Why are communities in conflict?

[Micheal]

Please explain why communities are in conflict. There is a range of communities.
Geographic communities, Communities or culture and Communities of organisation.
I have given you some information for your answer. Please spend a moment to comment.

[Micheal]

Jews.

[Winston Chau]

There are many types of communities: there are user forums and more permanent communities – some “walled” and some open. Blogs are absolutely living, breathing communities, where comment discussions are oftentimes more valuable than the content itself. There are also ad-hoc communities that result from people coming together to discuss something — picture a “tweetchat” that comes together to discuss something. These are all communities, and although they are different in formation process, duration, barriers to entry (sign-up, pay wall, professional qualifications), and other aspects — they are all built with a purpose of bringing people together who share an interest and passion. When passionate individuals get together and engage with each other, it’s like music to people like me. A shared passion inspires engagement, action, reaching goals, discussion, discourse… and conflict.

Goal and culture misalignment: Sometimes people may join a conversation because they actually have a different, or even conflicting objective. For example, there may be a conversation about social media for public relations professionals, and one person may be there to pitch his / her services. That’s clearly a goal that’s different from that of other attendees’, and a cultural norm that’s different from the rest of the community. This will cause conflict.

Method misalignment: Someone may propose a way of dealing with an issue that’s fundamentally different from what others are suggesting. For example, there may be a Facebook group dedicated to saving the rain forest, and one person may propose to save the rain forest by eradicating a group of monkeys. This will cause conflict.

Group dynamics: In any group, there are dynamics, and dynamics differ for each group. Each private, moderated community has its star contributors,nay-sayers, and even trolls and spammers (who hopefully get kicked out on a regular basis). Each public community or social network (Meetup group, Facebook page, Twitter discussion) also has its participants, although the less structured (i.e. Twitter) have a more transient cast of characters. Group dynamics (and even egos at times) drive a lot of the communication structure. Is there a pecking order? Twitter communities are a lot more fluid, and there may not be a pecking order per-se, but it’s certainly an “attention economy” where the ones with most social capital get more traction.

Conversational norms: This is related to above, but has more to do with how the platform is used. What are the conversational norms? Unspoken (and spoken) rules of conduct? I’ve seen people get completely eviscerated for using the platform “the wrong way”, even though they may have had good intentions. If someone with a relatively high pecking order jumps on someone for violating the norms, he / she may mobilize the community (whether or not rightfully so), causing conflict and a power imbalance.

Troll-like motivations: Of course, some people are in it for notoriety and crave unproductive conflict. They post, tweet, comment with the sole purpose of riling up others and getting the best of them. Or they may just be spamming and incessantly linking to their homepage.