Introduction: On Conceptualizing Community

Abstract

At the very moment that there is talk about the loss of “real” community, many theorists, researchers, and practitioners – groups who don't typically “speak” to one another – all appear to share a common interest in the community enabled by the Internet (Jones, 1995, 1998; Kiesler, 1997; Loader, 1997; Mitchell, 1995; Rheingold, 1993; Shields, 1996; Smith & Kollack, 1999). These discussions range from the need to redefine community, based on the dynamic and seemingly elusive qualities of virtual community; to concern for appropriate indices and measures for describing a community in the process of rapid change; to efforts to identify the nature of users, how they are interacting, and their needs. Several features of the virtual world contribute to the recent proliferation of references to, and the self-referencing of particular sites as, virtual communities. These features include: (a) an image of a community to which a core of users/participants returns over time, with whom a community might be built out (providing feedback, lending a volunteer hand, contributing to discussions and activity, etc.); (b) distinctions between physical and virtual communities in terms of temporal and spatial possibilities; and (c) the multilayered quality of communicative space that allows for the mingling of different conversations, the linking of conversations across Web sites, and the archiving of discussions, information, and the like, that permits social exchange around site resources at a future time. In this chapter, we explore the ways individuals and groups are using the Internet to build communities.