Browsing by Author "Palmu, Minna"

The aim of this study is to examine online volunteers views and experiences about online volunteering. The purpose is to investigate how interaction and presence based online volunteering is defined, how it is operated and what kind of requirements it sets for volunteers. In addition my interest is to examine how social inclusion and virtual communality reflects in the context of online volunteering and how it can be studied in the field of traditional volunteering. Previous studies suggest that many people are active to volunteer and volunteering can be considered to be very meaningful not only to the individual who volunteers but to the society as well. Volunteering is also suggested to increase the feeling of social inclusion. It has been said that online volunteering is a new trend of traditional volunteering which opens a new context of action; virtual world. There are many stereotypical images about online volunteers such as the image of them being young of age and technologically advanced. In reality online volunteers come from all age groups and possess very varied technical skills. Online volunteering is strongly linked with societal changes and technological development, which opens a great diversity how online volunteering can be operated. The data of this study consists of four interviews. All of the interviewees were from the Pelastakaa Lapset (Save the Children) organization. Interviews were conducted as theme interviews and they were transcribed and analyzed according to the principles of content analysis. Based on this research online volunteering in Pelastakaa Lapset organization could be defined somewhere between the “complete” and “ traditional / virtual” definition types. Online volunteering was conducted partly via the internet from home via computer and partly on site. The main operating model was two-on-two or group discussions in virtual world. Since online volunteering in this concept was based on interaction and presence it set some requirements for the volunteers. The volunteers were required to be able to act in visual virtual forums but mostly they were required to know how to listen, support, to be present and offer guidance to the youth they were dealing with. There was evidence that online-volunteering can increase social inclusion and that an online-volunteer can be part of a virtual and media community. It was also shown that despite the different operating context online volunteering reflects elements from traditional volunteering field and it is fitting to study it under the same research paradigms that guide the traditional volunteering research.