Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Largely due to Rheingold (1993) , the term “virtual communities” has become the most popular way to identify interpersonal and Internet-based communication networks to form, maintain, or extend social relationships. In 1993, Rheingold was writing ethnographies (→  Ethnography of Communication ) of the communities anticipated by pioneers such as Licklider (1968) , who imagined the →  Internet as the source of new meeting places and as a revolutionary advance in communication capability. For social scientists, virtual communities represent a new platform for the observation and testing of theories of interpersonal communication behavior ( Sproull & Kiesler 1986 ), structuration ( Orlikoski 1992 ; DeSanctis 1994 ), and identity ( Turkle 1995 ; →  Personal Communication by CMC ). A distinctive literature employing various combinations of underlying theories has emerged (e.g., Kollock & Smith 1999 ; Wellman & Gulia 1999 ). Efforts to sharpen the definition of virtual communities such as the one by Wellman and Gulia (1999) illustrate the difficulty of distinguishing between a network of communicating individuals and the various concepts of “community” – a term that brings with it many connotations of mutuality, trust, and identity. It is reasonable, however, to exclude some communication modalities as having no relation to the idea of “virtual community.” For example, ... log in or subscribe to read full text