.S.” narratives contribute to the shaping of a collective consciousness of transition as a shared reality. Those who read the magazine’s “S.O.S.” stories may well use an interpretive lens adjusted within a “transition” framework. This in fact, may come naturally, given that very few in Romania did not experience it in some way, though some in more enjoyable forms than others. Even those from abroad felt it as diaspora texts abound in testimonies of people providing assistance to their own relatives back home. Diaspora readers are frequently involved in supporting the magazine’s humanitarian work. Further, individual lived stories are in turn shaped by perceptions derived from interpreting others’ stories as readers have done for years by reading the Formula As “S.O.S.” forum.

As a result of interpreting individual narratives of hardship on a regular basis, readers start to become connected in a mental network that rests on their imagining of the Romanian society in transition. They rally together to support those with whom they relate (even remotely) through interpreting their stories. The magazine community’s emphasis on love and compassion, naturistic healing, traditional

Romanian values, and patriotism often comes in direct opposition to some of the values that characterize the social environment outside the group’s boundaries. Looking back to the magazine’s progress over time, Toma Roman, one of its leading editors, describes the transition society as “overwhelmed by individualism and corruption, of lies and misuse of authority.”23 Against this social background that may appear threatening, the magazine’s content related to the readers’ daily lives and provided them with emotional and material avenues for involvement in the magazine’s community and outside its boundaries. This is how Toma Roman characterizes the magazine’s relationship with its readers:

The “As” did not have a superiority complex [toward its readers]. It did not try

to astonish with images of an inaccessible world for the majority of the readers.

79 It did not shock them with sensationalist news or passionate attitudes. It did not

attempt to judge reality for them. The “As” tried to offer solutions to everyday

life problems and asked for solutions from its readers (Roman, “Ten Years…,”

Formula As 500).

This grassroots journalism is what sets apart Formula As from other publications as readers are brought together as an audience clustered around the magazine’s civic mission. The magazine’s interactive forums in particular provide the opportunity for readers’ involvement with the community and the incentive to form strong bonds. By contrast, the environment outside the community’s boundaries is perceived as

“different” and lacking in the values that bring community members together in the first place. Thus, Formula As community members have a need to establish a fellowship with one another and their bonds are heightened as they perceive themselves to be marginalized because of their opposition to Romanian mainstream’s trendy individualistic and materialistic values. Evidence for this argument comes from the widespread perception that the Formula As magazine is a publication that, as one reader described, “brings tears of joy in the eyes of many Romanians and that comes to the aid of those who are poor, ill, orphan, and hopeless.” 24

Two widely debated topics in the magazine’s community‐‐the general negative coverage of Romania and the penchant for sensationalism (including that provided by indigenous media)—have triggered numerous messages from readers. One such text comes from a Romanian reader in New Zealand who describes her momentous discovery of Formula As on the Internet while looking for a “correction” to the Romanian reality to balance her own as well as that of her New Zealand friends’ perception of

Romania:

Until one day, I discovered Formula As. I had been waiting and looking for her

for so long. I read through the whole archive and I recall one reader’s cry of

inner joy “So much light, so much light!” This is, I think, the defining

characteristic of this magazine. [Formula As] is no longer a simple publication

but love and compassion in action. It is, as another reader named it‐‐out of

80 divine inspiration perhaps‐‐a “state of spirit” (Taal, “The true soul…,” Formula

As 461)

The author’s use of dark and light imagery, typical of readers’ effervescent rhetoric, renders the positive perception of the magazine against the backdrop of Romania’s transition. Thus, the “light” that is Formula As draws like‐minded others together in an imagined network built around love and compassion. Incorporating references to other authors’ texts—as seen in this reader’s text above—is not only a common occurrence but most importantly, is a rhetorical marker of the collective construction of the community identity through the process of interpretation of publicly available texts.

Formula As community texts or voices can exist by themselves but may also become aggregated into new texts—a practice that gives participants a sense of connectedness and fosters group identity. In this respect, Ricoeur’s “mode of ‘as if’” is fitting for the Formula As community practice of intertextuality and constitutes, most likely, a major reservoir in the sustenance of the community itself. Actualized as readers and potential writers, the community members overcome the inherent “distanciation” between them in interpreting texts “as if” others are present to the situation of interlocution. Through discursive norms such as interactional coherence, quoting community texts, and incorporating markers of the authors’ presence, community members can minimize the physical distance or in Burnett’s (2002) terms, “make distanciation productive” (173). The motivation beyond this practice has to do with the oneness that community members experience as part of an imagined community that is mediated by the practice of interpreting texts. Specific discursive norms pertaining to community building will be addressed in more detail in the discursive space chapter of this study. For now, it is important to acknowledge their existence and role in the rhetorical construction of the Formula As community.

Participants’ textual interactions bring about a consciousness of belonging to the

Formula As community that manifests through commitment to its goals. The New

Zealand author’s text further describes the Formula As “consciousness” as it is tied into the larger, societal consciousness of change:

81 We can replace the word “spirit” with “consciousness” and then we get to what I

was explaining to my New Zealand friends: a new state of consciousness. The

burgeoning buds of the new consciousness are here, within “Formula As.” The

true soul of this country speaks through “Formula As” (Taal, “The true soul…,”

Formula As 461)

In line with this reader’s mixed metaphoric depiction of the magazine the consciousness image can be associated with Formula As community influence as a light that radiates in the environment, nurturing love and compassion. The magazine’s readers have the potential to influence one another and those outside the community boundaries as they develop the “Formula As” identity. One testimony for this comes from Oana, a young college student who confesses:

Whenever I read “Formula As” I promise to be more kind, understanding, and do

more charity. My heart rejoices when I read about good things and becomes sad

when I read about human suffering. You are an oasis of happiness and hope and

the spirituality section charges my batteries every week. I love you so much! If I

could I’d help all those unfortunate people who contact the magazine for

assistance. I feel torn by their pain and my powerlessness (Oana, “I wonder…,”

Formula As 530).

As the author’s text acknowledges, she is influenced by the magazine’s content in her view of the world. Through the reading of the community texts, Oana‐‐like numerous magazine readers—can mentally travel to the Formula As space which feels like an endless reservoir of positive experiences that nourishes community participants. Her ritual of reading the magazine every week is something that she shares with the rest of the community and which forms the basis of a common identity with others.

Considering that this text is typical for the community, one can also view it as evidence for the existence of a mental model or “state of spirit” that readers seem to develop as a consequence of becoming socialized in this community’s culture and internalizing its values. For example, as part of the mental model, readers form mental images not only of those who solicit help through the magazine; they also use it as a

82 reference point in evaluating their own behavioral response to being part of the Formula

As community. Oana’s opening and closing statements support this argument. Even though she lacks the material means to assist all of those who need help she is emotionally responsive to others’ pain through the affective bonds that she has developed, mentally, with people in need. While she may not experience the same hardships as those described in the “S.O.S.” forum, she nevertheless sympathizes with the distress stories that are published in the magazine. She continues:

There are so many people in distress in this country. I read and I say to myself,

“Look, these are life’s true hardships, not the ones that I complain about! I thank

you that you exist and for doing so much good in this world. I wonder and feel

glad of how little it takes for some people to be happy (Oana, “I wonder…,”

Formula As 530).

Reading the community texts can trigger readers’ assessment of their own narratives. In the example above, the author (Oana) tests the narrative fidelity of her personal story of hardship against the accounts of the “S.O.S.” forum. In comparison, Oana’s lived experience in the transition seems inconsistent with that of people who contact the magazine for assistance. This incongruity does not invalidate Oana’s experience or discount the impact of the “S.O.S.” stories. The reason for this is that the forum’s stories have material coherence in relation to each other as the arguments that are advanced agree on the hardship of the Romanian transition. Audience members’ arguments also concur on the expectations that the magazine community can be counted on to provide various forms of support to those who request it.

Stories have the potential of establishing invisible connecting lines among people as well as the power to shape perceptions and bring about change. Rhetorical analysis of Formula As community rhetoric revealed that readers develop strong bonds with the magazine and with one another in the process of interpreting the community’s texts.

This is how one beneficiary of Formula As solidarity, a 13 year old boy, described his experience of bonding with his benefactors:

83 A whole country simply rushed to our rescue and I don’t have an explanation for

the miracle that took place. (…) We received 300 hundred money orders, 70

packages, over 30 people brought us assistance, and I got over 1,000 letters from

children, young and retired people. Isn’t this a divine sign? How can I thank for

this extraordinary kindness, for this humane generosity that poured over us?

My words don’t mean much next to the fact that our life has simply been

changed (Iancu, “God has descended…,” Formula As 496).

While its is true that the magazine’s readers are from various walks of life and corners of the world it is nevertheless a fact that the bulk of the material assistance, as observed by the magazine’s own readers, comes in the form of small contributions originating from people who occasionally, may not be better off themselves than those soliciting help through the “S.O.S.” forum.

You [Sanziana Pop] and the editorial team that you lead are divine messengers

who connect those experiencing hardship and people with good hearts. Due to

the Formula As magazine I was able to shout my despair and I can thank now to

those from all over the country for the financial and emotional support that I

received. These noble souls took a piece of their little to save me, offering me a

shred of hope” (Mariana Cretu, “I am 35…,” Formula As 545).

Just as in the message above, a majority of the Formula As texts indicate the existence of a shared knowledge regarding the solidarity of the magazine’s readers. With every letter that is published in the magazine—whether it comes from readers thanking their benefactors, the editors inspiring the magazine’s readers, or simply from people who just want the world to know that they belong to this social space—the community’s sociomental bonds are reinforced. Participants derive pleasure for feeling included and involved (through humanitarian work, various readers’ contests, and the interactive health forum) in the magazine’s ongoing publication.

In Romania over the past fourteen years, the transition (and with it, a host of social problems such as unemployment, inflation, prohibitive costs of health services for the average household and deprived social categories, etc) has been experienced as

84 something that brought few benefits to the average person and favored those in positions of power. Whether individual readers experienced the exact same situations that are weekly submitted to the magazine’s “S.O.S.” and “Health” fora is beside the point. A significant number of them, though, may have had times in their lives (directly or indirectly) when they must have faced a crisis whether due to losing their job, illness, disability, old age, or seeing loved ones struggle. The weekly narratives that are posted in the magazine’s “S.O.S.” section fully support this argument. To illustrate, I selected a thread formed by two narratives that were submitted by Elena, a primary school teacher and reader of the magazine and whose message triggered a solidarity reaction among the magazine’s community. In her initial letter to the readers, Elena narrated the dramatic situation of a 16 year old boy‐‐confined to a wheelchair due to a life‐ threatening condition—and urged the magazine’s readers to help cheer the boy by sending him messages. She writes,

The boy, who is sensitive and intelligent, suffers terribly for he can no longer go

to school because he lost use of his hands and is overwhelmed by the studying

effort. Children of his age often push him away and that is why he is extremely

secluded, turned inwardly, shy, and looks down on himself. (…) He does not

know that I’ve written you [Formula As] and I think that you’d bring him great

joy by pulling him out from the “wheelchair universe” and his room, whichever

way you think best, perhaps asking your readers to send him letters (Cojoleanca,

“Disabled…,” Formula As 549).

Several months later, Elena submitted a follow‐up text in which she thanked the magazine and its readers for responding to her call and for expressing their solidarity.

She notes,

I have been impressed by the consideration that you [the magazine] invest in

receiving and sending out the messages of those Romanians who contact the

magazine but especially by the manner in which readers respond to such

requests. After publishing my letter regarding the sufferings of [Iliuta] there was

a solidarity reaction that touched me. I could not believe that it was real! The

85 boy received numerous letters, money, books, sweets, from people of all ages,

from all over Romania and even one letter from a reader in the United States. I

personally received phone calls offering medication, advice, naturistic

treatments, encouragement, and information about Iliuta’s illness. All of this

culminated with acknowledging, in the Formula As 555 issue, that the Nutu

family [the boy’s family] was selected to receive 15 million lei [approximately

$500] as part of the “Formula As” Foundation sponsorship program for January

2003 (Cojoleanca, “I could not…,” Formula As 580).

Elena’s narratives—and like them, numerous others in the magazine’s “S.O.S.” forum— once again, resonated with the magazine’s community. Readers bonded with the boy and his family in a “reaction of solidarity” that mystified the author of the text. It is not unusual for recipients of the “S.O.S.” donations to express surprise and emotional turmoil once they experience the full extent of the community’s commitment to its humanitarian goals. Strangers of all walks of life, as Elena describes, extended their hearts and their arms in a wave of emotional bonding in a response that matched the rhetorical situation that was created once she submitted her request. As customary for this forum, individuals bring private concerns to a public audience and yet, due to the community’s cultivation of trust and strong bonds, the response from the community’s participants is equally matching in emotional involvement. Physical proximity therefore does not seem to be an essential condition for the process of connecting with others. In fact, many of those requesting help from the magazine’s community frequently describe how they experience feelings of isolation in their own face‐to‐face environments and may even feel marginalized in society due to their personal situation.

An overwhelming number of readers’ letters describe the sociomental bonds to the magazine’s editors or to Formula As as seen in this text:

This magazine means a lot for many of us, even our reason for existing or the joy

of meeting true people. It is something that cannot be put into words. Perhaps I

used “a lot” too often when what truly describes you is the phrase “good people”

(Betty “Hey, good people,” Formula As 657).

86 In Chayko’s (2002) terms, the reader’s text signals the existence of a perceived connection with Formula As, or of a mental pathway on the author’s part. However, the flow of goodwill is reciprocal as editors’ messages abound in recognition and admiration for readers’ involvement with the magazine’s goals. In this excerpt,

Sanziana acknowledges the existence of affective bonds:

We have never met or seen one another, but I’m sure that each of you is a

practice for an angel, messengers of kindness and good, with places secure in

Heaven. Your gestures leave streaks of gold and the joy that you provoke brings

the scent of God in the most deprived huts. Your love is tangible, generating

huge enthusiasm and energies, your acts of kindness count not only in money

but in an extraordinary feeling of participation and engagement, especially since

it originates from strangers (Pop, “Rehearsal for Angels,” Formula As 547).

Despite the fact that the Formula As participants do not know each other in physical space (they are “strangers,” as Sanziana notes) their imagining of the ties that bind them is genuine. These invisible pathways that connect the Formula As participants in a community of the mind facilitate members’ social exchange and form the basis for the flow of social capital through the community’s network. A majority of the texts of the magazine’s interactive forums indicate that participants’ membership in the Formula As virtual community increases members’ access to resources (i.e., social capital) that are limited or even nonexistent in their physically‐based communities. Or in the words of one of the magazine’s readers, the mother of a disabled child who submitted a request to the “S.O.S.” forum asking for the community’s assistance with her case, “Your magazine has operated, so many times, as a link between people experiencing extreme hardship and those who can help them, because the latter have the information or the power

[capacities]” (Ivan, Formula As 559).

This finding contradicts views such as those of Blanchard and Horan (1998) for example, who claim that physically‐based virtual communities can increase social capital rather than geographically dispersed virtual communities who cannot. The uniqueness of the Formula As community‐‐which most likely influences the increase in

87 social capital despite the group’s lack of face‐to‐face interaction‐‐is due to the high levels of trust (in its various forms of manifestation) that characterize this social environment.

Generally, trust and the lack thereof become key issues in computer‐mediated communities as participants lack nonverbal cues or other types of social context information that would enable them to ascertain the authenticity of the individual members’ claims (Harasim 1993). Studies examining online deception and users’ experimentation with gender swapping or various aspects of identity fragmentation point out the connection between anonymity and identity play (Turkle 1995). However, people lie about various aspects of themselves in face‐to‐face interactions frequently as well as in other mediated contexts such as over the telephone or in newspaper dating ads. A lot depends on the context of the interaction, including factors such as the history of the participants’ interaction, the participants themselves, the type of relationships among the participants etc.

Assuming that anonymity and identity play characterize most online environments is a claim that does not fare well across all mediated communities. With a culture that nurtures implicit and explicit norms of openness and in which members do not make the distinction between a person’s mediated persona and their real‐life identity, the Formula As community is a thriving social space in which trust is a central community value that is directly related to the community’s transparency norms. Other communities that cultivate, as Baym (2000) aptly notes, “congruity between on‐and offline selves” constitute further support for this argument (157). Specifically, Baym’s

(2000) own study of an online soap operas community presents similar findings as the r.a.t.s. group that she examines stands out through its “anomaly” in the lack of identity play that pervades the group’s interactions (155).

A cursory comparison between Formula As and r.a.t.s. communities would acknowledge, despite a host of dissimilar aspects, the existence of low levels of anonymity25 within the groups’ cultures. In both cases, community members are comfortable enough to self‐disclose with the continuum of such disclosure ranging from moderate in r.a.t.s. to high in Formula As. Their purposes may not be as divergent as it

88 seems. For r.a.t.s. members, as Baym (2000) observes, “the need to interpret soaps through reference to personal experience encourages a group norm of (relatively) honest self‐representation” (157). Formula As participants cooperate via the discursive space of the magazine on health and humanitarian issues that are anchored in the participants’ real life identities; they envision the community as real and connected to the Romanian cultural environment. The exchange of naturistic remedies and providing assistance through donations almost requires truthfulness norms not just in terms of authors’ personal identities but also in the content of the information that circulates through the community network. This analogy with face‐to‐face interactions helps clarify my point.

For example, in face‐to‐face interactions people tend to prefer a referral to a qualified service provider over relying on chance alone in an extension of trust that draws from the history of their relationship with the person who makes the referral (either a friend or a professional). Formula As readers rely on the magazine’s grassroots ethos in extending their trust to the editors and the magazine’s audience. The prevailing shared knowledge among the magazine’s community members is best illustrated in this excerpt from a non‐Romanian reader’s message observing that “the Formula As magazine

[through its community] solves many hard cases.” 26 Its author, Ali, a Palestinian citizen who graduated from a competitive Romanian medical institution contacted the magazine hoping that somehow through the community’s efforts he would be able to return to Romania for his residency. In his text he provides a history of his attempts to retain the residency following proper channels and continues sadly,

I have now left for my country without any hope. I struggled so hard to finish

my degree, but if my scholarship is not accepted until the fall my situation is

really difficult because of the war. My father died when I was 5 also because of

the war. I’ve been living in terror in my country. (…) May God help you in the

same way that you assist the rest of the disheartened people. Oh God, I hope

from my heart, that you [Formula As] can bring me back to Romania so that I can

learn. I am afraid of war, innocent people are killed, I am afraid of death as I am

only 25 (Athamna, “I really hope…,” Formula As 445).

89 Given that even non‐Romanian readers of Formula As such as Ali are at ease to reveal personal information when interacting within the magazine’s community constitutes additional proof of the high levels of trust that exist in this environment. As community members observe, the bonds between them are authentic and through interactions, social capital is produced that impacts participants’ real‐lives. This is how Sanziana Pop for example, describes the “love” that she perceives to be coming from readers:

We too feel your protection, I personally. It is not professional to talk about

myself in a press article but I must let you know that without your thoughts and

good deeds, without your support, without the protection and love that I can feel

coming from you, my job running this magazine would be torture (…) I want to

thank you, in my name and on behalf of my colleagues for your love, for the

continuous affection that you place on us, without any interest or taxes. [Your

love] overcomes the distance, the unknown, goes through the walls of our

building giving us strength and trust that we are on the right path (Pop,

“Rehearsal for Angels,” Formula As 547).

Sanziana’s depiction of the affective bonds with the readers in terms of “love” that

“overcomes the distance” and cuts through obstacles of various kinds can easily pass for a definition of virtual communities. The text also makes clear references to what

Putnam (1995) identifies as components of social capital, that is, “networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” especially when corroborated with the rest of the community messages (66). Interpreting this excerpt in a Formula As mode, then Sanziana’s use of terms such as “good deeds,”

“support,” and “love” can in fact constitute manifestations of the community’s civic engagement and emotional support which are deemed prime components to social capital in virtual communities (Blanchard and Horan 1998).

As the common goals section of the analysis chapter will reveal, public requests and offers of “free help” in the form of exchange of health‐related information and community involvement in civic issues (e.g., humanitarian work) are routine social interactions for the magazine community. This type of behavior not only impacts the

90 intended audience in that recipients and donors of help effectively cooperate to achieve their goals but also the entire community that can observe it through the reading of the magazine. The public visibility of the acts of assistance may be responsible for the increased solidarity in some virtual communities and certainly distinguishes them from face‐to‐face communities (Wellman and Gulia 1999).

High levels of cooperation that are unique to Formula As are achieved specifically through the cultivation of norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness in which readers are socialized. Over time, engaging or observing public gift giving behavior in the community triggers feelings of identification and attachment to the group. A majority of the Formula As texts routinely note participants’ generosity as well as praise their dedication to the community goals. By contrast, community messages in which participants express lack of trust—whether regarding the content of the naturistic treatments or various individual identities‐‐are nonexistent. The explanation for this is certainly related to the transparency norms that are in place but may also be a result of the nature of the asynchronous medium. With only a minimum number of context cues participants’ perception of the similarities between themselves and other group members can be heightened. This is supported by Walther’s (1996) hyperpersonal communication theory that argues that due to this perceived similarity, among other things, online participants can feel more comfortable and at ease in mediated contexts.

It follows that a strong identification with the group based on perceived similarities coupled with the cultivation of norms of reciprocity may in turn positively impact the levels of perceived trust in the community. This can be seen in Sanziana’s text above in which she thanks readers for their “love and affection” that is offered unconditionally or as she metaphorically notes, “without interests or taxes.”

Community members’ affective bonds characterize texts originating from authors physically located in Romania as well as those from diaspora readers. As textual evidence from the community indicates, diaspora members may in fact experience a stronger identification with the magazine based on a common Romanian identity and shared interests. Through reading Formula As and participating in the

91 community interactions, diaspora readers can maintain their connection with the homeland together with a host of symbols associated with home. Consider this brief excerpt from a fairly typical message submitted by a Romanian living in Canada which illustrates the diaspora participants’ perceptions of the magazine:

First and foremost I write this message to thank you that you exist. My name is

Iustina (…) and I’ve lived in Toronto, Canada for about a year. I’ve been reading

the magazine for a good number of years now and when I left Romania I was

very happy to learn that I can access it over the Internet, while being away from

home. (…) Trust me, I do not exaggerate at all when I say that there is a bit of

Romanianness in every piece of information that I absorb through the magazine

and I’d feel more barren were it not for you. If until now, Sunday was just a

regular day and we would only prepare for a new week of work, now our

Sunday has a special flavor because we can read Formula As (Bac, “Now

Sunday…,” Formula As 535).

Generally enjoying higher levels of access than Romanians back home, diaspora readers, like Iustina, are able to maintain their old ties and keep informed of events in the home country over the Internet. Commenting on the Formula As content, Iustina congratulates the editors for selecting interesting and useful material that functions as an “oasis of peacefulness” for readers “everywhere” and “of any age” who have otherwise gotten used to receiving a “daily dose” of “violence” through the media. She further acknowledges, through vivid metaphorical language, the magazine’s role in maintaining diaspora participants’ connection with home:

I know that we, those from far away, can rely on you, a doctor of hearts who,

with magic hands, removes distances on the map and makes us feel, as we are in

fact deep in our hearts, ROMANIANS! [author’s original emphasis] (Bac, “Now

Sunday…,” Formula As 535).

Referring to Formula As as a “doctor of hearts” endowed with magical powers is a powerful metaphor that deserves some more analysis in that such language reflects the

92 essence of the diaspora readers’ perceptions of the community. First, readers frequently use various endearing metaphier terms when talking about the magazine as in comparing it to a mother, sister, and friend. In this respect, the “doctor of hearts” metaphor is not surprising since it connotes similar affective qualities in the readers’ imaginings of the Formula As community. The unique aspects of this particular metaphor carry over and attach in the minds of the readers. The former concern the associations that are triggered by the terms of the metaphier phrase (i.e., “doctor of hearts”) juxtaposed to the rest of the text. In this author’s vision, Romanian diaspora participants are perceived as suffering from homesickness—a rather common association I must note—and need someone who would help them stay connected with their home country. Formula As fits diaspora members’ needs by providing interactive sections where they can exchange messages with other Romanians, send personal messages to dear ones in the homeland, and read articles that address core Romanian characteristics such as spirituality, traditional customs, patriotism, Romanian history and geography.

Second, as reflected in a majority of the letters received from readers who describe the process of adapting to a new culture, leaving Romania—especially through emigration—was a hard and painful decision which was made occasionally due to disenchantment with Romanian economic conditions especially after the fall of communism in 1989. In some of the émigrés own words—people who continue to struggle with guilt even decades after their departure—leaving one’s country may be perceived as an act of abandonment of one’s roots, of betrayal. One such testimony comes from Arina Riviere from France, a more frequent Formula As contributor, who provides a “confession” about her departure from Romania, in 1992, embroidered within a larger narrative detailing one memorable trip back home in the émigré’s typical self‐reflective and nostalgic tone:

I left Romania ten years ago, with my passport and a backpack, without

imagining that I’d only return home for visits…(…)I felt the need to write to

you—for me it was like a confession—to thank you for the quality of the

93 magazine, for your professionalism. (…) Thanks to her [one of Formula As

editors] I found answers to many of the questions that I’ve asked myself during

these ten years of estrangement, when I had limited access to Internet and was

cut off from the world that I treasure and which I betrayed in body but not in

heart…(Riviere, “Nothing can…,” Formula As 533).

As someone who has been away for a decade, Arina looks to Formula As as a source of alleviating her feelings of homesickness, of keeping her connected to a cultural space that she cherishes despite the distance. Via the virtual pages of the magazine readers like Arina can still feel integrated within the community of origin. The rest of the community members and their texts—from the homeland and émigrés—reflect various aspects of her self that she has obviously tried to negotiate over time.

Lastly, messages coming from readers who settled in their new culture are more optimistic in tone but continue to express interest for everything Romanian. For many,

Formula As provides continuity between old and new diaspora generations. Often, readers from abroad who identify as parents describe the role of the magazine in familiarizing their children with the Romanian traditions as seen in this message that is a follow‐up to content that was presented in the magazine. This text, from a reader in

Austria is typical:

Allow me first to congratulate you for the content of your magazine that soothes

our diaspora hearts. I enjoyed reading the articles about the popular dance

traditions in Maramures. I would be grateful if you could point me to a source

for this type of events before they actually take place (an Internet site or perhaps

a Romanian address). I have a 9 year‐old son and I’d like to show him first‐hand

the true Romanian traditions (Irina Woolf, “I have a 9 year‐old…,” Formula As

503).

Other texts express concern over the negative image of Romania that is perpetuated by the media and congratulate Formula As for the balance that it brings to the picture.

In review, the shared language and Romanian background, interpreting the community texts and developing images of the solidarity and community boundaries, as

94 well as the production of public goods that flow through the mental pathways connect community members regardless of their location.

95 CHAPTER SIX

INSIDE FORMULA AS: COMMON INTERESTS AND GOALS

Any community—be it a face‐to‐face, virtual, or physically‐based virtual community—allows its participants some degree of involvement in the pursuit of common interests and goals, at both the individual and collective level. Members’ participation within a community is generally acknowledged as a significant unifying bond in that it brings people together in the so‐called “communities of interest.”

However, this characteristic alone may not be sufficient for a social environment to qualify as a virtual community. As with the rest of the community conditions discussed in this study, an examination of the community members’ shared interests can, by itself, provide but one facet of the multidimensional nature of the community. Even at such a level of granularity, for example, one may encounter varying interpretations of individual members’ goals as opposed to the collective goals of the group. For the community to endure, however, individual members’ goals and values need to be assimilated into the overarching purpose(s) of the group in such a way that participants can identify with and reflect the group’s norms in their own activities. The process of individual members’ identification with the collectivity is essential for the survival of the group as such dynamic is intimately related to the community’s self‐images.

In this chapter, I argue that a significant body of evidence indicates the existence of a variety of goals for the Formula As community depending on the level of granularity that one employs in examining this environment. As expected, while individual members’ goals and sub‐goals may appear heterogeneous depending on the participants’ role within the group (e.g., editors, readers) the Formula As community exhibits homogeneity translated into high levels of cooperation and reciprocity for a mediated social environment. What forms the basis for such cooperation? Specifically, what are the shared interests that bind Formula As community members together?

For the magazine’s editors, the overall goal has been to create a professional publication at a time when sensationalism and scandal were threatening to take over the

96 Romanian media (i.e., the early post‐Revolution years). Thus, the publication, in its

Director’s view, would respond to the readers’ need for valuable information, a public which has been unified “along true values” and constituted of those Romanians who

“still believe in merit and virtue” and whose value system has not been affected by the

“mold of transition” (Pop, Formula As 500). Over the years, the magazine has adapted its content, design, and editorial formula to better fit readers’ interests27 and nurture the affective ties binding the magazine’s community members. In a reply message to a reader who was congratulating the magazine’s director for her endeavor in bringing love and understanding in people’s hearts, Sanziana Pop comments on the magazine’s mission:

For a while we [the staff of the magazine] have thought that the magazine’s

readership and impact have solely a local influence. We figured that they [the

readership and impact] are the result of our synchronization to a specific

situation: the climate of insecurity that was brought about by the Romanian

transition and that the normalcy and peaceful tone of our publication are

perceived as a form of moral support. The Romanian readers (as all Romanians

for that matter) have a greet need for affection. They need someone who can

listen, understand, soothe and—if possible—help them. The idea that Romanian

readers form a commercial public is mistaken. The majority of the Romanian

readers need emotional support to help them cope with abrupt and confusing

changes that are hard to understand and which bring them nothing. One’s

consciousness is hard to change especially when everyday life contradicts it

(Sanziana Pop, Answer to a reader, S.O.S., Formula As 356).

The overwhelming number of messages addressed to the magazine and personally to

Sanziana confirm the affective ties that Formula As developed with its readers as seen in this example:

You are a very warm magazine, very close to readers. Many journalists probably

want this experience. I don’t know how you managed it, I don’t know anyone in

your editorial team but I feel you all near to my heart. I like how you write, what

97 you write, I like the pictures, even the ads…To sum it all, I like Formula As! (…)

Circulating among readers from hand to hand, the magazine has become a

manifesto of good and hope in tomorrow, for which we thank you (Doroga, “A

manifesto…,” Formula As 657).

Since the magazine caters to a general audience through topics and interests that appeal to a variety of age groups and lifestyles, rhetorical analysis of reader‐contributed texts shows the presence of a variety of individual purposes in readers’ use of the magazine and becoming part of its community. Generally, readers tend to read the magazine’s texts in ways that are meaningful to them, that is, employing a logic that brings commonality with their own lived experiences and personal narrative quests within the larger situated cultural contexts to which they belong. For example, a significant number of mature audiences, both in Romania and abroad, are primarily interested in the health content reflected in the editor‐contributed articles but especially in the readers’ forum on health topics as well as in the magazine’s coverage of Romanian

Orthodoxy traditions and practices. Those who find themselves in challenging situations such as illness or coping with some other form of stress (e.g., being away from home) are particularly attached to the magazine and its community as the examples below show,

I’m 79 years old, I’m ill and this magazine is for me the only solace and my daily

bread. Here I find comfort and all kind of naturistic treatments as well as other

good things, related to the soul and the belief in the Good Lord. I pray day and

night that the Lord continues to help you, to complete your good deeds (Slovig,

“The only solace,” Formula As 657).

For a significant portion of the magazine’s readership, the Romanians in the diaspora,

Formula As functions as a bridge with the “home” that they left behind. Roxana, a young

Romanian who used to read the magazine while in Romania describes her joy at being able to read it online so far away from home.

98 She writes:

Formula As has become like my second mother. It has come to offer home

economics advice, to heal my colds and other illnesses, because in the magazine’s

pages I would find natural remedies; to lighten me up with beautiful articles, to

touch my heart with real stories, to keep me updated with accounts about

“adolescents’ aces” [champions] in Romania (Vornicu, “Letter…,” Formula As

451).

Still younger audiences may nevertheless be attracted by different sections of the magazine as these seem to match their own lived stories. Raluca, a 17 year‐old reader from Romania and who includes her e‐mail address as part of her signature, confesses to

Formula As:

Hi! The goal of this letters is to congratulate you! (…) I’m sure that you receive

many messages like this one. Perhaps this one is more special since it comes

from a girl who is 17. I think that your main readers are older people. In fact,

the first time I heard about the magazine was from my mother, 5‐6 years ago.

This year however, I rediscovered the magazine and I liked it more than others

for my “age group” so to say. It’s true though that I don’t read it completely.

The editorials and the readers’ dialogue about health do not interest me. But

what matters to me is that I can find articles about Romania and Romanians,

written in a style that I find very…approachable, that’s why I think that you

“have won me over” (Avram, “Thank you…,” Formula As 581).

Such an audience has been carefully nurtured over the years so that even a 17 year old who is not interested in the readers’ health dialogue—a major Formula As blueprint—can still develop a mental connection with the magazine. Raluca further admits to particularly enjoying the articles about “Romanians who succeed despite red tape or the foreigners who have found here a second home.” These, she writes, “make me value my country even more!” She ends her message stating that if offered the opportunity to go abroad (an important debated theme in the magazine’s community) she’d probably not be able to adapt.

99 She concludes,

I simply found what I value most in life: that ROMANIA that exists beyond the

apartment houses and highroads. I want to thank you for boosting my

imagination through articles about truly wonderful places (Avram, “Thank

you…,” Formula As 581).

This younger reader’s perception of the magazine community populations is the result of her act of reading the community texts juxtaposed to her own experiences as a 17 year old who was introduced to the magazine within her family circle.

Reading the magazine with others within one’s family is in fact a common practice among readers; according to a 2004 Formula As survey28, the magazine has an average of 9‐10 readers per print copy. In this next example, the poster, another teen reader with two years of reading the magazine, describes her family ritual of reading

Formula As,

In my family, it’s become a weekly ritual for Formula As to lodge on the fridge,

but not for long, when I can hardly wait to skim through it, eagerly, and then

read it carefully, after it goes through my mother’s hands (she is the first one to

read it) and my sister’s (A bee that feeds on your honey, “A small…,” Formula As

408).

In fact, readers’ texts repeatedly indicate that accessing the magazine’s health “files’’

(i.e., the magazine’s past issues or its online archive) can also occur retroactively and by readers who are not directly involved in posting the information. Some readers even create their own archiving system that is complete with topical indexes by cutting out desired posts and pasting them in a separate folder which is consulted as needed.

Cornel, for example, is one of the many who confesses that reading and collecting the magazine has become a ritual that is shared with others:

I am sure that numerous readers relate to the magazine and find it invaluable. I

confess that in many Romanian homes the “As” is considered a true “guide”

(handbook), a thesaurus filled with valuable information…Once the latest issue

has made it into the reader’s home, it is read through from cover to cover and

100 then shared with others who may need some advice or remedy, and then

certainly, is going to be catalogued, archived, together with the other valuable

possessions (i.e., issues) from which the devoted collector cannot conceive to

separate…(Stoica, “A Thesaurus…,” Formula As 581).

Bogdan Lupescu, one of the magazine’s editors, attests that collecting the magazine has become a favorite pastime in many households that he visited during Formula As team field trips to various Romanian communities. In a story describing how the magazine’s print collection circulates within a whole village community Bogdan notes that one woman from the village of Hobita and grand‐granddaughter of Constantin Brancusi—a world famous Romanian sculptor‐‐sewed the entire magazine’s collection together into a huge book. For the woman‐‐Maria Mecu Brancusi—Formula As is her “small treasure” and she has collected the magazine beginning with its first issues that were printed in black and white. The Formula As collection has circulated from one household to another for the past ten years and as Bogdan notes, “some of the pages had turned yellow as they were wrinkled by thousand of hands.” Whenever someone in the village has health or soul problems he or she would show up in front of Maria’s house and ask, from the front gate, “Mrs. Maria, please lend me the ‘As’ a little more!” (Lupescu, “The newspaper sewn onto cloth,” Formula As 500).

In Sanziana’s opinion, the magazine’s popularity soared and naturally evolved through an empathetic involvement in the readers’ lives that cut across distance and time barriers. She writes:

People need someone to help them understand what happens, someone who can

win their participation, to guarantee hope, even in a hundred years from now.

But who has time for dialogue in Romania these days? Here’s why, I am glad to

note that the empathic mission of the magazine, its normal tone and kind words

are received equally clear by all our readers, all over the world, of whom you’re

part. The Internet greetings and encouragement are a confirmation of this state

of facts” (Pop, “Answer to a reader,” Formula As 356).

101 While the magazine and its readers are anchored within physical coordinates, the cognitive and affective ties that are established between the community’s participants transcend geographical and time limitations and are indicative of the existence of a social support network complete with norms of gift giving and reciprocity.

As discussed in the theoretical framework of this dissertation, virtual community members often engage in cooperation or exchange of various individual goods such as knowledge, different types of support, or specialized information (Smith 1992). Within this latter category, seeking medical content through health‐related web sites and within the nurturing space provided by specialized online groups is a growing trend in general

Internet use (Rice 2001). Additionally, comparative studies of online groups indicate that empathic communication is highest in support groups (Preece and Ghozati 2001).

Similarly, Formula As participants exhibit high levels of cooperation in that they produce public goods—the exchange of medical content on various alternative remedies and practices—and engage in gift‐giving in the form of donations originating from the readers and the magazine’s foundation. These specific behaviors characterize two of the magazine’s most appreciated and interactive sections, that is, the “Health” and the

“S.O.S.” sections.

Delving into this area of the magazine’s texts with the purpose of illustrating the manner in which such cooperation is actually achieved can bring enlightenment. Most importantly, analyzing participants’ messages may assist in finding an answer to a puzzling question that I further pose in this chapter‐‐What motivates members of the

Formula As community to contribute given that participants cooperate via a textually‐ mediated environment that has some functional resemblances with an online group but nevertheless lacks the technologically unique interface that facilitates such communication? Each of the readers’ letters posted in the “Health” section of the magazine could serve as illustration for the way in which Formula As community members provide health‐related knowledge for those who inquire in the pages of the magazine. With an average of approximately twelve to fifteen reply‐messages— sometimes one query for information will trigger several responses which are all

102 included as part of that particular thread—Formula As participants produce information that is publicly available for all of the magazine’s readers. It is important to note that although reply messages target individual readers (i.e., those who posted the original query) anyone who reads the magazine—in print or online—can benefit from the public good.

The magazine’s “Health” section functions as an asynchronous forum in which readers exchange medical advice—mostly based on alternative medicine remedies— although occasionally allopathic treatments are provided. A majority of the requests for help come from people who experience serious medical conditions—sometimes life‐ threatening—and who have run out of options or are eager to try something else before undergoing major allopathic treatments such as surgery or radiation. For example, in the 29 July‐August 5, 2002 issue of Formula As, almost half of the letters in the “Our readers ask…” section of the “Health” forum come from readers suffering from various types of cancer such as a rare form of heart cancer, a tumor of the inguinal nodules, a neoplasm of the parotid gland, a carcinoma of the esophagus, and a case of advanced cervix dysplasia. The remaining messages describe aggravating conditions such as polyradiculoneuropathy, osseous tuberculosis, spondylitis, and nodules on the thyroid gland.

A female, a 31 years old reader battling polyradiculoneuropathy presents the history of her illness and symptoms as customary in the letters, and inquires for a natural treatment for her condition:

I suddenly fell ill 3 years ago. I got paralyzed from my waist downwards and I

was hospitalized many times…Since I fell ill I had the following symptoms: I

have high blood pressure, which would not get lower without treatment, I get

tired very easily, my legs tremble when I make physical effort, my toes are not as

sensitive as they used to be; I also suffer from muscular atrophy, my soles are

cold, but I do not have pain in my legs. In the end I was diagnosed with

polyradiculoneuropathy. If anybody suffered from this disease and got cured,

please help me, as I have a son who needs his mother in order to grow up.

103 Thank you very much. May God bless you! (Pepelea, “I need…,”29 Formula As

526)

Numerous messages—both in the requests and answers sections of the “Health” section—indicate the existence of a significant level of medical knowledge among the readers. Thus, they often describe conditions using medical terms, are familiar with treatment dosages and side effects, and occasionally provide referrals to health professionals—either in the alternative or allopathic medicine. Some Formula As participants would keep up with the answers provided for a particular reader and/or illness for several months like this contributor who offers a naturist treatment for gastritis to a Romanian reader from Canada:

Since I also suffered from the same illness as you, I have followed all the answers

that you received for the past several months. The remedies are all good, and

even though some may not cure, they at least alleviate the illness as long as you

keep up with the treatment or the diet (“I’d like a naturist…,” Formula As 516).

Formula As participants rely on the “Health” forum to seek practical information to specific health needs and in doing so, display particular patterns of interaction that reflect a culture of gift‐giving with its own norms of cooperation and reciprocity. The analysis of readers’ texts indicate that Formula As community members trust the remedies provided in the “Health” forum and understand that the support provided through the magazine’s alternative medicine remedies section may sometimes be the last hope for some readers. Readers’ reply messages containing treatments to a particular query for help may sometimes be published (posted) for several consecutive issues of the magazine. The following thread is an illustration of this argument and provides valuable insight into the motivations underlying contributions to the “Health” forum.

Angela, a 30 year old Romanian reader battling thyroid cancer and working as a maid in the U.S. to help pay for her medical treatment submitted a query to the magazine’s community inquiring for alternative treatments for thyroid cancer and one for polypus (for the reader’s son):

104 Help! I live in America, have no papers, work only occasionally and suffer from

thyroid cancer. I come from a town in Moldova and had been exposed to the

Cernobil radiations. I’m only 30 years old. Last year I was diagnosed with 2 cm.

of ‘papillary carcinoma,’ and for the past two weeks I noticed and felt a swelling

under my ear (…) Has the cancer reached the lymph nodes? Is this the end of

my life? I don’t know what to do and what decision to make. Please work a

miracle for me as well (…) Where should I go and what to do? Mrs. Sanziana

Pop, if you were in my shoes, what would you do so that you can somehow

cherish this short life? Is there anyone else going through similar circumstances:

suffering from thyroid cancer at 30 and now this swelling under my ear? Has

this stupid Cernobil affected only me? What can I do to be able to raise my

child? (…) I’d also need a naturist treatment for my son, who is one years and

eight months old (…) please, please keep me in your thoughts. I love you a lot

and have put all my confidence in you. Respectfully, ailing among strangers,

Angela (Angela, “I suffer from thyroid cancer and my son has polypus,” Formula

As 509).

The first response that Angela received to her query accompanied the original message and came from the Formula As magazine. Touched by her situation, Formula As was informing Angela, through the magazine, that it would send her, free of charge, a coveted naturist Romanian medicine if she provided her contact information. While it is not customary for readers to receive answers from the editors, occasionally, Formula As will respond to readers’ queries. The editors’ contribution comes in the form of brief text that is visually distinct‐‐in brackets or italics‐‐from the readers’ and that is appended to the relevant message. On a case by case basis, Formula As editors’ texts may, among other things, provide offers for direct assistance—as in Angela’s case, refer readers to health practitioners, or direct readers toward various relevant treatments that were published in past issues of the magazine.

More answers to Angela’s message came from two readers‐‐nine weeks later‐‐ who provided treatment guidelines in two consecutive issues of the magazine. The first

105 reply is from Maria, a Bucharest reader, with a treatment containing detailed instructions on using two different types of tea, warm pads with a concoction of plants, and an ointment. In the introduction to the above‐mentioned cure, Maria

Constantinescu acknowledges her own struggle with disease and how making use of the treatments offered in the “Health” forum saved her life:

In 1999 I had terrible health problems. Although I was not given a certain

diagnosis (I was feeling very tired, my liver was enlarged and I was suspected of

chronic hepatitis), being a regular reader of the Formula As magazine (I have the

entire collection since 1995 when I found out about it), I underwent almost all

published treatments coming from its readers—both for enlarged liver and for

hepatitis, even for hepatic cirrhosis. Little by little, my health condition has

improved and now I’m fine. Finally, the diagnosis was also given: hepatitis type

B; I lived with it without being hospitalized and without one day of sick leave.

Moreover, not only that the disease has not become chronic but it is cured [sic]. I

would like to use this opportunity to thank the readers who published those

natural treatments which were really useful to me, as well as to the wonderful

staff of Formula As leaded [sic] by Mrs. Sanziana Pop (Constantinescu, “Answer

for Angela…,” Formula As 518 ) 30.

Maria’s testimony on the effectiveness of the treatments offered by readers in the

“Health” forum—as well as similar messages—may be one of the incentives for readers to contribute with cures since their joint effort may make a difference in someone’s life.

The second reply to Angela’s query came from another Bucharest reader, Ioana. Apart from the treatment information, the second reader’s letter is emotionally supportive as she empathizes with Angela’s tribulations away from home:

Dear Mrs. Angela, as your situation seems to be really desperate, and being all

by yourself among strangers, away from your country, I shall try to help you

with two cures. These cures are good both for you and for your son and they

have been recommended by other readers in this magazine (Parvu, “Answer for

Angela—USA,” Formula As 509)

106 Similar to the first answer to Angela’s question, Ioana’s message endorses the efficacy of the cure by stating that the cures “have been recommended by other readers in this magazine.” Generally, both the answers and replies to medical questions come in a story format—one that seems prevalent in the magazine’s interactive sections—in which a narrator provides an account of his or her personal struggles with illness and hardship.

The narrative analysis of Formula As health texts revealed patterns of rhetorical invention with consequences on the community’s collective repository of publicly available health knowledge that is the magazine’s “Health” forum. Mainly, such texts are indicative of the existence of a health frame in the selection of arguments, generally convey a personal lived experience through which the author narrates various episodes related to his or her own illness or that of someone close, and satisfy the condition of narrative fidelity. While additional narrative elements may provide valuable lenses in analyzing the community’s health texts (e.g., the use of plot and various tests for narrative probability) these lines of argument will only be addressed tangentially in this study.

As a community that excels both in terms of commitment to the magazine’s focus on naturist health remedies and in the amount of compassion that is provided through the readers’ stories containing specific treatment information, the Formula As “Health” stories are, by rule, framed within a health storyline. Anyone dealing with a major health situation is presumably confronting a personal crisis situation—numerous messages from readers attest to this assumption. It is common for people—in any situation for that matter, according to Fisher’s (1999) narrative paradigm, to rely on narrative reasoning as a way to make sense of their lived experiences. Psychologist Jerome Bruner

(1987) has argued, in his theory of life as narrative that the human mind makes sense of life’s events through the stories that we tell ourselves in an endless process of organizing reality based on our own internalized experiences. As one rhetorical meaning‐making experience, storytelling, is part of our cognitive framework and as such impacts not only the stories that we tell ourselves but also those that we share in our communities. We make sense of reality through self‐narratives that are interpretations of our lived

107 experiences—everyday accounts, major events, life itself—but we also corroborate others’ stories to our own and are in turn influenced in our storytelling by narratives that are embedded in our community’s cultural repository.

Individual stories that are published in the “Health” forum not only provide relief for those readers who ask for help but rhetorically, they exert influence over the

Formula As community in that they openly encourage a culture of compassion and cooperation. Repeatedly, in Formula As contributors’ texts to the “Health” forum, authors state their willingness to help, either in the form of phrases such as “I would like to help you,” “hoping that I could be of any help,” “let me recommend,” or through the accounts of their own lived experiences with similar medical conditions that were treated using specific treatments which form the object of the “Our readers respond” section of the “Health” forum. From a rhetorical perspective, specifically from the vantage point of Fisher’s (1999) narrative paradigm, Formula As health texts generally display narrative fidelity, that is, the quest for remedies and one’s afflictions match the stories that the readership audience have experienced in their lives when battling various illnesses. Personal testimonies of the effectiveness of specific medical treatments form the majority of the answer messages such as Maria’s answer to Angela’s query.

Another category of reply messages relies less on emotional appeal in the selection of arguments and provides instead specific instructions for administering the treatment without incorporating one’s own lived experience. Marcela from Buzau, for example, offers guidelines for treating kidney cysts:

I would like to recommend you the following treatment: take two hands full of

minced horse tail (it is advisable to use the whole plant, bought from the

collector himself), put them in a natural linen cloth and knot it. Then, put a pot

full of water on the cooker and when it starts boiling, introduce the linen with

the plant in it, and keep it there for 2‐3 minutes. Squeeze it a little and press it

hot on the sick area. Tie it up with a scarf and hold it for two hours. Use the

remaining tea to bathe your seat [sic]. Repeat the procedure for at least one

108 week, even twice a day. I wish you to be in good health! (Marcela “My

sister…,”31 Formula As 518).

Most information‐providing replies do end the text wishing the patient good health. A core group of Formula As community participants—including laypersons, licensed health practitioners and Formula As own editors would volunteer medical cures on a more regular basis than others.

While each individual story is unique, implicit or unwritten community norms for truthfulness prescribe that identifying information is provided by those who contribute to this section of the magazine. These norms have been described by Burnett and Bonnici (2003) in a study of Usenet newsgroups. The authors make the distinction between two categories of norms that seem to exist in any virtual community at a given time‐‐“explicit” (i.e., “codified in formal written documents such as FAQ’s) and

“implicit” (i.e., arising out of the participants’ interaction). They argue that both categories “provide much of the ‘glue’ that keeps social groups cohesive” (349).

However, implicit norms can only be traced down by longitudinal observation and analysis of the participants’ discussions as such norms are “not formally codified” in the community’s documents and therefore are not as self‐evident as the first category

(Burnett and Bonnici 2003, 336). Contributors to the Formula As forums provide personal identifying information in signature files (i.e., very brief texts that are positioned at end of the message proper) containing the author’s full name and contact information. The membership chapter in this study will address the significance of trustworthiness norms (e.g., implicit norms, signature files) for the Formula As community.

As mentioned earlier, exchanging health information is one important aspect of the magazine readers’ cooperation and solidarity. A second building‐block at the edifice of solidarity that is collectively raised by Formula As participants is manifested through the community’s humanitarian work. Thus, Formula As members collaborate to provide tangible forms of assistance to those who contact the magazine’s community for help.

The discursive space traditionally assigned by the magazine’s editors to this type of

109 cooperation is in the “S.O.S.” section. A cursory examination of the texts contained by the “S.O.S.” forum—in any given issue—can provide more details regarding the nature of the respective cooperation and the manner in which it is achieved. Since the magazine’s early years, the “S.O.S” section was conceived as a moderated discussion board facilitating the interaction among readers directly, just like the “Health” feature.

Even though over time the editors experimented with the “S.O.S.” format the core of this section is constituted by the “extreme distress” cases (hence the name “S.O.S.” for the larger section) that are published within its space.

In a nutshell, as the name so aptly describes, the “S.O.S.” space enables the posting of queries for help from people experiencing various forms of distress and therefore in need of assistance. These generally fit the “social cases” label in that people rely on the assistance of society, specifically, the Formula As community to be able to overcome the obstacles that block their paths. For a majority of the people who submit messages to the “S.O.S.” forum, Formula As may in fact be their last hope as one reader describes: “In this country where the transition lasts for too long, and the average person becomes poor and especially ill, the only hope rests with God and Formula As.” 32

The authors of these messages are, in the majority, individuals who expose their own private sphere issues to a public forum‐‐created by geographically dispersed private individuals and who cooperate through Formula As—so that they can receive much needed assistance. Routinely, such messages include a variety of requests and the following list is not meant as a typology but simply to provide some insight into the nature of cooperation that occurs here. Thus, most frequently, the section brings in requests for assistance from people experiencing extreme poverty due to unemployment

(loss of jobs, lack of or insufficient resources) or temporary debilitation due to medical conditions. Numerous requests also come from people suffering from life‐threatening conditions and who lack the resources for treatment (e.g., expensive medical procedures in Romania or abroad). Others, not as frequent, are authored by marginalized people or groups (e.g., disabled, victims of social injustice) or from people undergoing some form of life crisis (e.g., severe unemployment, divorce, emigration, etc) and who can no longer

110 cope on their own. Last but not least, members of various social institutions (e.g., orphanages, kindergartens and schools, churches) may occasionally contact Formula As to bring specific extreme cases to the attention of the community and to request assistance that would otherwise fall outside their contingent institutional resources. As customary for this forum, the queries for help are accepted whether they come from the authors themselves, from others who write on their behalf, or simply Good Samaritans who request help for those whom they think deserve assistance.

By design, the “S.O.S.” forum features an “appreciation” segment dedicated to acknowledging those readers who offered assistance from the beneficiaries’ perspective under the heading, “Readers thank for help.” Weekly, individual recipients of donations provide thank you messages or express their appreciation to those who assisted them. Just as in the “Health” forum, the follow‐up messages are threaded to facilitate coherence for the readers. Thus, as part of the heading for each thread the editors would paste a descriptive sentence from the respective follow‐up message within quotation marks—generally a statement that sums up the author’s message— followed, underneath, by a similar heading but to the author’s initial request for help, accompanied by the reference to the magazine’s issue in question. The following text is an illustration for this labeling practice within the “S.O.S.” forum:

“God has descended in our house”

(The letter “A 13 years‐old boy, at the end of his rope, writes to you,” F. AS #

488)33

As part of the Formula As “S.O.S.” culture, beneficiaries would acknowledge each donor by providing his or her name (unless anonymous), generally in a block of text within the follow‐up message, and update the community on the effect of the assistance that was received on their particular situation. If the assistance consisted of money—as it is most often the case—some beneficiaries would also specify the amounts donated by each of the donors for their case list. Due to the limitations of the medium and especially to the echo that some of the requests for help triggered among the Formula As community members, acknowledging the whole list of donors for an individual case may take

111 several issues as seen in this note that was posted by Formula As editors regarding the thirteen year‐old boy who requested assistance through the magazine:

Because the names and addresses included in Florian’s thank you letter go well

beyond the space for this page (no other letter ever published in the “S.O.S.”

section has had such echo) we ask for your permission to publish “as a series”

the list of those who submitted assistance as well as express our thanks, too, for

the real miracle that you fulfilled, now, on the brink of the Holy Holidays.

Should we dare say that there are no miracles? (Formula As [staff], “God has

descended…,” Formula As 496).

To encourage the culture of giving through the Formula As magazine and its foundation34 the magazine’s editors keep public records of the donations that take place through the magazine’s space. At the end of the “S.O.S.” section, each month, Formula

As publishes a report detailing the amount of money that was raised and the manner in which the money was distributed among the beneficiaries. Those who offer donations are acknowledged as their full name, place of residence, and amount contributed are included in a list of “sponsorships” from readers. Occasionally, individual sponsors may provide their own list of names of “S.O.S.” cases whom they wish to help as it has been customary for example for a select group of diaspora active contributors. One such

Romanian reader, Anca Dumitrescu from Sweden, has routinely offered donations ranging from $250‐$500 since 1999. Since the magazine makes public the correspondence that it receives, whether it is addressed to the magazine or to specific readers through the magazine, individual core participants and contributor identities such as Anca Dumitrescu for example, acquire increased visibility and reputation in the community.

Similar to the conversational dynamic in a fully electronic discussion forum, the

Formula As community can read the various discussions that occur among such core members and the recipients of their donations or with the magazine’s editors. Despite the limitations of the medium, there is textual evidence that Formula As participants follow community’s conversations. Occasionally, for example, submitted messages

112 would make references to specific community members and incorporate quotes from their respective messages as seen in the following text submitted by another Swedish participant of the community. The author of the text below contacted the magazine expressing her intention to donate money and send shipments of Aloe Vera products:

My name is Rodica Bornaci and I write a few lines to you from Sweden. Grace to

my mother, I can read your magazine as she sends it from Romania. I wish her

lots of health as she takes care of me. Time is short and reading [the magazine]

over the Internet does not have as much charm. In a way, the magazine fills my

heart with goodness but also with tears. I gladly join Mrs. Anca Dumitrescu, also

settled here, and who, in one of her touching messages states, so nicely and truly,

that “we are not a family of rich people, but in my opinion one individual’s

wealth is not measured in money but in deeds” (Borneci, “I gladly join…,”

Formula As 408).

Texts such as Rodica’s show that the community is weaved textually in ways that support Ricoeur’s interpretation theory. Thus, analysis of community discussions reveals that readers interact with specific community texts by interpreting them according to their own narrative frame. Rodica, for example, quotes from a message sent by another Swedish participant, approximately a year before, and identifies with her in the interpretive frame that is described. Readers also can become authors who incorporate others’ texts or interpretations of such texts into their own messages. As

Burnett (2002) aptly notes, “Reading becomes writing, that, in turn, generates a new act of reading. Through such a recursive activity, communities develop a robust sense of themselves and are able to forge an approximate but functional sense of their own populations” (171).

More evidence concerning the community’s intertextuality comes from conducting a simple experiment employing the web site’s search engine. Using “Anca

Dumitrescu” for example, in the search field, I retrieved approximately twenty results ranging from her correspondence with the editors detailing instructions in the distribution of specific donations, replies from the magazine to her messages,

113 beneficiaries expressing thanks to her through the magazine, to Anca’s own replies to such individuals. While it is true that such correspondence is primarily targeting and serving those directly involved (e.g., Anca Dumitrescu, the magazine and the beneficiaries of her donations) rhetorical analysis of their texts indicates that these make frequent reference to the community at large or are even indirectly addressed to its members. One of Anca Dumitrescu’s messages, addressed to the magazine’s director states:

I want to thank you and the Formula As magazine for making sure that the

money and packages that I sent met their recipients. I also want to thank those

who, through the magazine or directly to myself have thanked me so warmly. I

intend to continue what I have started, trying, with your help, to bring some

relief to those who suffer. I hope that the ranks of those who can and want to

give up a minimum amount of money to relight the hope in the eyes of some

children (…) are increasing (Dumitrescu, “I intend…,” Formula As 407)

Making such texts publicly available for the community provides standards of acceptable and desirable behavior for its members—whether these are active participants, lurkers, or new members‐‐and encourages more participation.

Further analysis of the “S.O.S.” forum texts reveals the existence of generic norms of accountability and transparency that are nurtured by the magazine’s editors.

For illustration I present a discussion vis‐à‐vis the community’s humanitarian work for

May 2002 as reflected by the report posted in the 6‐13 May 2002 Formula As issue. Thus, during May 2002, the Formula As Foundation registered almost 50 million lei (or approximately $ 1,700) submitted by 57 individual citizens (two of these self‐identified as anonymous) and five private businesses. Out of the 50 million, almost 9 million came in Euro (i.e., 300 Euro) from two readers (including one of the anonymous ones who offered 200 euro). The total amounts are listed in Romanian currency—as the form in which most of the donations occur. However, readers (from Romania) or abroad may donate money in different currency in which case the report usually listens these amounts separately and converts them into Romanian currency.

114 This amount was distributed, according to the magazine’s report, to seven individuals. The recipients of the donations are identified by their full name, address, and a reference to the letter title and Formula As issue in which the specific request for help was made. For each recipient, the report also includes the amount received. For example, two out of the seven recipients received 10,000,000 lei each while the rest were listed with 5,000,000 each. The beneficiaries of the donations ranged from a Romanian

Orthodox priest who set up a small parochial house for eight abandoned children in a mountainous Romanian village; a little girl who wrote a letter requesting that she be placed under the care of a foster family until her Mom, suffering from cancer, returned from the hospital; a 69 year old former pilot, suffering from cancer, who lost his home and had no knowledge that his story was published in the magazine on his behalf by a nurse who was familiar with his case as a consequence of his repeated intensive care hospital treatments; to several individual messages from teenagers requesting assistance for their families that were coping with poverty. Additionally, as part of the Formula As donations culture, the magazine itself offers, every month, separate “sponsorships” for

5‐10 selected cases from among the pool of requests for help.

Apart from the very practical task of keeping track of the community’s humanitarian effort, the editors’ monthly reports also have a symbolic function in legitimating the community’s joint endeavor especially when viewed within the larger discursive space of the “S.O.S.” section (i.e., together with the original queries for help and the thank you letters from the beneficiaries). Thus, through such texts, the magazine reinforces norms of reciprocity and presents evidence that the culture of giving that is practiced by the community has visible consequences in improving the lives of those who exist as more than just authors and characters of textually‐mediated narratives. This observation is congruent with current virtual community research findings (e.g., Baym 2000) indicating that virtual community members’ offline lives inform the interactions that they have online as people belong to both worlds simultaneously (e.g., Rheingold 2000, Wellman and Gulia 1999).

115 As the discussion of the “Health” and “S.O.S.” forums revealed, Formula As community participants cooperate successfully even though they are geographically dispersed and despite unique limitations of the medium of interaction. They exchange medical information and engage in humanitarian work impacting the lives of millions over the years in very tangible ways. In this respect, the community exhibits homogeneity of purpose even though at an individual level specific goals or the manner in which these are achieved may vary. The high level of cooperation resulted from very specific problems experienced by readers of the Formula As magazine who, according to numerous testimonies, were confronted with a range of needs arising from each individual’s situation.

A body of textual evidence supports the argument that Formula As community members are engaged in interpreting the community’s texts and some, who are active donors through the “S.O.S.” section, follow the posting of messages in its space. The following post submitted by Luminita, a mother of two doing her graduate work in the

U.S., narrates her involvement with humanitarian work through the magazine.

According to her story, she ran into the magazine on the Internet while doing a search for a medical condition that she had. Even though at first she was mostly interested by the “Health” section, in time, she began reading the magazine’s other sections.

However, she avoided reading the “S.O.S.” section for a long time. In her words, “It was too sad. Every time I would say that there are others who help those in need. I am embarrassed to confess these things now.” But she kept reading and after a while, she decided to become a regular contributor. Keeping up with the forum’s texts she reached her own observations regarding the community’s involvement in charity work and also devised her own method of contributing help which she shares with the community’s readers. Thus, she notes:

I sent donations only five times until now but I want to do more. I noticed that

in the Formula As account destined for the “S.O.S.” cases, most money comes in

from those who have little themselves, but have golden hearts. Through average

contributions of 100,000 lei, 200,000 lei and not so frequent ones of one million,

116 you[the magazine] manage to raise over a hundred million monthly. You prove,

on a monthly basis, that those who contact you through the “S.O.S.” section, after

they had gone beyond the limits of endurance, that they are not alone (Coman,

“Do charities,” Formula As 573).

As someone who sends smaller amounts, Luminita feels that depositing money into the magazine’s account and being charged transfer fees may deter those readers abroad who can only send contributions of $50 or less. Her method consists in wiring money to her sister through Money Gram and e‐mailing her a list of addresses from the “S.O.S.” section to which her sister would then send money orders in Romanian currency. This reader’s text shows the extent of cooperation that Formula As readers engage and their involvement in shared goals through a text‐based medium. Luminita, as she acknowledges, is both a reader and a writer, and interpreting the community’s texts is what enables her to fulfill both roles.

Unlike some of the wealthier community participants who donate money directly to the magazine’s account or foundation and therefore do not need to take their efforts outside of the community to achieve their goals, Luminita adapts by combining a variety of outside Formula As resources to achieve similar goals as the former. She reads and interprets the “S.O.S.” forum messages on a regular basis to determine potential cases of people needing assistance. She then, involves her sister—who most likely is a

Formula As reader herself—and employs a different route—outside the Formula As community’s main discursive space—to achieve her goals. Like her, it is safe to infer, there are other readers who devise their own methods of conducting humanitarian work using the magazine as a resource. Will Luminita’s efforts receive the same public recognition in the Formula As space as her Swedish fellow members who donate directly to the magazine’s accounts? Not likely since her private initiative bypasses the sponsorship practice of the “S.O.S.” forum. Even though she may not enjoy visibility in the community it is however true that Luminita is an active Formula As community participant through her involvement with the humanitarian work, just like the regular

117 core contributors. So involved, that in her message she inquires for even more efficient ways of sending donations among her fellow‐diaspora readers:

If anyone knows a more efficient method for sending money, please let me and

others who are interested know. One potential solution that I suggest is the

association of several individuals to send a larger amount (Coman, “Do

charities,” Formula As 573).

Additionally, in the conclusion to her message, Luminita virtually pleads with “those who are in the ‘wait for others to do it’ phase (like I was)” to become involved themselves.

Considering Luminita’s text within the larger community norms context it is apparent that by making it available for the community in a sub‐section of the “S.O.S.” forum titled “Letter of the Week” the editors achieved several goals. First, they not only acknowledged her own method by publishing the text but also brought her solution into the community’s discursive space especially since Luminita was querying the community herself, among other things, in her message. This is very similar to articulating implicit norms for acceptable handling of alternative methods for providing donations for the Formula As cases. Second, making this text publicly available, in a separate sub‐section that opens the “S.O.S.” forum is the rhetorical equivalent of setting up an imaginary conversation with the rest of the texts in the section (the distress cases follow right after with only a thin separating line between them). Thus, while not visibly related as pages on a web site may be through linked text, it is evident that

Luminita’s text is related thematically through the narrative that she tells and her intended audience that she addresses. Third, Luminita acquired visibility—partly as a result of her said involvement with the magazine—and her behavior was therefore rewarded by the editors.

From a virtual community perspective, Luminita’s text endorses the finding that virtual community members will engage whatever resources they have available— including those that are traditionally identified as outside the community’s boundaries or “offline”—to achieve common goals. Specifically, for Luminita to contact the would‐

118 be beneficiaries to her donations she used non‐Formula As communication channels: her‐ email to her sister and the services of Money Gram. Considering that the practice of using backchannels is common for the magazine’s “Health,” and “S.O.S.” forums—as shown by readers’ signature files and texts—one can only wonder about the extent of this community’s cooperation. Its members communicate through a variety of means, besides the magazine’s discursive space—some without ever becoming contributors— and may find new benefits for staying mentally or rhetorically connected to this community. Yet, they all share their imagined connection, radiating from the center of the community that in turn touches the lives of many more. As one contributor aptly put it, “Without her knowledge sometimes, Formula As has been there for many.”35

119

CHAPTER SEVEN

INSIDE FORMULA AS: MEMBERSHIP BOUNDARIES

At a cursory level of analysis virtual communities may present themselves as

“multilayered” textual interactions (Haythornthwaite 2002, 12), that is, texts that feed on previous texts in an intricate dialogical architecture especially in computer‐mediated environments. Any discussion group’s archive for example, in the graphical representation of the group’s discussion threads would be the closest tangible trace that is available of the group’s interaction over a period of time. The group’s texts are autonomous or in Ricoeur’s (1976) terms, “distantiated” from their authors who in fact may post to several online groups through cross‐posting. Do such texts enable community participants to develop a sense of presence about individual authors and the overall community? Additionally, since the author/audience distinction is blurred within the mediated environment, that is, community participants engage both in the consumption and production of texts through interpretation and posting of publicly available messages, how are group’s texts contributing to the creation of affective bonds between community participants? In this section I examine the Formula As texts with the intent of determining the nature of the community’s boundaries and its various categories of participants.

As stated in this study, Formula As has reached, in fourteen years, a readership of

8,000,000 people. Since 2002, the magazine’s readership has more than doubled in size and Formula As became an influential publication bringing together Romanians all over the world. According to Formula As, in 2002 the magazine had 700,000 online permanent readers who enjoyed reading the magazine from places as different as North America,

Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Oceania. Considering that the magazine’s sole advertising of itself comes indirectly from readers’ word of mouth the high circulation numbers are indicative of a community that constituted its ethos gradually and through a grassroots approach. While the magazine is available in print for a subscription fee

120 both in Romania and abroad, since 1998 Formula As texts have been archived on the

World Wide Web on the magazine’s web site. Being geographically dispersed does not deter Formula As participants from interacting in the pages of the magazine and providing free resources to one another such as medical advice, material assistance, and emotional support.

The analysis of Formula As texts indicates that the participants have a sense that they belong to the group through the common interests that they share and the norms that arise out of members’ textual exchanges. Specifically, through the posting of messages that describe members’ solidarity in its various forms of manifestation and the affective bonds with the magazine, Formula As cultivates a specific set of images about this community that act as the group’s boundaries with the environment.

This message from a reader from Canada, who confesses to read Romanian publications via the Internet to feel “closer to home,” is typical:

In my opinion, as they say around here, the magazine that you edit is a gift from

God, because it addresses Romanians everywhere, regardless of their political

beliefs and place of living in the world. One becomes more kind reading Formula

As, thinks of fellow human beings, suffers with the one who is feverishly

searching for treatment when the “medical knowledge” is still of no avail. To

sum it all in one phrase, one becomes a true compassionate person! I pray to

God for the health of those who edit this wonderful magazine, I pray for the

health of those readers‐compassionate persons who offer treatments that cure

those who are ill (Barbu, “In my opinion…,” Formula As 500).

Numerous other messages from readers comment on the affective connection that participants establish with one another through reading a magazine that cuts across cleavages of all kinds.

The Formula As community‐‐as defined by its members‐‐is both constructed and delimited by symbolic markers that emphasize a shared language, traditional Romanian values, and a Romanian cultural memory. It is not a coincidence that numerous diaspora texts acknowledge the connection that their authors feel with their home

121 country, often after decades of living elsewhere and successful adaptation to their host cultures. As one such reader aptly observes, “After journeying through several countries and learning several foreign languages, one comes to the realization that the language in which your mother raised you is yet the most beautiful on the planet”

(Nicoara, “The language…,” Formula As 515). Being and feeling Romanian at heart, regardless of one’s place of residence are important identification mechanisms for

Formula As community members. Victoria, a reader from New Zealand proudly notes,

[Formula As] succeeded that which no government ever did in Romanian history!

That is, you bring together [people], are the binding between all Romanians,

those from the country as well as those that are spread all over the world! The

Romanian diaspora cherishes your every article and the Romanians in the

country adore you! (Goga, “You achieved…,” Formula As 581).

For Formula As readers, especially those in the diaspora, reading texts in the Romanian language is perceived as a cognitive and emotional experience of connectedness.

Sharing a common language brings a whole set of symbols whose meanings resonate for people who were born into that language. A significant number of diaspora texts point out that various articles or messages from readers trigger memories from home such as the yearning for dear ones—some who passed away, the wonderful childhood snowfalls, cherished rituals such as Christmas and Easter holidays, summer vacations at the grandparents’ house, the treasures of the simple countryside life, and much more.

Naturally, homesickness grows stronger around major holidays, a time that for diaspora readers carries special significance as they forever remember the warmth and cheer of their own childhood holiday celebrations no matter how perfect these may be in their adopted countries. As one Romanian reader in the U.S put it, “that far away

‘home’ never reverberates more lively and longingly than at the time of the holidays.”36

Rituals, as symbolic markers, provide community members with the common ground for reaffirming their ties with one another and their allegiance for the community at large. Symbolically, rituals are windows into the essence of our identity as it has been shaped by our interactions with past (i.e., through traditions) and present others. It is

122 telling that diaspora members imagine themselves and aspire to remain committed to their cultural space of origin, even though, due to physical and temporal separation, this integration occurs mainly at a symbolic level. As noted elsewhere in this study however, symbolic or virtual ties can be just as strong as or even stronger than those established among people through sharing a physical space. The evidence supporting this argument comes, in the case of Formula As, from the solidarity that diaspora members extend—often in very tangible manifestations such as donations, material and emotional support—to the magazine’s community.

How do Formula As participants imagine their community boundaries? First, as the preceding arguments show, community texts reveal positive response that the magazine brings together Romanians everywhere. In this respect, it is safe to conclude that the boundary between Romanian diaspora readers and those from Romania is permeable as it allows for all readers to form a virtual community centered instead on common language, shared cultural values and interests rather than geographical location. Community texts also reveal interest—via Romanian readers‐‐from non‐

Romanian speaking individuals in reading the magazine. As a result, Formula As online version published, through most of 2002, the English translation of its reader interactive

“Health” feature and to a lesser extent, the editor‐contributed “Natural Therapies.”

Second, community participants rally around the magazine’s environmental and humanitarian campaigns. Identifying with the magazine’s goals and values, partaking in the community’s norms of love and compassion provide participants with a sense of identity within the collectivity or as one reader accurately observed, a “new consciousness”37 whose seeds have been planted and nurtured by Formula As. Often, this Formula As consciousness—to label it more appropriately‐‐is reflected in the participants’ understanding of who they are as part of the group, but most frequently in their awareness of the community’s boundaries.

A significant theme that arises out of the members’ interaction is that of the unmistakable ethos of the Formula As magazine and its community. By contrast, other publications and a good portion of the world at large seem to be lacking in the qualities

123 that define this community. Manuela’s text, a reader from Canada for example, provides a good illustration for the juxtaposition between the magazine and the rest of the publications. She writes,

A majority of the publications brim with sensationalism, articles that are loaded

with information about technology, business, and fashion; [such publications]

have become so stereotypical that they succeeded to hamper even the slightest

interest. By contrast, your publication is uniquely conceived, like a rare and old

piece of jewelry that emanates beauty all around, almost unreal (Arhire, “From

Canada…,” Formula As 556).

Similarly, an overwhelming number of texts describe the role that the magazine and its community play in readers’ lives. Here is a list—far from being exhaustive though—of the attributes endowed upon Formula As by its participants and which clearly define the domain of this community. Thus, Formula As nurtures hope for millions of its readers, brings light in people’s lives through the random acts of kindness performed by its readers, triggers solidarity ties with those in need—all projected against a world that, according to many readers texts, is perceived as lacking true values, dominated by materialistic and individualistic goals, and deficient in compassion and love. The following text illustrates this point:

Formula As has been for me, a magazine for the soul. It is the sun coming out

timidly from behind the clouds on a rainy day. It is so because we live in an

unsightly, hostile world, in which each carries his or her own burden all by

themselves, too alone, too self‐conscious, bent under a burden of worries and

deprivation (Mihaela, “If we raised…,” Formula As 413).

Sanziana Pop’s messages, as the embodiment of the Formula As spirit, often refer to the magazine community’s “triumph against indifference, aversion, alienation from one’s self, spiritual void”38 through the donations and various types of support that come from readers via Formula As. Similarly, Toma Roman, one of the core editors of the magazine, attributes Formula As’ success, partly, to the bond that its editors established with one another, working as a team of friends. Equally, the popularity is due to the

124 audience whom “they turned into a friend whose trust they have never broken.” He further notes that the magazine has been molded according to its readers’ needs and expectations by trying to assist people in their most legitimate concerns. Just like

Sanziana, he describes the society in which Formula As emerged as “dominated by individualism and corruption, of deceit and misuse of authority,” which Formula As and its readers oppose. In a nutshell, he concludes, “Formula As understood its readers. It exists among them and for them” (Roman, “The Friend,” Formula As 500).

These statements, coming from the magazine’s director and one of its leading editors—to illustrate with only a few of the many texts that substantiate the editors’ position‐‐are significant rhetorically as they reflect the magazine creators’ perception of the Formula As community and its boundaries. Just like the readers, the magazine’s editors view the community as constituted of “friends,” that is people who have affective ties with one another, who share a set of core values and engage in common goals. Formula As participants are self‐conscious of their unique bonds that make them stand out from the outside world to the same extent as they are aware that their community is “real” even though its members interact via the textual space provided by the magazine. In Sanziana’s words, the bonds of the community originate from the

“unconditional affection” and trust that are generously offered by the readers and which

“remove the distance, pass through the editorial building’s walls.” Thus, she further comments, resorting to Biblical terms, people who are “marginalized, crucified on the cross of deprivation and despair” benefit from the assistance provided by the magazine’s community and whose support “neutralize the biblical sponge of vinegar, replacing it with one of life‐giving water,” or “the life‐giving water of kindness which cannot be accounted for in words but in the effort to make this magazine as you expect it” (Pop, “Rehearsal for Angels,” Formula As 547).

Based on evidence that has been provided so far it is apparent that Formula As participants mark the group’s boundaries through the solidarity created among

Romanians everywhere, commitment to common goals, and a shared expectation for reconnecting with “positive” Romanian values in contrast to the mainstream context.

125 What do the community’s texts reveal about the participants identities? Does one get a sense of presence of individual contributors and of the group at large? The following portion of this section will address these questions. Not unlike any other textually mediated community, Formula As texts provide a wealth of information regarding the contributors’ identities and the relationships that characterize this social environment—some of which may or may not fit the expectations related to more technologically‐advanced virtual communities. First and foremost, it is important to note that in an overwhelming number of the community’s texts, Formula As participants use their full real names, provide (detailed) contact information, and only rarely sign using just a first name. Second, through the narratives that are exchanged in the discursive space of the community readers, also disclose sensitive personal information without the protection offered by use of pseudonyms that characterize some fully computer‐mediated communities. The justification for this practice is related to the ethos of the Formula As community that comes as a result of a combination of factors including but not limited to the group’s goals, culture and norms, and the nature of the medium of interaction. The community’s humanitarian goals—sharing knowledge of naturistic remedies and providing assistance through donations—as well as the various campaigns (e.g., animal rights, environmental issues) certainly inform the manner in which individuals present themselves to the community.

As shown in the theoretical framework of this study, virtual communities differ on many levels and one such important aspect is related to the degree of identity play or performance that characterize a particular mediated environment. Some communities, such as those geared toward identity play (e.g., MUDs, chat‐based groups) allow participants a lot of room to experiment with various aspects of their identities (Danet,

Ruedenberg et al. 1998). In such online environments, the use of pseudonyms and nicknames is fitting with the culture of performance and language‐play. In others, people prefer to pretend that they’re someone else altogether (e.g., gender swapping) or modify aspects of their persona (e.g., age, physical appearance, social status) to match their imagining of themselves and to better fit the context of their online interaction.

126 One of the utopian claims regarding the Internet is that various degrees of anonymity can empower the marginalized in a society such as gays, women, and ethnic minorities whenever they take to online channels. But so can mediated environments that foster a culture of transparency, interpersonal bonds, and solidarity such as Formula As text‐ based community.

Indeed, Formula As culture nurtures implicit and explicit norms of openness and accountability. In this highly “realistic” and yet virtual environment, anonymous communication would be considered a violation of the group’s norms. It follows that one contextual element of the communication process—e.g., the type of channel that is available—may not be the determining variable for the amount of self‐disclosure that will occur. Most likely, other contextual elements, in various ratios, such as the group’s goals, culture, and shared history, the nature of the bonds among participants, system infrastructure, etc, contribute to the mix. The fact that participants in Formula As community identify themselves using their real names is an important “clue” regarding the group’s culture of trust, gift‐giving through humanitarian goals, and exchange of reliable information. Providing real names is not mandatory since the community does not have a formal text such as FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) that some other text‐ mediated communities do. It appears that Formula As members’ use of their real names is a rhetorical avenue for enacting implicit norms of trustworthiness, accountability, in accordance with the community’s goals.

People in the Formula As community engage in significant amounts of self‐ disclosure that would not be otherwise possible if they did not feel comfortable with the community’s atmosphere. They are comfortable enough, that is, to not only use their real names but to also provide their contact information in signature posts that generally include a name, an address—either in full or sometimes only the town/country of residence—a telephone number, an e‐mail address, a person’s title. Overall, textual examination of the community’s texts shows that signature posts are extremely frequent in the Formula As community and are most complete in the magazine’s “Health” and

“S.O.S.” forums. In the “Health” forum for example, implicit norms of reciprocity

127 require that readers provide identification information in their posts to facilitate the exchange of medical knowledge and to convey credibility. The following example illustrates this argument. Elena Ionescu, a Bucharest reader, posted a query to the

“Health” forum for a natural treatment against chronic insomnia. Five weeks later, two readers provided her with the treatment options that‐‐as customary for the forum‐‐were grouped together under the heading containing Elena’s question. The first naturistic treatment came from a medical doctor whose signature file is as follows: “Janeta

Porumbita M.D., 32 Dragoslavele Str., Craiova, zip 1100.” The second answer was offered by a reader whose signature file only contains her first name and email address.

Both readers apart from their names provide some form of personal contact information which serves as an invitation to further dialogue for Elena.

Including a person’s medical title is a common practice for the “Health” forum and according to my observations medical doctors appear to post on a regular basis together with a select group of laypersons. For example, in the same issue of the magazine, Janeta, the medical doctor, provided an answer to another reader inquiring about a treatment against a cerebral vascular attack. Apart from Janeta, two more doctors offered treatment solutions to two different readers. Unlike Janeta’s, their signature posts contain their names, places of residence, and phone numbers as seen in these examples: “Irina Spuderca M.D.—Bucharest, tel. 021/2317106, 0723/510737,”

“Claudia Ciocan, M.D., Bucharest, tel. 021/2023023.”

Some texts contributed by medical specialists may contain, apart from the medical title, a brief reference to their medical specialization as shown in this text provided by Rodica Graur, a neurologist pediatrician from Constanta (Romania’s largest beach city). Rodica answers a reader’s query concerning treatment for cyanotic attacks in her baby daughter:

“I am a pediatrist39 (sic) neurologist and I have had many patients with this

diagnosis. The breath holding attacks (cyanotic attacks) occurs especially with

the children who suffer from hypocalcaemia, rickets, children with highly

excitable nervous system, with disordered sleep, fear and shouts while sleeping;

128 they are predisposed to convulsions, even to a slight hypocalcaemia, which may

occur during a burst of tears (Graur, Answer for…,” Formula As 526).

She further argues that treating the cause that produced the cyanotic attacks is the best procedure and recommends, as a remedy, a medicine which she endorses.

While treating these patients I made sure of the effectiveness of the natural

product “Biocalcium for children,” which, besides eliminating hypocalcaemia,

builds up the health, assures a normal development of the nervous system and of

the intellectual capacity. (…) Rodica Graur, M.D. –Constanta, tel. 0723/878709

(Graur, Answer for…,” Formula As 526).

The final paragraph of her message brings more detailed support regarding the medication and recommends the necessary dosage. Rhetorically, readers of this text will perceive the author as trustworthy and credible. Her ethos comes partly, externally, through her signature file that contains her medical title but also internally, through her argument that reinforces her professional expertise. The argument clearly matches a medical practitioner’s style as she talks about treating the “cause” of the illness, displays the necessary mental habits of someone who is skilled in treating patients, and also has her direct audience’s goodwill at heart (i.e., the reference to testing the efficiency of the endorsed product). People will trust the advice given as they trust the remedies provided by other categories of participants.

The advice given by laypersons represents the majority of the answers provided in the “Health” forum. Analysis of such texts shows that, generally, respondents appear to have a good understanding of their own illnesses or those of others in their close circle, are familiar with treatment options (including dosages, potential side effects), and occasionally will virtually “diagnose” others based on the symptoms described. In accordance with the forum’s culture, such texts also contain markers of their authors’ presence and implicitly of their authority on the topic. Interestingly, laypersons’ texts, though different in style than medical practitioners’ texts, contain a rhetorical repertoire that endorses the medical advice provided. Typically, a layperson’s text will have more

129 resemblances to a story frame as provided by the episodic dimension of the narrated events and the narrative fidelity of the argument.

Such texts usually contain at least one reference to the author’s credibility in the form of a statement acknowledging the respective person’s similar condition. This generally occurs in the opening paragraph of the message and serves the added function of establishing common ground with the audience:

I also had respiratory problems and was diagnosed with allergy to dust, cold,

and humidity (Draghici, “Answer for O.B.‐Canada,” Formula As 507).

Or:

17 years ago, when she was 8‐9 months old, my daughter started to have similar

attacks, as a consequence of an injectable treatment (Ropotan, “Answer for…,”

Formula As 526).

Next, respondents usually continue with an account of their own illness narrated in chronological sequence—debut, progression, solution—followed by a description of the recommended cure:

I followed treatments with everything that was available in the country (for two

and a half years), but with no result. The problem solved quickly with visits to

the saline mine at Slanic Prahova. After my fifth visit, I started to breathe quite

well. I would spend about three hours in the mine at every visit. After ten days,

I got cured. But to prevent a relapse, I repeated the treatment the following year.

At the mine, I met people who got relief from asthma (Galca, “Answer for…”

Formula As 516).

As illustrated in the excerpt above, structurally, one can consider the weaving of supporting stories within the main storyline as the equivalent of the “story within story” type of argument to convey the lived dimension of the person’s own struggle and provide good reasons to trust the expertise of the respondent. The reader can therefore easily identify with the described sequence of events if they happen to be suffering from the same condition (in this case the story has narrative fidelity) or simply fill in the gaps in a quest for coherence if these episodes are not included.

130 Formula As laypersons generally display significant medical knowledge and are critical of the information that is submitted in the forum. Often, participants’ texts contain textual markers that are indicative of an imaginary dialogue with the intended audience. Additionally, the answers provided show that authors are generally aware of dosages and potential side effects of the remedies that are recommended:

Although you do not either specify what kind of wound you have on your leg, or

what diagnosis you were given by your family doctor, if you suffer from diabetes

(this is a very important aspect) I would like to suggest you an universal cure

which, if carefully applied, shall heal you from many health problems.40

(Nicolita, “Answer for…,” Formula As 518).

As expected, a good part of the readers’ medical knowledge comes from their own experiences and their rhetoric clearly illustrates this argument:

I would like to ask Iulia if she has seen a neurologist. Hypocusis of perception

with injury of the auditory nerve and with tingles is the worst disease of

deafening, meaning that there is neither cure nor surgery to heal it. I have been

confronting with this disease for 30 years. [Reader includes list of medication

that were taken for it]. Smoking—in case you are a smoker—worsens the disease

as the noises in the ear get stronger. [Reader incorporates story of receiving her

own diagnosis]. All this time I have undergone all kinds of treatments, but all of

them were meant to distend the cranial vessels‐vessel ventilation. Now I have a

hearing aid and the noises have completely disappeared. Be careful with these

vessels‐dilating drugs because you must not expose yourself to the son [sic] and

you should always have your head covered. I suggest you a hearing aid, made

up according to the audiogram record that you can get from Bucharest 41

(Andronescu, “Answer for…,” Formula As 518).

Providing referrals to medical practitioners specializing in the inquirer’s presumed condition, endorsing a treatment method or naturistic remedy by supplying its source— whether from a previous Formula As treatment or from elsewhere—are all common practices in the magazine’s “Health” forum. Rhetorically, incorporating references to an

131 external source of ethos confers additional credibility to the author’s text as illustrated in this excerpt:

If you have this opportunity in Canada, follow a cure at a saline mine. But once

you are inside, you need to breathe in deeply. Formula As published an article

about an air purifying device—SALIN, which can be obtained from Mr. Pascu

Constantin from Buzau, tel. 038/71.91.88. You might want to consider it.

(Draghici, “Answer for…,” Formula As 507).

In this particular case—and there are many readers who incorporate various references to treatments covered in the magazine’s “Health” forum, its “Natural Therapies” feature or to an external source—the device in question receives endorsement since it was covered in the pages of the magazine. Lastly, respondents’ texts generally include some form of emotional support that is woven into the message but, most frequently, in the conclusion to the text followed by the author’s signature file.

Even though Formula As does not fully resemble traditional forms of virtual communities, the interactions that characterize this environment point toward the existence of various categories of community members, apart from differentiating them according to their physical location or title. Unlike a virtual community such as the

WELL for example, that is maintained through a network of computers and servers which makes participants’ interactions easier to track and assess according to the researcher’s goal, the Formula As community poses logistical problems when it comes to determining the number of its various categories of participants. However, based on my observations of the community’s interactions over the past several years it is evident that a core of active participants exists and has developed over time. They contribute regularly to various sections of the magazine and their texts are frequently acknowledged by the editors. Still, as with any virtual community, a number of participants have been reading the magazine for years without submitting any texts, simply observing the community’s dynamic. Do such individuals fit the description of lurking‐‐a behavior that is so common in virtual communities? What reasons determine them to break the silence eventually? Other members do not participate as frequently as

132 the core members while new readers join the community every day. What are the roles that each of these categories of members play in the community’s culture? How are they received in the community?

Within the category of active participants there is a core of participants whose identities are acknowledged and recognizable by the community and whose texts contribute to the shape of the group’s norms and its collective identity. The analysis of the Formula As texts clearly supports this observation. An approximate number of this category’s size would have provided more “certainty” to my arguments and yet it is almost impossible to ascertain this number for a magazine that has an online readership of at least 700,000 readers and a general audience of more than 7,300,000 people and still growing. Additionally, the label of “core participant”—due to the unique mix of media that supports this community (print and Web‐based) and its history—may not necessarily apply to every core member in the same manner. In other words, statistics of contributions of core members versus frequent and random contributors would not be illustrative of this community’s culture which is one of inclusiveness, of permeable boundaries and constant flux of readers who, before even contributing, tend to join in mentally—often for years, as “devoted” readers.

Among the core members of Formula As, Sanziana Pop, the magazine’s director and heart of the community, clearly stands out. While her contributions are kept to a minimum they nevertheless are, symbolically, the red thread that weaves in/ seams in this community’s texts and provides an identity to this environment. Rhetorically, a tabulation of Sanziana’s texts clearly reflects an astounding ability on her part to seize the appropriate kairotic (timely) moment coupled with display of prepon (adapted to the audience) in addressing readers. Her comments range from replies to individual readers on a variety of topics to addresses made on the occasion of the magazine’s tenth anniversary, religious holidays, end of the year reviews of the state of the community, brief acknowledgements, as well as articles. Since an overwhelming number of the community’s messages are addressed to Sanziana—a common practice among the magazine’s contributors—and given that the community’s size has increased

133 significantly it is not surprising that her own replies to individual readers are rather sparse and positioned strategically. Over the years, Sanziana corresponded with an impressive number of individual readers. The topics are as varied as interpersonal relations (e.g., pre‐marital sex, domestic abuse, family relations), diaspora readers coping with homesickness, environmental and animal rights issues, various solicitations for help through the magazine’s “S.O.S.” section, donations from the magazine community’s active members, and many more. Depending on the rhetorical situation, she would be a trusted confidante and skilled counselor, a compassionate friend, an activist, or just someone who listens and does her best to help. The following examples illustrate her interactions with Formula As participants.

In her correspondence with Ionut, a brave 13 year old boy suffering from a life‐ threatening illness (Duchenne muscular dystrophy) that confined him to a wheel chair and made him dependent on a breathing device, Sanziana offered material and emotional support. In his narrative, the boy asked the magazine’s readers for help so that he could at least stay alive longer through medication and a treatment at a medical facility abroad. At an interval of two months and respectively three months after the second post, he submitted update messages to the magazine community describing his progress. In the first follow‐up, he thanked readers for the assistance that he received as early as two weeks after his initial message had been published. He states:

…I received over 100 money orders, tens of letters written by children, young

and retired persons to whom I am profoundly grateful. Beyond the material

assistance, a majority of the readers have become my friends and we continue

our correspondence. This has filled the void in my heart and sometimes, I even

forget that I am ill. (…) I promise to fight the disease with all my might and hope

that the good Lord will allow me to win (Baicu, “For Formula As…,” Formula As

516).

Sanziana, in her first follow‐up, assured Ionut that the magazine’s foundation will pay for the cost of his medication:

134 Dear Ionut, the [Formula] As Foundation will pay for all the medication that you

need. Let us know, as so as you find them (Formula As, “Answer to Ionut Baicu,”

Formula As 516).

As is customary for the “S.O.S” section, the boy’s message was accompanied by the list of people who submitted material assistance to him. In another message, triggered by

Ionut’s second update on his condition, Sanziana reassures him and offers emotional support:

Dear Ionut, as we promised, we will cover the cost of your medication. You have

a big heart and lots of courage and God will help you recover. Sanziana Pop

(Pop, Answer to Ionut Baicu, Formula As 531)

Her messages, though brief, carry significant rhetorical force, for Ionut but also for the magazine’s community at large. As someone who keeps her individual replies to the

“S.O.S” solicitations to a minimum, her personal involvement in this particular case describes her as someone who is extremely compassionate and supportive. In their imaginings of Sanziana, readers add more detail to her ethos as the community uses enthymematic rhetoric.

One particular area of the magazine that generally receives Sanziana’s personal involvement is in the correspondence with those active Formula As participants or with readers who express an interest in offering donations. One such reader, Anca

Dumitrescu from Sweden, a core Formula As community member, has been providing donations since 1999. Her early correspondence with Sanziana illustrates an explicit norm of handling donations that has become internalized by this community. Here’s an excerpt from Sanziana’s message to Anca’s offer for submitting material contributions to the magazine which was submitted in June 1999:

Dear Mrs. Anca Dumitrescu,

Your intention of helping the unfortunate and deprived through the Formula As

magazine brings us joy and honor. It’s been years now that we’ve tried to bring

some relief, according to our means, to some souls who have nothing left but

their hope in God. We’d be happy if apart from the permanent support that we

135 receive from our readers in Romania, we received that of our readers abroad. In

this respect, we inform you that all the extreme distress cases (the title of our

assistance section) are authenticated and substantiated through medical records

or written documentation requested from city houses (Formula As, “Reply to

Anca Dumitrescu,” Formula As 364).

As the analysis of the text shows, Sanziana’s reply contains markers that personalize it to this particular reader (“dear,” “your,” and referring to Anca’s original message) but also direct it to the community as a whole. In fact, Sanziana’s message is directed to the diaspora community that forms an important readership of the magazine. Since many of these readers abroad are active in submitting texts to the community Sanziana employs persuasive strategies in involving them in the magazine community’s humanitarian goals. Her reference describing the magazine’s scrutiny of the social cases before they are posted for the community is meant to alleviate any potential anxieties that these may have regarding the authenticity of the stories. Proof that readers requesting help through the magazine’s “S.O.S.” feature accept the community’s norms comes from the frequent appendices authored by Formula As informing readers of the existence of various documents that accompany the messages. Such texts are published in italics and follow the pattern of “the letter is accompanied by a medical certificate attesting the….diagnosis” or substitute that with the type of documentation that was provided by the author.

Not surprisingly, perhaps as a consequence of Sanziana’s correspondence with

Anca Dumitrescu and similar diaspora contributors, at the beginning of 2000, Formula As previewed one of its regular correspondence sections on the topic of donations with the heading: “Our Western readers intensify their donations.” The message appeared in the section titled “Society” a space that is generally dedicated to editor‐based texts or interviews:

The beginning of 2000 is auspicious for the humanitarian effort of the Formula As

magazine. This time, leading the list of “sponsors” are our diaspora readers, for

whom Romania and its problems do not represent an abstraction but the most

136 precious place on earth. There is no other explanation for their offer, filled with

generosity and goodwill, considering that the senders of the clothing and food

packages, of money deposited in our magazine’s accounts are not very rich

people themselves. They are instead good people. People who are touched by

others’ suffering, who don’t go through life with indifference, people for whom

the country that they left behind is alive, happy people to whom charity gives

meaning to their existence (Formula As, “Our Western readers intensify their

help,” Formula As 399).

Apart from the introductory message excerpted above and that bears Sanziana’s style, a few other threads that contain her correspondence with diaspora readers who submitted donations are included. One is a new Sanziana / Anca Dumitrescu thread detailing the plan of starting up a more substantial form of assistance with a Swedish charity organization. Three other threads are with a reader from Israel, one from Cyprus, and with an anonymous reader from Germany who signed using her first name. To each of these texts Sanziana posted a follow‐up message that was published immediately below the original messages.

An important part of Sanziana’s correspondence with readers who provide donations—whether core members such as Anca Dumitrescu or infrequent contributors‐

‐falls in the category of what Burnett (2000) describes as “collaborative interactive behavior” or activities in which the community members engage for the purpose of information seeking or achieving some common goals. Through the exchange of such messages, community norms of giving and reciprocity are reinforced. Since donations and various types of assistance through the magazine’s “S.O.S.” and “Health” interactive features are two of the community’s major goals, setting normative behavior standards (i.e., through posting publicly available texts) is an activity that forms a major building block in this community’s culture. Thus, more or less permanent contributors are involved in the community’s culture as their messages are acknowledged and answered, if appropriate, while those who are still at the stage of readers but potential authors become familiarized with the community’s norms of interaction. For

137 illustration, here’s Sanziana’s correspondence with Anca, a Romanian doctor from

Israel:

Dear Mrs. Sanziana Pop

I read with much emotion in your magazine how so many Romanians abroad

help you, sending money for the poor. All that I can say is that I and my family

(especially my mother) are, in heart, close to those from home and do our best to

help our families and friends from Romania…Thank you for the effort to pick up

my package and paying for the customs fees. I only ask you, if you have a

minute, to write me a note to confirm that the package arrived, and even suggest

what would be best to pack for my next shipping, things that you think would be

most useful to people. I’d like it if those that I sent would especially reach

families with numerous children of whom I read about in your magazine. Thank

you. Anca Ciurariu Voinescu, M.D.,—Israel (Ciurariu, “My 3 year‐old…,”

Formula As 399).

Sanziana replied:

Dear Mrs. Anca Ciurariu, your wish has been followed accordingly: your

package with food and clothes was sent to a family with many children. They

are…eight in number, and both parents currently unemployed. The mother is

called Oloeru Maria and lives in Baia Mare, in a social facility. For them, and

many like them, there are no preferences and choices: a loaf of bread is pure

gold. Therefore, send whatever you can, inspired by your kind heart. Thank

you. Sanziana Pop. (Pop, “Answer to Anca Ciurariu,” Formula As 399).

As seen in the thread above, the interaction is concise, goal oriented, and similar‐‐in content and tone—to conversations that people exchange in computer‐mediated communities. Such exchanges are frequent in the Formula As community, not only between readers and Formula As editors but also among readers themselves. The discursive space chapter will describe them in more detail.

Another category of messages that bear Sanziana’s signature are those delivered on certain occasions, such as the magazine’s tenth anniversaries and state of the

138 community addresses, usually at the beginning or the end of the year. In an editorial celebrating the magazine’s tenth anniversary, Sanziana Pop comments on the readers’ role in shaping Formula As’ unique fate:

It has been said that Formula As is atypical for a publication. That it goes beyond

its role of “objective informing” by accessing a sentimental and religious layer

that pull us “out of line.” So be it, if our “line” consists of three million readers: a

huge family that makes us dizzy with this realization and keeps us awake at

night with worry; dear friends, from Romania and abroad, from villages and

hamlets as well as from large Western capitals, to whom we dedicate this

anniversary, we thank you for your exemplary involvement with the identity

and destiny of Formula As” (Pop, “A Miracle…,” Formula As 500).

Her texts are the symbolic equivalent of a ritual within a community that reinforces the members’ goals and shared values. In her messages, Sanziana is inclusive, bringing together Romanians from everywhere in the world, in an imagined community that cultivates norms of gift‐giving and reciprocity in information exchange. In the text above for example, Sanziana refers to the Formula As community as “a huge family” that goes beyond Romania’s borders. Its members, whether active or infrequent contributors to the magazine community all share the activity of reading and interpreting the magazine and its community’s texts as well as participating, in tangible ways that are related to the community participants’ “real” lives, to the community’s common goals.

One puzzling question which I have asked myself based on rhetorical analysis of this community’s texts and longitudinal observation has to do with determining the membership label for a category of readers who consider themselves “dedicated” to this community even though they may not contribute as frequently as the “active” members in online discussion groups would. In fact, in the Formula As community, these are the readers who have been reading the magazine constantly for years, empathizing with readers through the act of interpreting their texts, are familiar with the community’s goals and culture but only contributed occasionally as with the occasion of the

139 magazine’s tenth anniversary or on major religious holidays, or simply to offer their gratitude to the magazine.

These members‐‐ redeemed lurkers‐‐ form the majority of the posts within the

Formula As community. They are those participants‐‐potential authors and infrequent contributors—who illustrate the Formula As core identity not at the level of individuals but collectively. They are in constant flux but their posts, thematically, provide continuity for the community’s goals and culture of solidarity. They are a necessary link between all the other categories of participants. Every week, the editors select from among the texts received and make them available in those magazine’s sections that are uniquely dedicated to maintaining the connection with the readers. Thus, every week, one such text becomes the center for the “Letter of the week” feature while 5‐10 messages from readers are each grouped in the “Internet Messages,” “Our Readers write to us…,” and “Home” sections on a regular basis.

Analysis of new readers’ texts reveal that such individuals have been lurking for months, even years before they eventually decide to contribute, as the following post illustrates. A 16 year old reader who self‐identifies as “a little bee that nourishes on the honey of your [the magazine] work” contributes a story describing her involvement with the magazine. As her story goes, the “little bee” who had been a constant reader of the magazine for about two years, discovered the role of Formula As in her life during a school trip. She writes:

I am a 16 year old female adolescent and a devoted reader of the Formula As

magazine. I am sure that you receive millions of letters that contain well‐

deserved words of praise, congratulations, and wishes, but I’m only sending you

my thoughts of thanks and good wishes for you keep alive a shred of hope in my

heart, a small twinkle of light for which I could not live without. I have been

reading your magazine for approximately two years and I regret not having

discovered it earlier, for indeed, it is a handbook for good and happiness (A little

bee that nourishes on your work, “A small twinkle of light,” Formula As 408

140 Apparently, the magazine—which her roommate had left in the room—kept her

“warm” throughout the trip and alleviated her longing for home. In her words,

during that first night I kept it [the magazine] in my hand without being able to

read it (there were no lights in that huge and cold room), and I felt that it

warmed and soothed my soul, like a dear friend. Just touching it, I would feel an

amazing strength and confidence in myself (A little bee…, “A Small Twinkle of

Light.” Formula As 408)

Although the reader graciously keeps her real identity hidden—a rare occurrence for the magazine’s culture—her narrative self‐discloses sufficient information to infer that she has forged a strong connection with the magazine. In the second part of the message, the reader frames her own experience within a larger context by stating,

Many souls have found soothing through you, in the advice that you offer, in the

texts that are written with so much care and dedication, in your emotional and

material support, but especially in the boundless kindness of your heart, my

beloved friend Formula As! (A little Bee…, “A small twinkle of light,” Formula As

408).

The author’s text is filled with textual markers indicating the bond that “the little bee” established with the magazine. As the discursive space section of this study will reveal, endearing metaphoric language and anthropomorphizing are common in the Formula As culture. This reader has developed affective ties with the magazine through reading its texts without becoming an author for a determined period of time. In virtual community jargon, this behavior qualifies as “lurking.”42

Can someone who does not contribute develop an attachment with his or her community of choice? The answer to this question has a lot in common with the fact that people can develop bonds with others based on the imaginings that they share.

Nationalism, as described by Anderson (1983) is one of the best illustrations for this process. Another example that comes to mind is that of the Greek Orthodox Church in the town that hosts my university. Especially around major Orthodox celebrations, this community brings together people of various ethnicities (Greek, American, Egyptian,

141 Ukrainian, Romanian, etc.) education levels, and age groups, whose members form a heterogeneous community that is yet bonded on their core religious affiliation with orthodoxy although they may be more closely affiliated with specific brands of orthodoxy in their home countries.

Formula As participants who have not yet become writers (i.e., lurkers) fulfill an important role for this community. Based on my observations, they form the majority of the Formula As readers. As their texts indicate (once the lurkers decide to contribute) they self‐describe as “dedicated,” “devoted,” “constant” readers. This suggests that they have developed the habit of reading the magazine community’s texts—often sharing the magazine within their own families for years—and bonded with the magazine and its community in the absence of physical contact and submission of written texts. Their rhetoric speaks of the existence of “built‐in” attachment with the magazine and its goals, strong identification with the community and its values through the texts that they submit when they decide to contribute, and similar imaginings about the community.

The Formula As community’s permeable boundaries allow it to continuously expand its membership by the addition of new participants from Romania and the diaspora.

One such experienced lurker who recently moved to France, sends an interesting and articulate text describing her dissatisfaction with the image of Romania in that country and congratulating the magazine for offering a much needed counter‐balance.

She acknowledges her changed interests in reading the magazine’s texts as a result of her move to France and the revived interest and pride in her own culture:

You have probably gotten used to it by now, but look, you succeeded, again, to

convert another reader by urging her to write to congratulate you. I’ve been

reading you for a long time, since 5‐6 years ago, but before I left the country, I

was more interested in the naturistic medicine, beauty, and weight loss articles.

For a little over a year since I came to foreign land, I’ve been only reading the

texts in the “Society” and “Spirituality” sections, and every time you manage to

make me shed some tears, even though I’m only 20 years old! This time, you’ve

142 succeeded to make me write to unburden my heart. (Cheroi, “My country

has...,” Formula As 660).

A common theme in the new members’/ former lurkers texts is the acknowledgement of their own need and intention to contribute as illustrated in the following message. This reader, who moved to Greece through marriage, soothes her homesickness by reading the magazine:

I’ve been yearning to write you for a long time, but every time I face the blank

paper I almost feel speechless and a fog comes down on my eyes and I cannot

start…I’d like to try to describe the range of emotions that I experience reading

you, dear magazine, but I’m afraid of falling into desuetude and my attempt

would not be successful. But I miss home so much (C.M., “I pray to God for the

good of my country,” Formula As 542).

Like her, many diaspora readers who used to just be consumers of Formula As texts change their role into authors—albeit temporarily. The reasons are varied, but according to diaspora texts, a majority of the authors contribute to alleviate their longing for home. Formula As embodies everything that they left behind: family, friends, dear memories that they relive by reading the magazine’s materials on Romanian traditions, spirituality, and history. The following message was sent by a 17 year old Romanian student who participated in an exchange program with a Texas school. A month after her stay in the United States in the care of a foster family, she writes to Formula As describing her experience of missing home:

I don’t know why I write to you. Perhaps because you’re my only true and real

connection with Romania. (…) Even though they [the foster family] treat me like

their own daughter I start to miss my life from home, the life that I lived for

seventeen years. I don’t know why. I shouldn’t feel this way. Perhaps it’s easier

if I write…Perhaps my yearning will go away (…). I write to my parents and I

call them, but only now I start to feel the difference between the way my life used

to be and what it is now. I haven’t had a terribly good relationship with my

folks. Perhaps it was due to my age, perhaps to something else, but I believe in

143 destiny. I used to read Formula As and cry for people and their sufferings. I even

tried to write to some. And now, I ended up one of those away from home who

needs help! (Cristina, “Thoughts from far away,” Formula As 432)

This text illustrates an important practice in the Formula As social environment that supports a hermeneutic approach in studying virtual communities. Being physically

“distanced” (to make a pun on Ricoeur’s idea of the inherent “distanciation” in the act of writing), members of such environments resort to interpretation of texts to bring them into an imagined proximity. Reading community texts—as with any texts for that matter‐‐presupposes a process of appropriating the content through the filter of one’s own lived experience which often entails a host of emotions and feelings. Cristina acknowledges that she empathized with the stories that she read in Formula As (“I used to read Formula As and cry for people and their suffering”). In her experience with the

Formula As community we learn that the magazine—which is a collectivity of such individual texts—is her “only true and real connection” with home. So real, that she is comfortable enough to confess, to a public audience, that she did not have a satisfying relationship with her parents. She self‐discloses even more by admitting to feeling vulnerable and in need of help from those whose texts she used to read. So, she contributes a text—an act of writing—that was preceded by an act of reading. Once away from home, her act of reading has been supplemented by writing as a way to minimize the distance and make herself known to the community. Thus, she feels connected to Formula As readers through reading the community’s texts.

144 CHAPTER EIGHT

INSIDE FORMULA AS: SHARED HISTORY

Any community, whether face‐to‐face or virtual, depends on the shared activities of its members that function as fuel for its sustenance. Developing interpersonal bonds—of various levels of intensity‐‐is a time‐sensitive process as people generally go through stages, however compressed, in self‐disclosing and being socialized into the group’s culture. Every community has a history that comprises not just a specific moment in time that marked its birth, but an evolution that is punctuated by various community events as well as a set of norms that develop out of the members’ exchanges over time. Some virtual communities dissolve, whether by themselves or due to external circumstances such as lack of technical capabilities to keep up with the increase in traffic (Rheingold 2000) while some continue to exist, or morph into something else and even sprout. Baym’s (2000) r.a.t.s. community for example, unable to cope with the massive increase in posts, branched off into three newsgroups, still related to interpretation of soaps, but categorized by the network airing the soaps. This split, with its host of related phenomena, brought challenges to the community (now r.a.t.s.a.) even though many of the old r.a.t.s.’ traditions were preserved due to the group’s shared history. This observation leads to pertinent questions about the mechanisms that underscore virtual community members’ interaction. Specifically, what are the components of a community’s shared history? Is such history different depending on the various categories of participants? If so, what makes the community endure, despite the great amount of change? The remaining portion of this chapter will address these questions vis‐à‐vis the Formula As community.

Formula As texts analysis indicates that the community’s shared history is reflected by members’ common experience as part of the community. Specifically, participants have a sense of the community culture and values, partake in the community’s rituals, and make public their stories of involvement with the magazine community. As described in the preceding sections of this chapter, the readers are

145 brought together through their interest in Formula As and adherence to the magazine’s umbrella goal of shaping an authentic Romanian consciousness that centers on “love, solidarity, faith, and patriotism.”43 The variety of individual goals is reflected at the collective level in the shared purpose of cooperation in the exchange of information on health‐related issues, assisting others in need and being supported by the community

(i.e., humanitarian work), and developing emotional connections through the shared mental network. Such joint activities result in members’ feelings of belonging and identification with the group. As participants interact, they become socialized in the community norms and develop a history together.

Even though Formula As is a community whose members connect through the discursive space of the magazine, the social context emerges through the participants’ interactions. Cultivating truthfulness norms, for example, creates an emotionally safe environment in which readers can engage in various forms of self‐disclosure. The choice of topics that are addressed in the magazine’s community also supports the point that the Romanian cultural heritage (e.g., shared language, cultural memory) not only contextualizes the participants’ social exchanges but also brings them together. Just as face‐to‐face communities retain their unique flavor of the cultural context in which they are inscribed and provide members with a normative universe that informs the stories that they share over time, so does the Formula As virtual community develop a sense of shared history that strengthens community bonds. Romanian cultural memory in particular or various regions of it exist in the minds of each of the magazine’s readers, whether they are homeland or diaspora members. In serving as a virtual congregation space for people sharing core commonalities, Formula As symbolically nurtures a collective negotiation of publicly shared memories through individual interpretation of texts. Remembering may entail various aspects of the community formation (e.g., stories of its roots, key events shaping its destiny), its progress, and exchanges with other cultures. A culture’s narratives, monuments, rituals, and “official histories”—to name but a few of the major forms of cultural memory—are rhetorical constructions produced by a community over time.

146 Formula As narratives are woven in to create a tapestry of Romanianness viewed from a multitude of viewpoints and thematic angles that often spur debates among the magazine community. While this is not a complete rendering of the richness of the magazine’s content, the themes that are generally addressed in the community texts include: 1) the very popular Romanian Orthodox44 spirituality pages that occasionally alternate with material about other faiths that are practiced in Romania; 2) Romanian history (e.g., narratives of Romania during monarchy co‐exist with touching stories of survivors of communist persecutions); 3) cultural traditions illustrated through articles describing ancient Romanian folk practices as they still exist in certain villages combined with reader‐authored material that provides a more personalized texture; 4) Romanian geography; 5) Romanian traditional medicine; 6) Romania’s transition and future viewed by experts (both Romanian and foreign) as well as simple people; 7)

Romanianness viewed from abroad (e.g., interviews with foreigners who are in love with Romania and with Romanian born personalities); 8) social issues such as emigration, Romania’s image abroad, corruption, etc.

For an overwhelming number of the community participants, the common language is associated with a Romanian cultural identity as seen in this text submitted by a Romanian reader in Japan:

[Formula As] is one of the ties with the cherished place that I left and with which I

will be forever connected, no matter where I live. Last but not least, reading [the

magazine] alleviates my longing for Romania and the Romanian language (Aso,

“Reading…,” Formula As 519).

Though brief, the excerpt above deserves further analysis as it is typical for the diaspora members’ rhetoric. Not surprisingly, in the author’s view, reading the magazine represents the connection with the place of origin. Remaining culturally ascribed to a place of origin has been a characteristic of diasporic communities of all times. Before the electronic revolution, emigrantss would keep in touch with relatives and friends at home through letter writing and consumption of newspapers. This practice, despite its evident disadvantages, was in fact important in the sustenance of emmigrant imagined

147 communities for the past century. Communication over the Internet, in its various formats, created additional channels that are instantly available for members of a geographically dispersed community and broadens the domain of community definition.

Observing Indian national discussion groups, Mitra (1998) notes that “what produces community in the era of the Internet are the shared systems of culture, language, and beliefs that are spread across large distances” (57). The Romanian diaspora for example, currently numbers six45 million for a homeland population of

23,000,000. Its members are spread across the world with the largest emigration concentrated in North America, Europe, and Australia. Even though one can find

Romanian enclaves clustered in large urban areas such as New York, Cleveland, Detroit,

Chicago, Montreal, Sydney, etc members of the Romanian diaspora are geographically dispersed and come from a variety of backgrounds46. As expected, the diaspora readership of the Formula As magazine reflects the Romanian diaspora global distribution.

For diaspora members, consuming national media, over the Internet or through subscriptions to Romanian publications, and participating to various Romanian‐related online forums represent important avenues for preserving the bond with the cultural space that they left in body but not in spirit. Diaspora Formula As readers in particular feel a strong link or “ties” with the place of origin which is sustained through reading the magazine. Symbolically, the cultural space of Romania is a defining element for the

Formula As diaspora community of interest even though its members may never have interacted in person. While it is true that the Romanian cultural space is concentrated in the Romanian territory and its people the mental images that readers have of it (based on their own lived stories or interpreting others’ texts) are equally important.

Romanians at home (just like diaspora members) for example, as explained in the self‐ reference section of this chapter, interpret the magazine’s “S.O.S.” forum stories within a

“transition” framework.

148 The affective connection with the magazine and its readers is a characteristic that surfaces in a majority of the diaspora texts and constitutes a marker of the sense of community that such readers experience through interpreting community texts that reaffirm their shared commonality with those in the homeland. The next example attests to the role that shared mediated cultural products play in coalescing geographically dispersed communities. People who are already connected—whether by kinship or shared language—report an intensification of their bonds whenever these pathways are augmented by sharing an interest for the magazine:

I’ve pondered whether I should write to you or not, whether I have a reason to

write…And I have found it! I miss home! For almost two years I’ve been

soothing my homesickness with you [Formula As]…And many times I have felt

even closer to my folks knowing that my sister is a magazine subscriber and

reads Formula As every week (Stoica “I miss home,” Formula As 540).

Knowing that other Formula As readers away from home enjoy the magazine’s content creates an affective bond among diaspora members as acknowledged by the author of the text below:

Personally, whenever I read [Formula As], I don’t know how, but there are bound

to be articles that bring tears to my eyes, fill my heart with joy, especially when I

see that other Romanians abroad read and enjoy the magazine. Thank you that

you exist and make our lives more beautiful. You cannot even conceive how

important is for us, the Romanians abroad, to maintain contact with the

homeland. No matter how well off we may be here, where we live, our thoughts

and hearts are still HOME [author’s emphasis] (Calapar “No matter…,” Formula

As 496).

What does “HOME” mean for diaspora participants? How does the magazine sustain diaspora readers’ interest for Romania? According to textual evidence from the Formula

As community “HOME” primarily brings about images of one’s roots, memories,

Romanian geographical space, Romanian orthodoxy, Romanian traditions (e.g., religious holiday celebrations, national cuisine, traditional music and dance), and patriotism. The

149 following text authored by Vera, a diaspora reader in Switzerland, describes well the magazine’s role in nurturing the spiritual connection with Romanian traditions, “for the spiritual fervor that is absent” in her adopted country:

Although I read your magazine over the Internet, the pages that my eyes hover

more, trying to apprehend the images behind the words, are those concerning

our faith and Romanian traditions. Only a person who moves away can

understand the treasures that we have in our country (Friedman, “Please

continue…,” Formula As 503).

Indeed, diaspora members’ texts overflow with the theme of appreciation of “Romania’s treasures” and for the magazine community’s efforts in bringing them to a public forum for open acknowledgment. Physical distance from the home country and the contact with other cultures, some that have been sanitized to the point of losing their uniqueness, give diaspora readers a comparison point. A diaspora text from Canada describes the author’s emotional difficulty in accessing the “Spirituality” content of the magazine in the aftermath of her arrival in Canada. She states:

Your magazine is a balm for my soul. I joyfully read all of its sections. For

months however, after my arrival in Canada, I could not read the “Spirituality”

content, my heart ached at the encounter with what I truly miss here: Romanian

spirituality, the soul of my people (Cristina “The secret atmosphere…,” Formula

As 519).

The holidays, as expected, were the hardest to bear and she, like numerous other diaspora readers acknowledges her efforts to recreate the image of home during the holidays. She continues:

It is hardest during the holidays when feeling like home in everything is an

overwhelming need. I feverishly try to put together a shred of that atmosphere

with its well‐known tastes and smells that are so typical for the beloved holidays.

Yes, that secret atmosphere, filled with profound and pure Romanian meanings

is what I most definitely miss here. Now I read “Spirituality” and I rejoice and

wish nothing else but that my children live in the Romanian Christian spirit: to

150 experience the holidays with a Romanian heart, to love them and carry them in

their hearts, with love and pride (Cristina, “The secret atmosphere…,” Formula

As 519).

In a last nostalgic thought, the author of the text sums up the mechanism through which readers create mental images from the texts that are published in the magazine:

I am touched with emotion when I read some Romanian readers’ recollections

about their grandparents’ village or old customs, filled with so much charm.

This is what we, emmigrant Romanians, steal away from our children: a

childhood with grandparents and the mystique of the traditional holidays. It is

true that God is with us and in us wherever we may be in this world, but

something remained far back, at HOME. And this something feels like a wound

inside which I think knows no cure (Cristina, “The secret atmosphere…,”

Formula As 519).

As shown in the text above, resonating with memories of HOME is typical for community readers, especially when these are diaspora members. The interpretation of texts process however, is common for all readers and attests to the effectiveness of such a model in imagined communities. One devout reader provides an account of a funny episode triggered by reading the magazine. She states:

Today for instance, I was reading about Popicu (the wonderful article signed by

Bogdan Lupescu) and I had a lump in my throat, my heart was pounding as I

saw myself there, among those violin players, dancing with them, singing with

them…and I missed my subway stop. I became amused by this happening and I

said to myself again: how well these people write, how they make us dream and

live together with other Romanians, from other parts of the country (Ioan “I was

reading…,” Formula As 503).

As seen in this text, even though readers do not physically experience the events described, they can re‐create the events and the surrounding atmosphere in their imagination. The process intensifies the ties with the authors of the texts and with the magazine community in general.

151 The Romanian diaspora has an important presence and role in the magazine community. Apart from reconnecting a formerly marginalized segment of the population by opening a discursive space for airing its issues, the magazine also caters to the needs of those Romanians at home. Here is how Sanziana replies to a reader who expressed an interest in contributing texts about diaspora life to the magazine:

The life of the Romanian diaspora has a [long] tradition in the Formula As

magazine’s pages as it is a very appreciated theme by the readers. The

experience and impressions of their fellow Romanians who went so far away

interest them very much. Are winners those who succeeded to break away from

their country? Does their country of origin still mean something for them? Have

they succeeded to cut off the affective bonds that often turn into chains? Do they

miss those back home, in their beloved but disheartened country that nobody

seems able to get to calmer waters? (Pop, “Reply to Alexandra Botezatu,”

Formula As 373).

She continues, acknowledging the bonds that Romanians share, regardless of where they may be in time and space:

Certainly your letters, the articles that you intend to write, your opinions

regarding our work, interest us very much. The Romanian readers’ presence in

the pages of the magazine, send a solidarity statement, transcending time and

distance, the joy that we are alive through our common origin. We need this

certitude of brotherhood, of knowing that we’re not alone in this world, on either

side of the ocean. No matter where we’d go and what we’d do, blood will not

turn into water, only into longing (Pop, “Reply to Alexandra Botezatu,” Formula

As 373).

Sanziana’s texts—highly metaphorical as they are—illustrate the sociomental bonds that connect the magazine community members. A shared ethnicity is a core commonality that fosters a common identity with others. The magazine space is symbolically an imagined place where readers can meet and develop the sense of a shared Romanian

152 identity which leads to forging genuine connections with one another and strong solidarity feelings.

Sensitive to the matter of emigration that appears to be a common concern for a significant number of Romanian readers, particularly young people who are dissatisfied with their life in Romania, Formula As facilitates the exchange of information between aspiring emigrants and those in the diaspora. For example, in a message titled “Try to

‘realistically’ encourage the Romanians who migrate to Canada” which appeared in the

12‐19 November 2001 issue of the magazine, Sanziana Pop, addresses the Romanian diaspora in Canada. She states:

Your quick and generous replies, meant to help individuals leaving Romania and

for whom adapting to the new condition of emmigrant is a painful process,

honor each and every one of you and honor our whole Romanian diaspora

within Canada—thus eliminating the widely circulated myth of the image of the

“Romanian divisiveness (Pop, “Try to…,” Formula As 490).

Leaving one’s country was considered an act of treason during the communist rule. The

Ceauşescu regime would place a stigma on those who chose to defect (and on the relatives left behind) rather than stay in the country and contribute to the collective goal of building socialism. A popular counter‐propaganda myth among Romanians at the time, however, viewed those who succeeded in leaving communist Romania as

“heroes.” Thus, collective memory narratives would describe would‐be émigrés as coping with numerous adversities that ranged from public stigma, loss of employment for them and their close relatives, official persecution to endangerment of their own lives

(e.g., some would swim 47 across the Danube river, travel in cargo containers on ships and trains, being shot by border patrols, beat to death by Secret Police agents, etc). Since the fall of communism, this “myth” has been reactivated, though in a different form and circulated in various media circles. That is, leaving one’s home and country at a time when Romania is free of communism but nevertheless experiences transition pains can be perceived by some people as a lack of solidarity with those who are left behind. It is this “myth” that Sanziana addresses describing it as “Romanian divisiveness.”

153 Emigration (in its various aspects) is a common theme in the magazine’s discursive space and signifies the opening of the private space to public opinion especially since throughout communism emigration was a taboo topic in public and even private discourse. Although Romanian mass media since 1989 have made considerable progress in bringing to the fore previously forbidden issues and submitting them to the critical analysis of the audiences, there are few Romanian‐based publications, besides Formula As, that are openly involved in catering to the needs of specific groups in society such as the aspiring emigrants or the needs of the Romanians in the diaspora at a deeper level than providing occasional news. As a magazine that promotes social activism, Formula As is carefully monitoring the change in the Romanian value system and even though it does not advocate emigration it creates public opinion by trying to engage into dialogue a diversity of groups for a more objective presentation of reality. The following text is an illustration of the manner in which the magazine readers create public opinion on the topic of emigration. It describes the dilemma of

Dana, a devoted reader of the magazine and a new émigré to Canada. In the opening paragraph she introduces herself as patriotic and provides an account of her departure from Romania through marriage to her husband, a Romanian who had been living in

Canada for several years. She states,

Not for long, I left Romania (only a few months) and I already feel that I cannot

breathe the air here, from far away. (…) The number of those who did adapt to

Canada is small and I would not want to be categorized in the “exceptions”

group, but I simply don’t know what to do, how to think so that I can be

understood. I ask for your readers’ help, especially those who are abroad,

because I know that I’d receive honest advice. My husband is different; he does

not suffer so much for not being home and does not quite understand my

emotions. When I read Formula As I show him all the beauty that you present

with so much warmth but he only reads articles from newspapers rendering the

hard life in the country (Cernat, “My soul is in the country,” Formula As 574).

154 In her message, Dana brings a very private issue to the public forum even though it involves the topic of emigration. Engaging in a significant amount of self‐disclosure,

Dana looks for help from the readers in counseling her through what ultimately is a family issue: should she stay with her husband in her new home or go back to

Romania? She continues:

I feel that I miss everything that was around me back home: my parents,

teachers, dear places…Even though I love my husband, I am in a situation where

I need to choose between Canada and Romania, because he does not even want

to consider a possible return (Cernat, “My soul…,” Formula As 574).

She offers details of her past communication with her husband acknowledging that since her arrival things have changed. Initial promises that they made “to take to heart what each of them feels and decide together where they would live” don’t seem to hold ground any more:

Now I am in this situation and things are not “quite” as we talked about. I

wonder whether I postpone my decision to return it would be harder for me

later. I know that it’d be harder without him too, but the thought of growing old

in a place that I feel that I don’t belong and in which I live only in body, my heart

being in my country, makes no sense to me. I could live here for a while but only

supported by the thought of a return. Without this support, it’s very hard,

almost impossible to live here (Cernat, “My soul is…,” Formula As 574).

A few months later, Formula As published two follow‐up messages to Dana’s initial message with this preview from the editors:

The letter titled “My heart is back home” and published in Formula As no 574 and

sent from Canada under the name of Dana Cernat caught attention among our

readers abroad. Adaptation is apparently, a handicap for the sentimental nature

of Romanians. We hope that the texts that we selected would be of help to Dana

(Formula As, “Preview to Elena Kirsch’s Letter,” Formula As 580).

The editors’ text, for one, acknowledges that they perform some form of gatekeeping in the selection of material from readers. From my observations of this community and

155 based on additional textual evidence, however, the editors do not alter the integrity of the readers’ letters. These are published as they are sent. The editors, however, engage in a selection process while trying to publish as many of them as possible within the limited space that is available in the magazine. Frequently, follow‐up messages continue throughout several issues. In Dana’s case, the two texts that were selected for publication illustrate conflicting views while both noting that Dana’s dilemma is ultimately a personal decision regarding her love for her husband. The first came from a female reader from Germany. Elena, the author, advises:

I am like you, a Romanian who left the country long ago. My advice is the

following. If you love your husband so that you can sacrifice for him, stay in

Canada. If not, go back as soon as possible. Nothing is worth more in life than

inner peace. (…) Not everything in life amounts to eating well and having

money. Loneliness will depress you (Kirsch, “Nothing is worth more…,”

Formula As 580).

The second text was sent by Geta, a female reader in the Netherlands. She notes:

I read with pain in my heart your cry for help that came to me here in the

Netherlands, the country of the windmills, from far away Canada, through the

wonderful Formula As magazine. Romanians don’t leave their country because

of too much good or for an adventurous spirit, these are rare instances.

Everyone has his or her valid reason when making the decision, but one never

leaves it; one keeps the country in one’s heart, wherever he or she happens to be,

lives with the hope of returning. (…) (Jacobi “One’s country…,” Formula As

580).

As seen above, Geta’s message taps into publicly shared memory of the so‐called

“Romanian sentimentality.” The advice to Dana however, is opposite to that of the preceding reader. However, Geta, too, rhetorically shifts the nature of Dana’s problem from the public issue of emigration to the realm of the private interpersonal dynamic.

She continues:

156 Dana, if you truly love your husband, stay with him, because one does not

encounter true love twice (some never do) in a lifetime, and the country in which

you were born and have lived will always be like a loving mother. Whenever

you see her she will receive you with love and understanding for you and your

husband, and later on, your children. And when you return to Canada, your

second country, your adopted mother, you’ll have wonderful memories that

you’ll share with guests, some perhaps Canadian even, around a Romanian meal

and a glass of wine. It is not the professional “diplomats” that create a good

image of Romania in the world but we, those who left through everything that

we do here every day, together with those back home! (Jacobi, “One’s

country…,” Formula As 580).

The metaphors that she uses to refer to the public (one’s country) and private spheres

(one’s mother) are both from the interpersonal arena. Assimilating the country to the mother image is rhetorically, an illustration of the intensity of the ties connecting diaspora members with the homeland. Formula As functions as the intermediary and yet essential link between the two, a space where readers (including diaspora) can travel home albeit through mediated texts. From a narrative theory perspective, all four texts illustrate the power of individual narratives in advancing private issues to a public arena.

As the common interests section of this study revealed, the magazine’s interactive sections and especially the “S.O.S.” forum illustrate, through the quantity and nature of the conversations that occur, the existence of sensitive topics that through public discussion are considered matters of common concern. In participating in the discussion, private individuals converse as peers often being critical of public authority and of negative social practices in Romanian society. Often, readers who post queries for help acknowledge their lack of resources in solving the situation in their face‐to‐face networks. The social capital that is developed through the community’s social exchanges, however, allows for solving of various cases. This is possible also because everyone in the Formula As community is free to express his or her opinion and the

157 community culture nurtures a positive, comfortable environment that allows for various forms of self‐disclosure. Former marginalized voices in the Romanian society in particular, such as individuals or families who are below the subsistence limit or who are in crisis situations, Romanian emigrants and aspiring emigrants, the elderly, the disabled, and animal rights and environmental groups have a forum where they can be heard and where they can contribute to the reconceptualization of the Romanian public opinion. These voices might constitute what Fraser (1997) called “alternative publics” that have now “equal access to the material means of equal participation” (120‐123). It comes as no surprise that a significant number of readers, particularly those who represent subordinated groups in society, speak highly of the magazine and of its readers. For example, in a letter posted in the “S.O.S” section, Crinuta, a reader who identifies herself as suffering from severe disabilities caused by polio and who is married to a man with a similar condition refers to Formula As as “our guardian angel— of all those who are disheartened.” 48 In her message to the readers, Crinuta acknowledges her family’s condition and the way in which society tends to regard such individuals (“despite our disabilities, we are human beings”) and explains how her family which used to be economically self‐sufficient, is currently facing extreme material hardships caused by inflation and low pensions.

Another reader, Cornelia, addresses the delicate issue of the Romanian young people’s condition within society. In her text, Cornelia provides commentary about several rhetorical questions that she asks vis‐à‐vis the lack of opportunities for young

Romanian people, including her own daughter, for whom, apparently, the only reasonable but painful solution is emigration. She concludes her letter by stating that “I have written about all these things in a desperate call to our politicians, hoping that some of them are Formula As readers and who therefore will ask themselves ‘How do we provide for the young people?’”(Chirita, “A desperate cry…,” Formula As 442).

Confronted with so many hardships and dissatisfied with the pace of transition in

Romania, Cornelia and a majority of the readers sometimes rely on the solidarity and support provided by the “imagined community” of Formula As.

158 This next text, sent by a 15 year old girl who lost both parents illustrates a phenomenon that pertains to Formula As but which renders the enlargement of the private sphere to areas that clearly belong to society. Cezarina, the author of a query for help submitted to the magazine community expresses thanks to the readers in her follow‐up message. She states,

I am the 15 year old girl who lost both her parents within a year. I’m from

Bucharest and was writing to you a while back that the [public] authorities did

nothing to help me after the sudden death of my parents. Instead, as a

consequence of publishing my letter in Formula As, numerous people were there

for me, each to his or her means. I can only thank and assure them that when I

grow up I will also help those who need some help, regardless how little

(Constantin “Thank you…,” Formula As 632).

She then provides the names of the benefactors, as customary for the “S.O.S.” forum.

Toward the end of the letter she returns to her initial statement by saying,

One question however bothers me…can I say it to you? I’ll state it here because

those whom I asked could not give me an answer that I could comprehend: why

so many people were moved by my situation when those who were required to

give me what was lawfully mine, through the state’s laws, did not even make a

phone call? Why those who rejected my pension file did not understand my cry

for help? The Office for Child Protection and the Pension Office from Bucharest,

district one, who know my situation did nothing to provide for tomorrow for me,

to give me a certitude that I have a monthly income, no matter how small. When

I first wrote to you it was around the time of my [high‐school entrance] exams. I

want you to know that I am now a student in the 9th grade and that in my heart, I

believe that a part of my achievement is because of you (Constantin “Thank

you…,” Formula As 632).

The solidarity of the readers is strong and extends to areas that are both private and public. The exchange of messages among the readers via the magazine creates and reinforces public opinion for social issues. The following text illustrates how private

159 issues sometimes migrate to a public arena and therefore receive proper attention

(unlike Cezarina’s case) through the magazine’s community efforts.

For example, in one of the past issues of the magazine a reader called on the

Formula As community by sharing the story of an elderly man with disabilities (Mr.

Rusu Dumitru from Bucharest) who, due to a very unfortunate set of circumstances, found himself with no place to live and without any relatives to support him.

Describing the old man’s new homeless condition and accompanying the text with effective photographs, the Good Samaritan (one of the neighbors living in the same apartment complex with his now dispossessed old friend) was able to mobilize a significant amount of support coming from a variety of sources. The follow up story was written by the same good neighbor and posted in the 5‐12 March 2001 issue of

Formula As in the “S.O.S” section with the heading “A man in the street: positive feedback and negative reactions”49 and also included a separate brief note from Formula

As thanking those readers who helped the ailing old man. As a result of the first article, the readers offered clothes, food, and money to the old man.

Surprisingly, the old man’s legal situation also improved as two public administration officials expedited his pensioning process (a tedious and long procedure as a rule) after they learned about the old man’s extenuating conditions. Apparently, the two officials either read the old man’s story on their own or someone at their workplaces brought the article to their attention. It is important to note that the old man’s pension file contained the first article that appeared in Formula As. In bringing a private matter to the forum of public discussion within Formula As, the benefactor was able to recreate a public opinion that resulted in very tangible support and triggered public authorities’ involvement with this case.

Another illustration of the manner in which storytelling can facilitate discussion in the public discursive space of the magazine is the Rosia Montana environmental campaign that was conducted in Formula As throughout 2002. Rosia Montana (i.e., “Red

Mountains” in a literal translation) is a gold‐bearing region situated in the Apuseni

Mountains, near the Transylvanian city of Baia Mare. One of the oldest Romanian cities

160 (132 B.C), Rosia Montana or Alburnus Maior, was, throughout history, the heart of a flourishing gold and silver mining establishment that first belonged to the geto‐dacians

(i.e., ancestors of Romanians). Subsequently, the gold at Rosia Montana was worked by the Romans, Romanians themselves who owned their mines prior to the Austro‐

Hungarian rule and the communist take over in 1947. Most importantly, apart from breathtaking scenery, the gold‐bearing mountains also contain invaluable remnants of the Romanian civilization that stretches over thousands of years.

Beginning with 1999, Formula As started to raise awareness about the ecological disaster that was being underway at Rosia Montana when various corporations

(Eurogold most notably) were planning to work the gold mines through a technological process that involves alarmingly high concentrations of cyanide in the open‐field decantation ponds. Apart from the high toxicity for the environment, Rosia Montana’s beautiful mountains and their hidden archaeological treasures would disappear from the face of the earth. Baia Mare, another gold‐mining city nearby Rosia Montana, has been, for years, an ecological disaster during the communist rule and in 2000 “won” an infamous top three ranking among the most polluted cities in Europe (Formula As 509).

This gold‐bearing mountainous region in Romania would have been on its way to becoming an ecological disaster were it not for the permanent flow of letters sent by numerous readers in response to the magazine’s coverage of the issue. Specifically, throughout 2002 Formula As published readers’ letters—from Romania and abroad‐‐on the Rosia Montana topic and included massive coverage on the state of the Rosia

Montana affair detailing the public opinion among the residents of the Rosia Montana region. Eventually the initial awareness campaign turned into a public crusade against the major corporate and political characters involved in the plot. In their protest,

Formula As readers (via Formula As’s petition that was published in the magazine) amassed 100,000 signatures that were sent to all the responsible actors: key Romanian political actors, environmental organizations that were allied to the campaign, and to the

European Union’s Environment’s Protection Agency.

161 In review, sharing a Romanian cultural heritage associated with involvement in the magazine’s community has been for members of the magazine community a way to bring private issues to the attention of a public audience. Civic involvement, in particular, manifests in the magazine community through discussion of sensitive issues such as poverty, emigration, and environmental concerns. In light of Habermas’ model of the public sphere I have uncovered how marginalized voices in the Romanian society become empowered in the discursive space of the magazine. Even though the social issues that are solved through the magazine community assistance mainly concern individuals, the fact that these topics are brought to the attention of the Formula As public is important. From a rhetorical perspective, this illustrates the role of storytelling in opening private sphere for the public eye. The reverse is also true. Through the public opinion created by the Formula As magazine on larger social issues such as the

Rosia Montana environmental threat, individuals representing public institutions are co‐ opted.

162 CHAPTER NINE

INSIDE FORMULA AS: COMMON DISCURSIVE SPACE

Just as face‐to‐face communities have a specific physical locality (e.g., village, neighborhood, PTA meeting) that allows people to come into proximity, so do virtual communities develop a sense of “place” which generally coincides with the virtual locale hosting the group’s interactions. For the Formula As community, the magazine functions as a mediator among Romanians who share core commonalities regardless of their geographical location and walk of life. The shared Romanian heritage (e.g., common language, choice of topics, Romanian cultural memory), participants’ common interests (e.g., Romania’s transition and future, alternative medicine) and cooperating for humanitarian purposes form the foundation for the connectedness among

Romanians who are physically separated. At a deeper level of consciousness, participants also resonate with one another in the narrative reasoning that they employ as part of the larger interpretive framework that they share. I have already described, for example, how community members develop the Formula As mental “lenses” that bring together broad categories that participants share such as Romanianness (e.g.,

Romanian heritage and values, orthodoxy, diaspora) or which can be further adjusted

(i.e., focused) for a “Romanian transition,” “health‐related” frame in interpreting the narratives that are posted in the magazine’s space.

At a very basic level, Formula As, like other virtual communities, is sustained through the exchange of texts50. Burnett et al. (2003) describe text as “the lifeblood” of virtual communities in that it facilitates the exchange of meaning among participants and bridges the spatial and temporal distances separating them (2). Formula As participants communicate and establish connections with one another by reading the magazine’s content, whether in print or on the magazine’s web site that contains an archive dating as far back as 1998. In fourteen years of existence, the magazine’s print circulation increased tremendously as well as the number of readers accessing the magazine’s site. While the majority of the print readers are based in Romania there are a

163 minority of readers abroad who subscribe to the magazine even though they also have access to the magazine’s content online. According to magazine’s statistics, a majority of its online readers are outside Romania even though the numbers of Romanian based online readers are growing due to the greater Internet penetration in recent years.

However, the only visible traces of the community’s population come from the texts that its members produce and which are published in the magazine’s print and electronic editions. How does this lack of members’ visibility impact the community?

An indirect answer to this question is provided by social network research that points out that contemporary communities have a dispersed structure that bypasses physical proximity due to progress in transportation and communication technologies

(Wellman and Gulia 1999). But the presence of attributes such as a shared history (e.g., common goals and values, collective identity) and affective ties or “bonding” among members clearly separate communities from simple social “aggregates” (Etzioni and

Etzioni 1999, 241). Formula As, while not a standard computer‐mediated community shows clear evidence for a shared culture and significant levels of bonding as the preceding sections of this analysis indicate. Additionally, Formula As texts are not entirely invisible but carry more or less subtle markers of the authors’ presence. For example, the use of signature information in participants’ texts as well as the community’s norms of truthfulness attests to this phenomenon.

Most importantly, from a hermeneutics perspective, Formula As community is actualized as a collection of texts that are distanced from their creators. As Ricoeur

(1976) notes, this “distance” also exists in spoken discourse in that words, once released from the interlocutors become autonomous from the authors. Burnett (2002) aptly summarizes the process by commenting that “Thus, the act of speaking—the discursive act—inherently introduces a “virtual” distance between the speaker and what has been spoken as well as between the speaker and the listener” (164). The shared physical proximity of interlocutors in spoken discourse, Burnett (2002) further notes, only “masks this inherent distance, allowing both participants to assume an unproblematic exchange of meaning through the act of speaking” (164). However, lived experience is entirely

164 subjective. Meanings of such lived experiences can be shared with others through communication but require the mediation of the interpretation process, whether for spoken or written discourse (Ricoeur 1976, 16). Through text‐mediated interaction,

Formula As participants virtually congregate to exchange opinions on topics that matter to them, work together on common goals, and provide emotional support to each other.

In doing so, they share a basic activity that is reading each other’s texts and producing further texts as a result of the interpretation process.

One important characteristic of the discursive space of the Formula As is that readers are no longer passive as in traditional texts. Unlike members of a standard mass audience (e.g., television, newspaper) Formula As readers make a significant contribution to the production of the community texts at both an individual and collective level. In this respect, Formula As resembles an online discussion board that facilitates communication and connectedness among participants. Especially in the online but also in the print edition intertextuality (i.e., connectedness of texts) has become a distinctive characteristic of the Formula As generic norms compared to standard publications.

Community texts have clear interactivity features in the threaded messages, the reader authored articles, as well as in specific textual practices. All of these topics will be addressed in more detail in the interactivity section of this chapter. For now, it is important to note that Formula As has a culture of interactivity that is built on common expectations of interactional coherence especially in the magazine’s “S.O.S.” and

“Health” discursive areas.

Since the magazine employs an asynchronous (i.e., non‐simultaneous) mode of interaction, participants’ messages adapt to the text‐based medium to compensate for the lack of contextual cues and real time dialogue. This is primarily noted in several structural and textual practices: 1) the editors’ non‐intervention into reader‐submitted texts; 2) evidence of interpretive practices; and 3) interactivity activities.

Standard asynchronous text‐based electronic communities contain structural features such as the use of e‐mail or specific Usenet or newsreader programs that facilitate their interaction. These built‐in characteristics generally reflect the designers’ goal of creating

165 the affordances of a text‐based conversation in a user friendly format. The technical capabilities, depending on the system that is used, commonly include the use of headers and subject lines, organizing messages into threads (i.e. through linking related texts) to pasting features, use of signature files, filtering options, etc. Analysis of Formula As texts, by comparison, reveals the existence of features that perform similar functions but adapted to the print‐based environment. One very important linguistic norm in the magazine community is the cultivation of authenticity in both editors’ and readers’ texts.

This message, submitted by Liliana, a core Romanian reader in Canada with a passion for “literature, reading, and writing” attests to the editors’ practice of authenticity. The

“reasons” for writing to Formula As, Liliana claims in her e‐mail message, are to send an

Easter wish to the magazine community, note the editors’ authenticity practice, and narrate a personal story related to a topic published in a preceding issue of the magazine:

The second reason I write is to thank you for the honor and pleasant surprise that

you offered me through publishing, in the magazine’s 353 issue (number 10 of

this year), of the e‐mail that I sent you. This has brought immense joy to me and

my dear ones from home who recognized my style—and certainly—my

signature. Having read [Formula] “As” for so many years I always wondered if

there is someone in the editorial team who prepares readers’ letters for a “good

for print” form. Now, I am convinced that this does not happen since not even one

character was removed from my text! [emphasis mine] (Chitoi, “There are

people…,” Formula As 357).

The cultivation of authenticity norms by the magazine’s editors makes Formula As similar to a moderated online group. Just as in a fully online community, the authenticity and integrity of messages are part of the system’s built‐in features. The difference is that Formula As, as a print‐based publication, lacks the technical capabilities offered by specific newsgroup software and, instead, actively promotes norms of authenticity in its posting of texts. Since the magazine’s editors have control over the output of community texts, such an authenticity practice can be considered a built‐in

166 feature of the Formula As community but is also fitting with the editorial team’s professional make‐up. It is interesting, however, to observe that readers may not be fully aware of editorial authenticity activities—as seen in Liliana’s message‐‐since the community lacks explicit norms for publication of author‐submitted content. They can, however, infer from published texts the magazine’s editorial norms of authenticity. In light of Burnett and Bonnici’ s (2003) discussion of social norms in electronic groups, this specific type of authenticity practice falls in the category of implicit norms. For the

Formula As community implicit norms of authenticity help with the overall culture of trust.

Another way in which Formula As participants adapt to the text‐based medium can be observed in the community’s interpretive practices. Unlike speaking, which provides interlocutors with contextual cues or in Ricoeur’s (1976) terms, “the human fact,” written language eliminates most of these (26). The written text actualizes the inherent distance between speaker and listener but at the same time also makes it

“productive” (89). Computer‐mediated research, however, shows that in fact people adapt their interaction style in a variety of ways to the text‐based medium. For example, users rely on emoticons to convey paralinguistic cues and create a feeling of connectedness (Walther and D’Addario 2001), make use of the paste function to refer back to previous messages, and use humor to emphasize points. In other words, to paraphrase Ricoeur (1976), members of virtual communities write “as if,” they were in proximity. To get a better sense of how Formula As participants make use of the “mode of ‘as if’” I select a few illustrations of textual practices that show evidence of interpretive behavior.

One reader in New Zealand, Liliana Taal, writes to Formula As community to acknowledge the magazine’s role in bringing about, as she states, a “new consciousness” and to congratulate Sanziana for her hard work. The reader’s text contains a passage that is a clear reference to a previous statement that Sanziana made in a text addressed to another reader approximately two years prior. It involves Sanziana’s acknowledgement that the Formula As magazine is the result of giving up her own

167 writing projects as a poet. Here’s how the New Zealand reader interprets Sanziana’s confession:

I recall a shred of frustration, expressed in a nonchalant manner, in passing, in a

brief answer to a reader. It emerged there as a vague regret of the wonderful

heart called Sanziana, that this publication involved to a great extent a personal

sacrifice—as one way of giving up writing or the book that could have been

written. I’d like to urge her [Sanziana] based on a personal intuition (…) The

things that you do Sanziana (I hope that you’ll forgive me for not addressing to

you using a polite [pronoun] form—it is related to my English usage but also

because it would place some distance between us which I don’t feel), goes

beyond the books that you could have written (Taal “The true…,” Formula As

461).

For comparison, I next provide the excerpt from Sanziana’s original message addressed to a Romanian reader in the U.S. who expressed her appreciation for Sanziana’s work of bringing Romanian readers everywhere into a huge community. Sanziana confesses:

Because we are in the Easter Week of confessing and forgiving one’s sins, I feel

the urge to say something that I have not confessed until now: the emotional

vibration, sometimes exaggerated that goes loose in the pages of the magazine,

comes also from a great lack of internal fulfillment‐‐the fact that I stopped

writing. To a large extent, Formula As is my longing for my unwritten books, an

affective predisposition that is not used and which flows in other directions. I

ask you and the readers of this letter to forgive me for my treason, for this

subterfuge in transmuting the energy and the dream for my books in the

structure of Formula As (Pop, Reply to “A Romanian woman in America,”

Formula As 356).

Even though the two texts were published within two years’ interval, one sent from a computer terminal in New Zealand in 2001, and the other one handed in by Sanziana to be printed in 1999, they are interrelated. The New Zealand text is a follow‐up to

Sanziana’s message which in turn is a response to another reader’s post. What makes

168 this time‐delayed conversation possible? What are the elements of the interpretation process?

First, the New Zealand text occurs, in Burnett’s (2002) terms, through an act of writing which was in turn generated by an act of reading (171). Liliana, as she acknowledges, learned about Sanziana’s confession while browsing through the magazine’s online archive the day when she discovered Formula As’ web site while searching for some less negative media coverage of Romania. This is an important observation in that it speaks of the different affordances that an online text‐mediated community offers compared to its physical counterpart. Storage of information, apart from its obvious advantages (i.e., keep records of the community’s interaction) also allows online community members to engage in new acts of reading and writing through interpretation of the written texts. To some extent, Formula As magazine print readers engage in a similar behavior whenever they consult the magazine’s collection of past issues. However, despite the fact that this is a common practice for the Formula As community, it involves significant differences that make the online archive an easier alternative for those who have Internet access. Online readers of the magazine for example can search for a specific issue of Formula As in the web site’s index page. The magazine’s past issues are hyperlinked and catalogued by issue number accompanied by the date of publication. Additionally, readers can also conduct a search for specific topics in each of the magazine’s sections using the magazine’s online search engine.

Furthermore, they can e‐mail the magazine staff directly from an embedded link in the

“Contact” area of the magazine’s homepage navigation bar. All of these technological affordances create a different experience for the online reader of the magazine.

Second, the temporal and spatial distance that separated Sanziana’s initial text from the New Zealand reader’s interpretation of it was annihilated. From a hermeneutic perspective, the two texts become joined through the interpretation practice. The technological support facilitates the mental connection that members of a virtual community establish with like minded others through reading and responding to each

169 other’s texts. It is in this sense of intertextuality that one can best understand Ricoeur’s

(1976) interpretation theory as applied to virtual communities.

Third, textual analysis of the messages above also illustrates an important dynamic related to the changed role of the audience in text‐mediated communities. In a nutshell, members of virtual communities perform active roles as they are actualized as both readers and writers of texts. For example, Sanziana’s text was created as a result of her reading of the U.S. reader’s message. Even though she may not use direct quotes, her text is structurally placed as a follow‐up to the U.S. text and contains textual identification markers that qualify it as a response. The large number of messages addressed to Sanziana, as a direct audience, additionally indicate that community participants acknowledge her status of a core member and also share the expectation that she can create new texts in response. Sanziana herself, as an active writer shares the expectation that Formula As participants interpret her text. Evidence of this interpretive practice for example, can be traced in her text’s image of the intended reader (i.e., “I ask you and the readers of this letter to forgive me”).

The New Zealand text however, given that it was published two years after

Sanziana’s confession and due to the limitations of the medium, does not structurally qualify as a follow‐up. But the reference that Liliana makes to Sanziana’s confession of giving up writing, albeit in an imaginary dialogue points the analysis to a different conclusion. The two texts are thematically interrelated. Specifically, Liliana’s text rhetorically incorporates an interpretation of Sanziana’s testimony but in a new text.

This appropriation, or in Ricoeur’s (1976) terms, making “one’s own” of another’s text in fact happens in spoken language as well (43). It was pointed out by Bakhtin (1986) in his notion of heteroglossia or the idea that a text can have multiple “voices” as a result of differing interpretations. Bakhtin (1981) notes “Every conversation is full of transmissions and interpretations of other people’s words” (338). A hermeneutic reading of Liliana’s mental dialogue with Sanziana contains steps that Burnett (2002) makes clear:

170 This interaction, through the influence of generic norms governing such matters

as quoting others’ texts, is highly self‐reflexive: writers create texts that refer

directly to other texts and, thus, integrate the act of reading directly in to the act

of writing. Reading becomes writing that, in turn, generates a new act of reading

(171).

Online virtual communities thrive on this very same process that is traceable, in graphic format, in the threaded conversations. The Formula As community makes no exception.

In fact, the participants’ degree of adaptation to the medium is impressive, as they can have ongoing conversations with each other despite the lack of sophisticated system features that are common for computer‐mediated communities. Compared to online text‐based communities, Formula As members cultivate norms of interactional coherence through references to other texts but they do so without making much use of direct quotes. Instead, they refer explicitly to the content of a previous message, as seen in this text submitted by the author of a “S.O.S.” query and addressed to Sanziana Pop, as customary for this forum:

Just like Iancu Florian was writing to you in the 496 issue of the magazine, that

God descended into his home I let you know that the same thing happened for

our family too after my letter was published in the Formula As magazine. To be

honest, I did not think that my letter would have an echo. (…) Although I had

read in the 496 issue of the magazine that I would be sponsored I had no idea of

what sponsorship means (Necula, “God knocked at our door…,” Formula As 507)

In the excerpt, the author of the text establishes a context for interpreting her own

“S.O.S.” experience by comparing it with a similar one. The two texts are linked, as one incorporates the interpretation of the other. Rhetorically, the effect is one of accumulated proof of the solidarity of the magazine community.

One significant result of the interpretive practices of the Formula As community involves the creation of norms of friendliness. Endearing terms in reference to the magazine and its participants are very common and occur in every issue of the magazine. Generally, this linguistic behavior can be viewed as evidence for the

171 existence of strong affective ties in regards to the magazine and the community of participants. Since this observation is also applicable to electronic text‐based communities, the goal of the remaining part of this section is to identify particular discursive practices that are involved in the process of rhetorically constructing friendliness norms. How does the activity of interpreting posts contribute to mental images of the community as an “immense family,” of the magazine as a “good fairy,” or of its readers as “angel‐people”? What does an overly positive image of the community reveal about the group’s culture?

Online communities can indeed be vibrant social environments where participants develop emotional connections with each other—an observation that has been noted across various types of such communities (Baym 2000; Cherny 1999; Preece

2001; Rheingold 1993; Wellman and Gulia 1999). For anyone reading Formula As for the first time however, the community’s rhetoric comes across as rather unusual in the participants’ linguistic displays of affection especially for a print‐based community.

This aspect of the magazine community is generally a component of related criticism of the magazine in comparison to other Romanian publications. Sanziana Pop, in one of her messages to the readers, notes prevalent criticism of the magazine community describing Formula As as “atypical” and of going beyond its role of objective reporting, breaching into “a sentimental and religious area that makes [Formula As] stand out.” 51

Analysis of community texts revealed the existence of several discursive practices that shed light on the rather intense and “effervescent”52 community rhetoric.

In this study I focus on those that are relevant in the construction of the discourse of community. These are: 1) the use of endearing terms; 2) attributing humanlike qualities to the magazine or “anthropomorphizing”—a term that I borrow from Chayko (2002,

52); and 3) the use of rhetorically shared core metaphors. For illustration, the texts below provide typical accounts for each category, although in the analysis I will discuss them in relationship with one another.

Endearing terms are very frequent in the magazine community texts and can have a variety of manifestations. Since this study does not attempt to provide a

172 typology of such linguistic practices I will only refer to the most common ones. Among these, forms of address rank first in usage although they are not distributed equally throughout the magazine’s sections. Specifically, these are sets of specific words or phrases that are employed by community participants to address one another, usually in the introduction and ending paragraphs of the texts. Words like “dear,” “esteemed”

“wonderful,” “good people,” are ways to reinforce a shared linguistic norm of respect and appreciation for the magazine’s director and the community readers. They can also be considered a subset of generic norms governing texts pertaining to the magazine’s interactive sections, mainly in the “S.O.S.” forum. In other words, such forms of address function as a set formula in the personalized texts (i.e., letters) that are exchanged within the community.

A stylistic variation of this first category of endearing rhetoric is the use of a confessional style in participants’ description of the role of Formula As in their lives, as seen in this example:

I am a reader like any other and I want to tell you, like numerous others, that I

like you so much that I haven’t missed any of the magazine’s issues since it was

started. I look forward to every weekend to buy the magazine and you [Formula

As] have never disappointed me. In fact, I can say that I don’t subscribe on

purpose so that I can enjoy the moment when the magazine is disseminated to

press vendors. For me, purchasing and reading the magazine (myself first and

then the others in my family who wait in line, eagerly) are [elements of] a dear

ritual. The fact that I can go online at any time to read [the magazine] does not

even determine me to give up my joy of purchasing it and smelling the ink. [I

wish you] many successes and light in your hearts, in everyone’s hearts! (Serban

“You have never disappointed me,” Formula As 657).

The text is typical for the effervescent quality of readers’ texts addressed to the editors.

Its author, a core member, considering the length of her involvement with Formula As, has developed a strong bond with the magazine. Textually, this is signaled by her ritual of purchasing and reading the publication which she shares with dear ones. Just like

173 her, there are numerous other readers who describe a similar ritual. According to diaspora members’ texts from Canada and the United States, some purchase Formula As from Romanian ethnic stores. Others, who do not have access to this facility, describe a similar phenomenon in accessing the magazine’s site. Rituals indeed can create an experience of engrossment in a particular activity, of involvement. The magazine, in its weekly format, provides readers with a routine that is technologically mediated. It forms the basis for commonality in readers’ imagining each other partaking in the same regular activity at approximately the same time. This type of involvement, over time, leads to the creation of bonds with the object that triggers the experience but also with others who participate in it. Here’s how one reader in Romania describes her ritual of bonding with Formula As:

Every Saturday I go to the fresh market and purchase the magazine. The

newspaper vendor knows me and he no longer asks what I want. In the evening,

after I finish my housekeeping chores I read through to see what other topics our

dear editors bring for debate. On Sunday afternoon, I sit on my folding chair in

my balcony, in the midst of my dear plants, and I start reading. (…) I never

finish to read the whole magazine on Sunday so the next day I take it along and

on my way I read a little more in the subway (Ioan “I was reading about

Popicu…,” Formula As 503).

For the author of the text, the ritual of purchasing and reading the magazine is doubled by what Chayko (2002) describes as “serialization” or the regular involvement in a particular activity (91). She further notes that serialization is common in both face‐to‐ face and technologically mediated contexts (90). Indeed, one quick flip through the television programs at any time, tuning in to the radio, or a trip to the magazine section at the grocery store as well as going online would reveal numerous illustrations for the pervasiveness of media‐generated serialization in contemporary society. In the text above, the experience of serialization can be detected in the reader’s statement about her curiosity for the latest topics in Formula As. Both rituals and serialization contribute to the formation of sociomental bonding (Chayko 2002). For the Formula As participants,

174 the magazine’s weekly publication (in print and online) structures to some extent the consumption of its content, as seen in the illustrations above. Readers’ texts for example, frequently acknowledge household rituals in reading the magazine as illustrated by Ruxandra’s statement describing the ranked order in which members of the family read Formula As. Magazine statistics also indicate that Formula As has a wider sphere of distribution that goes beyond the household unit. Sanziana Pop, in one of her end of the year messages, cites the results of a 2004 survey of the magazine’s print circulation which indicates an average of 9‐10 readers per copy. In her own words, these are “readers who pass Formula As from hand to hand.”53 Evidence from community texts configures the social domain of the magazine’s community distribution to an individual’s social circle (family members, neighbors, friends) augmented by its larger social context such as one’s work place, church groups, schools, even small villages. All of these observations point to the conclusion that serialization and ritual further generate new rituals in the social distribution of the magazine.

Analysis of community texts supports this finding as readers frequently describe the process of reading the magazine as a social experience, an event that is shared within a social space (whether physically defined or rhetorically constructed). The act of reading or in other variants, sharing it, involves members of the community (e.g., family, neighbors) and also brings together geographically dispersed individuals.

Descriptions such as “magazine of my family,”54 or “my friend and my children’s friend from across the ocean”55 attest to the social interaction potential of the magazine. For further illustration, I select a text that was published with the title of “Open letter to all the friends of “Formula As.” The author, Catalina, an active participant to the community submitted a long message in which she discussed the role of the magazine and its community through exemplifications. One of the major narratives in her text describes the impact of the magazine in the lives of a group of eight terminally ill patients including her own mother as they share a hospital ward. As the story goes,

Catalina would commute from her hometown across several hundreds miles by train to a Western Romanian city to visit her mother every week and spend the weekend in the

175 company of her mother and the rest of the ward’s patients. At the beginning of her visit, the room would be unbearably quiet and yet tense as she describes it as “Eight beds, eight pyres on which the flame of hope would burn, gradually waning away.”56

However, the morning after her arrival, the patients would miraculously become revived as a hospital’s employee distributed Formula As to each of the room’s occupants.

Catalina states,

I would immediately recognize the Formula As cover (I used to buy it and read it

myself in much hurry at the time) and my surprise for seeing it sooner than

Monday, as it was published in Galati [the reader’s hometown] was replaced by

my astonishment as I was watching the quiet women’s faces being transformed

by a strange, almost mystic joy (Craciun “Open letter to all the friends of Formula

As,” Formula As 584).

The magazine’s distribution to the hospital earlier than in the rest of the city was due to the fact that the express train’s machinist would bring them along from the capital

(where it became available two days prior). The hospital’s employee, “a compassionate man” as Catalina describes him, would pick up the copies of Formula As very early in the morning and bring them to the hospital where these were “feverishly expected.”57

This narrative, in its dramatic quality, renders the solidarity of the members of the community and the great lengths to which they often go to obtain the magazine so that others, in need, can benefit from reading it. In Catalina’s story, we further learn, reading

Formula As, with its naturistic therapies content, was the only hope for the patients of the ward. Symbolically, the concerted effort of the Formula As community participants produces a public good (i.e., health‐related knowledge) from which anyone reading the magazine can benefit. This type of cooperative behavior was described in more detail in the common goals chapter of this study.

The last two components of the effervescent rhetorical practices of Formula As are anthropomorphize or attribute humanlike qualities to the magazine and the use of core metaphors that entered the community vocabulary. Such linguistic activities represent interpretive strategies that participants use to grasp or concretize the sociomental space

176 that they share. Through the frequency with which they occur, such discursive practices indicate that they play an important part in the construction of the magazine community. Together with the use of endearing terms, their main function is to reinforce a supportive, positive group culture that exhibits high levels of solidarity and which differentiates Formula As from other text‐based communities.

The inherent distance that separates people involved in a situation of interlocution becomes even more apparent when their only mode of interaction is the exchange of texts (Ricoeur 1976). In an effort to convey presence, make the exchange real or to “textually inhabit the distance” to paraphrase Burnett (2002, 173), virtual community members develop repertoires of terms that reflect the social geography of the sociomental space that they share. This is a common phenomenon in Internet contexts as people often use physical space vocabularies to refer to their technologically mediated experience. Terms such as “cyberspace,” “surfing” the Internet, Web “site,” chat “room” or even “flip” the channels for a television context reflect a common need for people to concretize that which they cannot experience directly but via a technological support (Chayko 2002). To Internet scholars, this linguistic behavior may constitute additional proof to the argument that the offline and online realms exist in consonance and they are not separated by clear boundaries. They are enmeshed. Mitra and Schwartz (2001), for example, note that while being in cyberspace people still maintain their connection with real space. According to the authors, the boundaries between the two types of spaces become merged into a new space, “cybernetic space” which is a “synthesis” of the real and the virtual.

Anthropomorphizing and shared metaphoric vocabularies of the Formula As participants reflect such an effort of owning virtual proximity, of creating a virtual topology, and a sense of presence of its population. Just like in any face‐to‐face interaction the effervescent rhetorical practices of the Formula As practices fulfill the fundamental human need of bonding. What makes them unique to Formula As is the intensity of the connecting or bonding. In posting messages that reveal similarities in imaginings of the community, participants reveal the existence of strong emotional

177 commitment and collective solidarity. The texts that I select for illustration below fit in the broader category that Ricoeur’s (1976) termed as the “mode ‘of as if’” or conversing as if the participants were present.

Analysis of community texts reveals that attributing humanlike qualities to the magazine constitutes a pattern in the community’s rhetoric. Very frequently, the magazine is described explicitly as a “dear friend,” a beloved feminine presence evoking deep bonds such as a “mother,” or “sister.” A related textual practice is to refer to the magazine as a person but implicitly. This occurs through transferring certain human body parts to the magazine. This can be observed in the following description which originates from the text of a private representative of a community of elderly people living in a social institution and who asked for the community’s assistance with building a chapel: “Dear magazine, you’ve had a good heart and hand, your page was lit by the

Lord because the fruits of Christian charity ripened in the account of our chapel” 58

[italics mine for emphasis]. The “heart” (or its variant “soul”) and “hand,” attributes are the only human characteristics that readers mention. In the same category of more subtle markers of anthropomorphizing I place the technique of engaging the magazine in conversation directly, as if it were a person. This is conveyed through the use of a second person of address which in Romanian is almost entirely reserved for informal talk as in family or close friend circles. Romanian, like a few other Romance languages, distinguishes between two forms of address in its pronoun use. Thus, people use the polite form “dumneavoastra” (the equivalent of “vous” in French or “usted” in Spanish) in public contexts or where the social norms prescribe some interactional distance between interlocutors. The informal “tu” is the same as “you” in English but its usage restricts it to private social interactions where people already share some type of familiarity, whether due to kinship or personal affinities (e.g., friendship). The example below illustrates the use of the second person form of address. In the text, the pronoun

“you” is a substitute for the magazine Formula As:

Many hearts found soothing in you, in the advice that you offer, in the lines that

you write with so much attention and passion, in the emotional and material

178 assistance that you provide, but especially in your limitless generosity of heart,

my beloved friend “Formula As!” I wish you all the best and sufficient energy to

recharge our emotional batteries (…) (“A little bee…,” Formula As 408).

The author of the text’s language shows clear signs of deep bonds with Formula As, the type of sociomental connectedness that characterizes this social environment. The reader relates to the magazine as if it were a person because the mental image that she formed about the magazine contains social reality for her. In Chayko’s (2002) view, anthropomorphizing is a manifestation of the process of forming sociomental connections and is an attribute of being human. She notes:

It is likely that a similar process of anthropomorphizing characterizes the bonds

that both children and adults make with animals, fictional characters, spiritual

figures and special objects. Those who conceive of, develop, write about, and

distribute such things, as well as those who form connections to them, impute

human traits to them even though they are not human. (…) We even treat

computers as humanlike or sufficiently human (talking to them, naming them,

blaming them for errors, etc) to permit the construction of perceived mental

connections to them (52).

In its design and manifestation, the magazine is a collective artifact. From a rhetorical perspective, bonding with the Formula As magazine can be envisioned as a strategy of inclusion. That is, a multitude of physically separated individuals who are part of a mental network become represented (i.e., personified) and addressed collectively in

Formula As, the magazine.

Community members’ effort to provide texture and orient themselves into a textually mediated social space that exists beyond the sheer materiality of the magazine’s print or online edition often leads to an effervescent rhetoric about their community. The metaphors that participants employ provide, in this respect, an inside perspective into the community itself and into the manner in which readers establish sociomental bonds with the magazine. Community text analysis identified the existence of metaphoric vocabularies associated with the medical and spiritual registers. In this

179 respect, Formula As is often perceived as being endowed with a series of attributes that are soothing to those who create a connection with it. Diaspora members’ rhetoric in particular overflows with metaphors from both registers, often within the same text.

The self‐reference chapter of this study analyzed the connection between metaphors and the process of imagining the Formula As community for diaspora members. To illustrate,

I present a few examples. For one reader in Canada, the magazine is envisioned as a

“doctor of hearts, who, with magic hands, removes distances on the map.”59

In a similar style, Arina, a Romanian from France writes that Formula As

“appeared” in her life just like a “magic window that views” the world of home, with “the wonderful snowfalls” of her childhood and the longing for the dear ones whom she left behind. Noting that a part of her heart is back home, together with her family, Arina describes how Formula As placed a “band‐aid” over her broken heart, “torn between two such different worlds”60. In the examples above, the authors impute both magical and medical attributes to the magazine in that it is perceived as being able to transport the readers to their place of origin (i.e., “magic hand that removes the distances,” and

“magic window”) and alleviate (e.g., “doctor of hearts,” and “band‐aid”) their broken heart due to homesickness.

Metaphors from the spiritual register are very common in regards to the magazine and its community:

The Formula As magazine, that I read more and more often, is a true spiritual oasis

within the desert of the hearts of the people who lost hope of being healthy, of

believing in something beautiful, pure, divine, and real. It is indeed a miracle that

so many souls depend, pin their faith on [the magazine] hoping that they will see

the light at the end of the tunnel (Arhire “From Canada, over the Internet,”

Formula As 556) [emphasis mine].

The rhetorical analysis of this text reveals the presence of a lexicon for this type of metaphor. Thus, the core metaphor, “spiritual oasis,” has a constellation of thematically related terms like “miracle,” divine,” and “light” that also occur by themselves in other contexts. From a narrative perspective, the author of the text constructs a mental image

180 of the magazine through a health frame as she refers to the health‐related content of the community texts.

It is important to note that, frequently, metaphors from the spiritual register are placed in the context of the community solidarity as seen in this example:

No matter how hard I try, I cannot find the appropriate words to thank the

readers of this magazine that connects people with divine strings through its word

and audience (Bogatu “Not believing in miracles…,” Formula As 488) [emphasis

mine].

This text illustrates the argument that the magazine community members are aware of the role of the magazine as a mediator among individuals who are separated by temporal and spatial distances. The terms that describe the mediating attribute of the magazine are “connect,” “word,” and “audience” while a phrase like “divine strings” reflects the deep bonding experienced by the participants through their cooperation.

Lastly, while in readers’ messages metaphors are common occurrences they however have an increased density in Sanziana’s own texts. The unique quality of her rhetoric that is permeated with metaphors from the spiritual register originates in the fact that she is after all a poet and therefore has, as she confesses, certain “affective predispositions”61 that found a home in the Formula As magazine. As discussed earlier in this section, community participants frequently incorporate references to Sanziana’s texts in their own messages. Sanziana’s constellation of metaphoric terms in particular often becomes part of the community discourse especially in the area of the “S.O.S.” section of the magazine which abounds in words such as “miracle,” “light,” “angel”

(“angel‐people”), “divine,” and “God.” These metaphors act as a reservoir of shared community images and activate the mental experience of connecting.

181

CHAPTER TEN

INSIDE FORMULA AS: INTERACTIVITY

Examination of the preceding set of community conditions vis‐à‐vis the Formula

As magazine already addressed aspects of the community’s interactivity pertaining to each particular area of investigation. This is so because interactivity is an essential component in this virtual community that, just like self‐reference, enables participants to stay connected. In this chapter, to avoid redundancy, I will present an overview of the major categories of interactivity that pervade Formula As community as they were uncovered through rhetorical analysis of the community texts. Thus for simplicity sake,

I distinguish between two major aspects of interactivity namely, interactivity by design or attributes derived from the magazine’s structure and format and interactivity through interpretive practices. I note however that in the lived experience that is Formula As they are interrelated.

As described in the background chapter of this study, Formula As participants’ mode of interaction is different than face‐to‐face talk. Participants communicate by submitting messages to the magazine which are further posted in specific sections. The technological medium (print or the magazine’s web site) facilitates the ongoing talk within the community. The two different interfaces can lead to different experiences of interactivity, although for the most part, the magazine’ online edition practically mirrors the print one with a few exceptions (e.g., the online edition has been filtered for advertisements). However, for those accessing Formula As magazine over the Internet the built‐in print interactivity is complemented by additional features. In other words, the magazine’s web site has been adapted for the online experience. Thus, online readers benefit from the luxury of an online archive that starts with 1998 and is organized by issue numbers that appear as embedded hyperlinks. The web site’s search engine allows readers to search the magazine’s archive using keywords. The navigation bar from the homepage provides easy access to each of the features listed above, and

182 additionally to the magazine’s email address as well to an inactive discussion forum interface. From all of the online interactivity by design features, the magazine’s archive, the search engine, and the contact hyperlink provide the most use to the diaspora members of the community.

Unlike those participants who engage the magazine via print (the majority at the time of writing this study), online members’ discursive practices can be impacted to a higher degree by the online interface. At a very basic level, this is reflected in the fact that a majority of the online readers of the magazine acknowledge, in their texts, the role of the Internet in facilitating their connecting with the country of origin. An interesting phenomenon is, however, the fact that print readers occasionally solicit that their messages be posted on the magazine’s web site for a larger audience. This is typically encountered in the magazine’s interactive areas. A similar occurrence but among those accessing the magazine’s online version has to do with submitting requests that the magazine content be translated into English so that non‐Romanian speaking individuals

(most often friends or acquaintances of diaspora members) can become part of the magazine community. These findings are significant. They illustrate: 1) the permeability of the community’ boundaries; and 2) the interchangeability of the mediating technology.

This latter argument is also supported by the fact that community members acknowledge that even though they have access to the magazine’s online edition they may prefer the print version. As I explained in a previous section addressing this aspect of the community, the attachment to the print version is a consequence of the serialization of the magazine. In addition, community texts indicate that for some categories of readers (e.g., senior diaspora members) collecting the magazine‐‐printing it off the Internet and pasting the pages into folders arranged by topic‐‐is a common practice. Online readers, however, also develop rituals around the online publication of the magazine’s content. An explanation for the existence of these various forms of experiencing Formula As is most likely related to the fact that regardless of what format is being used, at a very basic level, participants engage the magazine’s content through

183 text that is similar in both of the magazine’s interfaces. Additionally, the Formula As magazine’s structure of sections display interactivity features.

The “S.O.S.” and the “Health” discussion forums garnered popularity, over the years, to the Formula As magazine and constitute an embedded interactivity feature for the magazine. Their presence, most likely, has been the engine for the Formula As virtual community in that it allowed for the members interaction. Since the beginning of the magazine’s publication, these two particular sections have been unchanged while other sections have been either added or discontinued. From a rhetorical perspective, a significant part of the community’s interaction is carried in these core sections of the magazine. To illustrate, a significant portion of the interaction among readers, and between the readers and the editors is centered on the medical problems that are addressed by the readers themselves in the “Health” section of the magazine. As a rule, the messages posted indicate the existence of trust in the alternative medical treatments offered by the readers and reinforced by the very design of this widely appreciated section. The constant exchange of medical information among readers constitutes a continuum where the delayed time between the query for information and its corresponding response is compensated by the quality of the treatment options that are proposed and the more subtle connections between the readers who, in sharing their medical knowledge, take responsibility in providing their full contact information for further interaction.

In light of Burnett’s (2000) typology of information exchange in virtual communities, both the “Health” and “S.O.S.” areas display collaborative interactive behaviors in the form of queries made by community participants but also by others outside the community. Thus, participants may request assistance (either for themselves or for others) from the magazine’s community—this forms the majority of the messages in the “S.O.S” section. Participants also offer help—approximately half of the messages in the “Health” discussion forum. Last, readers offer thanks for the assistance that they have received—a practice prevalent in the “S.O.S.” forum but one which also exists to some degree in the “Health” section.

184 Just as in the case of a regular online discussion group, the imagined community of the Formula As exhibits interactivity characteristics in that the messages that are posted are logically connected. In the absence of special software to display community texts however, Formula As developed textual practices for identifying and ordering members’ messages. These, as I discussed in the common goals section of this study, range from the use of headings containing a memorable phrase from the respective text, identification of the initial message in the thread by adding a subheading containing the magazine’s issue when the original post occurred, to the use of signature files containing the author’s personal information. All of these aspects of embedded interactivity features allow community members to interact as Ricoeur (1976) would say, “as if” they share the physical distance separating them.

Providing adequate space for questions and answers on medical and humanitarian issues, Formula As facilitates the existence of rhetorical antecedents (i.e., earlier messages that had been posted in preceding issues of the magazine) that offer a continuous flow of information much like the one occurring in face‐to‐face communication. In the “Health” forum for example, some topics generate a bout of responses sent by different readers recommending differing cures for the same illness and the exchange of medical treatments can continue over the course of several issues of the magazine. Very frequently, the readers post feedback messages vis‐à‐vis various topics discussed in the “Naturistic Therapies” editor‐generated section of the magazine and share from their personal experiences in trying out alternative medicine remedies.

For example, in the 12‐19 March 2001 issue of Formula As, four different readers provide follow up concerning alternative treatments ranging from reflexology to herbal medicine and apitherapy that were presented in preceding issues of the magazine either by the readers themselves or in feature stories posted by the editors. The readers‐‐some from the Romanian diaspora‐‐without exception acknowledge and thank Formula As for providing them with the necessary information and share their positive experience with other readers. Maria Iagar, one of the four readers, recovered from a case of stroke after just one session of reflexology treatment performed by a dedicated specialist whom she

185 learned about through the magazine. She states: “I want to express my thanks to

Formula As for helping us [the readers] so much. I need it as much as the air that I breathe because I know that there is someone after all who alleviates people’s suffering and who offers help wholeheartedly.”62

The “S.O.S.” forum of Formula As also exhibits strong interactivity characteristics that have been somewhat adapted for the nature of the humanitarian work that occurs in this space. As I described in the common goals section of this study, apart from the regular “request”‐“answer”‐ appreciation” format that is common for the “Health” forum as well, the magazine editors additionally include announcements with the amount of money that has been collected through readers’ donations as well as Formula

As account information to mediate the process of cooperation. Analysis of community texts indicates that the community members’ text based interaction in the area of humanitarian work is fruitful. This reader’s text is typical:

(…) My message “Help a college student finish his studies,” had an echo. You

cannot imagine how much good I experienced through the encouragement

letters, the advice and naturistic treatments, addresses of naturistic practitioners,

the very feeling of solidarity that I felt and which cured me from my depression

(Krajla “I said a prayer…,” Formula As 555).

Another component of interactivity by design is the use of regular contests, on various topics (e.g., happiness, childhood memories, animal stories). These generally serve as spring boards for more community messages. Generally, members participating in such competitions acquire more visibility in the community. This text illustrates this argument:

I am one of the winners of the “Happiness Recipes.” I want to than those who

congratulated me in this unusual role, for their beautiful words, their genuine

and special emotion that engulfed me in a purifying state of wellness…A shred

of sadness though crosses through my soul, thinking of those who wrote to me,

expressing the (unjustified) skepticism with which they view the magazine’s

humanitarian and medical objectives, the profound and authentic solidarity with

186 which Formula As magazine surrounds those for whom life has been less

generous (Craciun, “Open Letter…,” Formula As 584).

The author further announces that the goal of her text is to “offer an answer to all of those who ask for it, by objectively narrating how I discovered Formula As in the consciousness and hearts of some of our fellow human beings who were heavily challenged by destiny.”63

This text is illustrative of the type of interactivity that occurs in the Formula As community. Mainly, it illustrates that the interactivity by design features blend well with the interpretive activities of the community members. The author of the text, an active community member, engages the rest of the members through an editor‐ generated contest. She, however, becomes the recipient of what scholars of computer‐ mediated studies call “private messages,” or texts that are not part of the community’s public discursive space. This is common in chat room and IM environments. Formula

As community texts evidence indicates the existence of this discursive practice. The extent to which it is employed is, however, almost impossible to ascertain. To illustrate, messages in the “Health” and “S.O.S.” sections often attest to such back channels of communication. As I described in the common goals chapter of this study, community members exchange personal contact information to extend the interactions that they carry in the Formula As magazine. This is in fact, an argument in favor of the blurring of the offline and online boundary markers. In the example above, the contest’s winner nevertheless fuels back some of the private interaction into the mainstream community discursive space. In her text, she acknowledges that the reason for authoring the specific letter is to address some of the concerns that she received through back channels. This particular rhetorical practice attests, once more, to the robustness of hermeneutic approaches to text‐mediated communities.

187 CHAPTER ELEVEN

CONCLUSION

The story that I have told about the Formula As magazine as a virtual community is close to the end. At a fundamental level, it is an account of how an immense group of people, separated by temporal and spatial distances, but who think of themselves as a

“large family,” “build solidarity bridges” to each other and to the rest of the world through their passion for their favorite magazine. This is no ordinary story, however, especially if one conceives of community in a traditional fashion. The same is true, however, if one were to test the story’s narrative rationality through standard virtual community criteria. Even approaching it from the vantage point of traditional journalism would make not much of a difference. But viewing Formula As for what it is, an alternative to the three previous interpretations above can be a start.

An important articulation point in understanding the uniqueness of the Formula

As community is to recognize the diversity of community forms that exist. In this respect, Formula As is indeed different not just only because it combines both print and electronic media—after all numerous other print‐based publications have an online counterpart—but in terms of what goes on in the rhetorically constructed domain of this social environment. Starting from this premise, in this study I have asked: How do the magazine readers view themselves? Do they consider themselves as a “community”?

What does “community” mean for members of Formula As? What are participants’ common goals? What boundaries do they imagine for this environment? What history do they share? What discursive practices do members share? And lastly, what norms have they developed to adapt their interaction to an asynchronous environment?

In addressing these questions I employed a theoretical perspective that brings together concepts from different areas of inquiry such as virtual community and computer‐mediated research, public sphere, interactive journalism, and Paul Ricoeur’s

(1976) hermeneutic theories. To these, I added a rhetorical‐based methodology centering on Fisher’s (1995) narrative paradigm. This chapter discusses the study’s

188 findings, acknowledging its limitations and contributions and offering some thoughts on future directions for studying virtual communities from rhetorical approaches.

My goal in this study has been to outline a framework for conceptualizing community that accounts for the unique characteristics of the Formula As environment.

Built around the Formula As magazine, this community has taken both the ideas of journalism and community a step further. From a journalistic perspective, the popularity of the magazine has gone beyond Romania’s borders to far away places where members of the Romanian diaspora access the content of the publication over the

Internet. In this study I have revealed that, partly, the success of this publication is closely related to its metamorphosis into a virtual community. Thus, regardless of spatial and temporal distances, readers of the magazine develop a strong attachment for the publication, the editors, and the community of readers at large. Quite unusually for readers of a publication and for members of a standard computer‐mediated virtual community, Formula As “family members” as they affectionately call themselves, display high levels of solidarity and trust. This is puzzling, to say the least; therefore, my attempt in this study has been to probe into the Formula As magazine to unravel the details of this community’s story.

One of the major findings of this study points out that the key for understanding this virtual community is to conceive of such a concept in a broader manner than the one generally employed by standard computer‐mediated studies. In this respect,

Anderson’s (1983) “imagined community” perspective has been helpful in that it shifted the focus from proximity‐‐which used to be considered a required ingredient in traditional conceptualizations of community—to symbolic processes. Thus, in this study, I revealed that Formula As participants sustain connections by imagining themselves and others as constituting a community. Even though they do not share a physical space they are brought together in the imagined space that has social reality for them. It is through constructing mental images from the texts that they read in the magazine’s content that enables Formula As participants to meet together in a sociomental space. In this study, the concept of sociomental space that I borrow from

189 Chayko (2002) helped explain the deep bonding that Formula As members experience with the magazine and with one another. The building blocks for building sociomental connections are perceived core commonalities that bring people together. Formula As participants share both contextual commonalities but also those that result out of their involvement with the magazine. For example, the shared history section findings indicate that one of the main commonalities that participants share is their common language. This characteristic impacts the Formula As community in several ways. First, the shared language provides both the means of interaction and the social reality for the community members. As in face‐to‐face communities, Formula As participants are in majority, whether directly or by proxy (for Romanians born abroad) anchored in the meaning making system that they “inherited” through the Romanian language. In an analogy with fce‐to‐face interaction, the shared language replaces physical proximity and some of the contextual variables of the environment. Specifically for Formula As, interpreting the community texts written in a common language is a practice that brings participants together in an imagined mental network.

Second, Formula As is a community with permeable boundaries, that is, accessible to anyone who shares its goals. The Romanian language is for the magazine community the symbolic marker of the community boundaries and that which distinguishes it from non‐Romanian fluent communities. The shared language, however, sustains the community as it allows for a constant exchange of resources with the Romanian cultural environment and constitutes the bridge between the homeland and diaspora members. Even though in the past, the editors experimented for almost a year with the translation of the community’s most popular content (i.e., the health forum and the naturistic articles) at the request of its readers (diaspora members in particular) currently, non‐Romanian speaking readers are still outside the boundaries of the community. Thus, the Romanian language provides the participants with the common symbol system and meaning‐making framework of the interaction. Additionally, community members, while open to the influx of new members, make an axiological distinction between the group’s common values and those pervading the outside

190 environment. The result of this phenomenon is that the magazine’s readers become unified as an audience along several core values. This process is instrumental in the members’ sense of identification and belongingness to Formula As.

The community members’ cooperation manifests in the exchange of naturistic remedies information and involvement in humanitarian work. Over time, participants develop a history together. All of the characteristics that I have described, to name the major ones, bring Formula As members together in a sociomental network. In the light of the core commonalities argument, it is no longer almost impossible to explain why perfect strangers start to develop a sense of belonging to the community and become active contributors to its sustenance. However, the connecting process would not be possible without the mediation of the Formula As texts.

For any geographically dispersed community, the exchange of texts forms the basis of the interaction and therefore the sustenance of the community. In this study, drawing on Ricoeur’s (1976) interpretation theory, I advance the idea that at a very basic level, virtual communities are quite similar. This explains how Formula As members for example, are able to form a community even though the technological support for the mediation may be either print, the Internet, or both. In light of Ricoeur’s approach,

Formula As participants are actualized as both readers and writers of publicly available texts. This is reflected in the community conditions that I have selected as “lenses” for this study. Interpreting each others’ texts that are aggregated in the asynchronous space of the Formula As magazine is the fundamental activity that brings them together rhetorically. For example, members of the community can develop a Formula As community consciousness and exchange stories, regardless of their physical location; imagine the boundaries that separate them from the rest of the environment; express their attachment to the community, albeit in an effervescent and intense manner; and infer norms about the community culture during the shared history of their interaction.

What brings Formula As members together are interpretive activities that allow them to interact “as if” they were present and thus minimize the inherent nature between them.

Just like members of standard virtual communities, Formula As participants adapt their

191 interaction style so that they can get a feel for each other’s presence. In this study, for example, I have described how community norms of authenticity and truthfulness are actualized through textual practices. Hermeneutic approaches can, as illustrated by this study, provide a more vigorous instrument in evaluations of virtual communities.

One of the major advantages of conceptualizing cyberspace as a discursive space lies in opening it to a whole range of rhetorical approaches. In this study, narrative rhetorical approaches have uncovered the role of storytelling practices in nurturing a culture of self‐disclosure, compassion and cooperation. An equally important finding in this study‐‐supported by research in the area of constitutive rhetoric—is that the Formula

As community constitutes itself rhetorically. Throughout the analysis portion of the dissertation I provide evidence for the argument that Formula As exists as a community and sustains itself through a process of collectively constructing the Formula As consciousness. As the rhetorical analysis revealed, the shared Romanian cultural heritage, the community’s common goals and interests, and the shared interpretive practices enable members of the Formula As community to identify with the group’s values and ultimately constitute collectively as a public in the Romanian society.

Through civic engagement, Formula As community creates its own public sphere on a series of social issues. From a rhetorical perspective, the Formula As community is also sustained through members’ interpreting of each other’s stories. Storytelling offers them a safe manner to disclose sensitive personal information and bring private concerns to the public space of the magazine community. Thus, the discursive space of the magazine becomes the locus of shaping public opinion on sensitive social issues such as poverty, emigration, Romania’s image abroad, environmental concerns. Since the community members’ interaction is text based, power issues are transcended. This study illustrated how marginalized groups in Romanian society like the poor, the disabled, and the elderly are empowered in the Formula As public discursive space. In other words, their voices are heard. Additionally, members of the Romanian diaspora can also join the public space after decades of being more or less voiceless during the communist rule. Through sharing narratives, community members connect with others

192 at a distance and evaluate their own interpretive lens in making sense of the Romanian transition as a shared reality.

In addressing limitations of this study I would like to first point out that this work is a case study. In this light, its goal is to advance a theoretical model that can be applied to other types of text‐based virtual communities. Nevertheless, since virtual communities are so diverse even in terms of the channel that facilitates the imagined connection among participants, one can only hope that the model that I propose can offer insight into specific community cultures that employ multimedia channels (e.g., images and text).

Secondly, this case study is only an initial attempt into explorations of the narrative paradigm potential as applied to online public spheres. In this work, I set the groundwork for uncovering how text‐based virtual communities employ storytelling to open formerly private spaces for public access. In a further study I intend to return to the Formula As community with the goal of probing deeper into the community’s use of narratives in creating public sphere. Narrative logic, as a fundamentally human attribute, can help understand not only individual stories but also shed light into collectively constructed narratives that are often debated in online public spheres.

A potential area of future research that in my opinion, seems promising, is applying the concept of voice—a rhetorical approach‐‐to text‐based virtual communities in consonance with Habermas’ public sphere model with the help of hermeneutic lenses.

Mitra (2001) and Mitra and Watts (2002) for example, in a groundbreaking work, identified the applicability of “voice” to online contexts research. Further empirical research, using longitudinal studies, is needed.

193

ENDNOTES

1 Sanziana Pop, “A Miracle: Ten Years of Formula As,” Formula As 500. Unless stated otherwise, the English translation of the Romanian texts in this dissertation represents the author’s work.

2 Throughout this study the magazine’s name is rendered in italics.

3 Formula As Web address or URL is http://www.formula‐as.ro

4 Maria Lodea, “I’m Moved to Tears by the Ties That You Secure Among People.” Formula As 446.

5 “New Europe” is a phrase generally used in public discourse to refer to the countries of East Central Europe, South‐Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet bloc that underwent significant socioeconomic and political changes in transitioning from state socialism to democracy.

6 According to Sanziana Pop’s testimony, director of Formula As, the magazine was started in 1991 with a bank loan of three million lei for which she used her mother’s house as a collateral—a risky endeavor considering Romania’s highly insecure economic climate and the skyrocketing inflation at the time (Sanziana Pop, “A Miracle Ten Years of Formula As.” Formula As 500).

7 See Sanziana Pop, “A Miracle: Ten Years of Formula As.” Formula As 500).

8 Toma Roman, “The Friend.” Formula As 500.

9 The Romanian Revolution started on December 15, 1989 in Timisoara (a city in Western Romania) and was not covered by Romanian media. However, a majority of the population continued to remain informed about the Timisoara events by tuning in to Western radio stations that were broadcasting news and commentaries of the events and by corroborating rumors with the regime’s initial silence. Several days later, Romanian indigenous media began to make allusions to the uprising in a very euphemistic manner and using enthymematic reasoning that in fact, triggered the opposite reaction from the population who was actively seeking information using as Gross (1996) accurately observes, “whatever means available” (31). On December 21st, Ceauşescu (Romania’s president at the time) organized a pro‐regime televised rally which turned out into an anti‐regime demonstration miraculously featuring a few minutes of live footage of the people’s angry shouting and Ceauşescu’s fear and loss of control over the situation.

10 Abortion was illegal during Romania’s authoritarian rulers.

11 Romanian mass media during socialism was subsidized by the state and tightly controlled by the communist party. This ensured effective control on the open circulation of ideas and views that were outside mainstream ideology.

194

12 MediaPro International S.A. is a media conglomerate in which more than half of the shares (66%) are held by its parent company, Central European Media Enterprises (CME). CME, owned by the U.S. billionaire, Ronald Lauder, is an international television broadcasting company that holds large shares (mostly television stations) in major media groups in Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. CME’s Romanian operation, MediaPro International, comprises two television networks (ProTV and Acasa), the RadioProFM network, a news agency (MediaFax), a cable distributed network (Pro Cinema), specialized publications (Playboy Romania, ProSport, Ziarul Financiar, etc), and several other media companies.

13 According to Bursa, a leading finance newspaper, MediaPro International has been using its connections within the Romanian government to drag over a period of several years its accumulated tax debt to the Romanian state budget of approximately $40 million. “Media Pro…” (2003).

14 The Romanian Television (RTV) headquarters was occupied by Bucharest’s citizens and the army on the afternoon of December 21, shortly after Ceauşescu had failed to pacify Bucharest’s citizens during the momentous televised rally from the Palatului Plaza. Throughout the subsequent weeks, the RTV premises were the sight of heavy fighting between the so‐called terrorists, the army and large numbers of Bucharest’s citizens who, incidentally, had been urged by the ad‐hoc Revolution leadership (i.e., the National Salvation Front) to rush to the rescue.

15 Tomescu, “I Can Endure My Own Destitution But Cannot But Take Pity in That of Others.” Formula As 453.

16 For example, according to Formula As, only in April 2004, the total amount that was deposited into the Formula As Foundation account, via readers’ donations, totaled a little over $2100 or “81,000.000 lei.” The average wage in Romania in 2004 was still very low (i.e., $140) while the prices for most goods and food products are compatible to those in the U.S. (“Breakdown of April 2004 donations,” Formula As 619).

17 Beginning with 2003, Telecom‐‐Romania’s former main telephone and Internet provider‐‐was forced to lower the phone access prices that had artificially kept Internet access at prohibitory levels for a majority of the population for the past several years.

18 See for example Paul Ricoeur. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation. Edited and translated JB Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1981. However, for Ricoeur’s most comprehensive presentation of interpretation theory and its related concepts consult Paul Ricoeur. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press. 1976. This work emerged out of a series of lectures that he had given in 1973 at Texas Christian University.

19 cf Petrescu, editor at Formula As magazine, in “Formula As—500.”

20 Cosmin Drulea, “I Hold Formula As in My Hand While Surrounded by Different Flowers,” Formula As 413.

195

21 Denisa Iarovici, “Offer Retired People the Chance to Become Actors,” Formula As 516.

22 Elena Bogatu, “Not Believing in Miracles Is Wrong,” Formula As 488.

23 Toma Roman, “Ten Years of Hope and Achievements,” Formula As 500.

24 Elena Cojoleanca, “Disabled for the Rest of His Life, a 16 Years‐old Boy Waits for Solidarity signals,” Formula As 549.

25 Formula As community exhibits no identity play and very low levels of anonymity.

26 Ali Athamna, “I Really Hope that You Can Bring Me Back to Romania,” Formula As 445.

27 cf. Marius Petrescu, Formula As editor, Formula As 500.

28 Sanziana Pop, “Let Us Go to Heaven Together,” Formula As 597.

29 The message was published in the English feature of the “Health” section of the magazine which offered, for most of 2002, English translations of the “Health” and “Natural Therapies” sections of the magazine.

30 The English translation was authored by Formula As.

31 The English translation was authored by Formula As.

32 Valeriu Krajla, “I Said a Prayer in My Town’s Cathedral,” S.O.S. forum. Formula As 555.

33 Iancu Florian, “God Has Descended in Our House,” Formula As 496.

34 The “Formula As Foundation for Press and Culture” was started in April 2001 and is devoted, largely, to raising money and distributing donations for the people requesting assistance through the Formula As magazine.

35 Catalina Craciun, “Open Letter to All the Formula As Friends,” Formula As 584.

36 Monica Sauer, “Christmas in New York,” Formula As 546.

37 Liliana Taal, “The True Soul of This Country Speaks Through You [Formula As].” Formula As 461.

38 Sanziana Pop, “Letter of the Week,” Formula As 496.

39 The text appeared in Formula As 519 in the original English translation conducted by the magazine’s translators.

196

40 Quoted excerpt is in the Formula As’ translation.

41 The text was quoted from the magazine’s English translation of the “Health” forum, Formula As 518.

42 cf. Jenny Preece’s work on lurking.

43 Ilie Tudor, “A Simple Definition: ‘A Paper for the Soul.’” Formula As 500.

44 87 per cent of Romania’s population is Romanian Orthodox.

45 Traian Basescu, President of Romania, Inaugural Address at the Swearing In Ceremony before the Joint Chambers of the Romanian Parliament. November 2004.

46 Romanian emigrants first came to the United States in the early 1900 and settled in states such as Ohio, Michigan, and New Jersey. Subsequent waves continued throughout the rest of the century, including the ‘70s‐‘80s. Newer generations of Romanian emigrants seem to prefer Florida and the west coast.

47 Many defection stories would be broadcast through Radio Free Europe throughout the communist rule.

48 Crinuta Pop, “We’re People Too, Even Though We’re Disabled,” Formula As 456.

49Constantin Botoncea “A Man in the Street: Positive Feedback and Negative Reactions,” Formula As 454.

50 Internet research scholars routinely employ a broad definition of “text” in that it encompasses communication artifacts (including but not limited to the written word such as images, sound, or any multimedia combination) (Mitra 1999).

51 Sanziana Pop, “A Miracle: Ten Years of Formula As,” Formula As 500.

52 I borrow this term from Durkheim (1965/1912) who uses it to describe strong community bonds (qtd. in Chayko 2002, 69).

53 Sanziana Pop, “Let’s Go to Heaven Together as well,” Formula As 597.

54 Dancila Cornelia, “My Family’s Magazine, Never Grow Old,” Formula As 413.

55 Mina Colibaba, “Fanica and His Friends.” Animal World, Formula As 443.

56 Catalina Craciun, “Open Letter to All the Friends of “Formula As,” Formula As 584.

57 Catalina Craciun, “Open Letter to All the Friends of “Formula As,” Formula As 584.

197

58 “Dear Magazine, You’ve Had a Good Heart and Hand, Your Page Was Lit by the Lord,” Formula As 632.

59 Iustina Bac, “Now Sunday Tastes Differently,” Formula As 536. [italics mine]

60 Arina Riviere, “A Band‐Aid on My Broken Heart,” Formula As 657 [italics mine].

61 Sanziana Pop, “Reply to ‘A Romanian Woman in America,’” Formula As 356.

62 Maria Iagar, “After Just One Session [of massage therapy] I Recovered,” Formula As 455.

63 Catalina Craciun, “Open Letter to All the Formula As Friends,” Formula As 584.

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221 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Mihaela Victoria (Duca) Nocasian was born in Bucharest, Romania. She received a B.A. from the University of Bucharest in Romanian and English (1989), an M.A. in

Communication from Wake Forest University (1998)—where she was a Fulbright

Scholar‐‐ and a Ph.D. in Communication with an emphasis in Theory and Research from

Florida State University (2005). Growing up in a non‐democratic society was the spark that fueled her interest in the study of the power of language and the ways in which we construct our social reality through our rhetorical practices. Mihaela Nocasian has more than ten years experience teaching students at various levels and from different cultures.

During her graduate work in the United States Mihaela Nocasian taught undergraduate students in the areas of public speaking, communication theory, rhetorical theory, and computer‐mediated communication. In her research, Mihaela Nocasian’s area of interest features rhetoric, new communication technologies‐‐particularly Internet studies, and civic culture.

222