Community in Cyber Space?: The Role of the Internet in Facilitating and Maintaining a Community of Live Music Collecting and Trading

Abstract

The interactions based around the taping, trading, and collecting of live music performances have evolved into a phenomenon that may aptly be referred to as a community. What is most remarkable about this is that the vast majority of these activities now take place over the Internet. The emergence of virtual community is addressed by sociological theories that address the increasingly disembedded nature of social structure. This article is a participant observation that specifically examines if trading is indeed a community, and demonstrates how this is facilitated through the proliferation of the Internet and other technologies. The findings reveal a phenomenon that does exhibit many characteristics of a traditional community; though acceptance or rejection of the notion of virtual community is contingent upon which definition of community one uses.