Virtual Communities

The term virtual community was coined by Howard Rheingold, in his 1993 book of that name, to refer to those connections primarily forged between people through the medium of their computers. Rheingold's book, subtitled Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, drew on his long involvement in the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a group characterizing itself as “the birthplace of the online community movement.” Virtual communities center on the use of various forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC), a novel phenomenon in the early 1990s but now a pervasive feature of life across large parts of the world. The “affordances” of information and communication technologies give rise to different forms of virtual community, some synchronous (e.g., chat rooms), others asynchronous (e.g., e-mail discussion lists). Of course, virtual communities existed long before the Internet. The members of the Royal Society in eighteenth-century England formed a virtual community through their correspondence on the scientific questions of the day. For all its centrality, the term community has proved to be one of the most elusive and ambiguous notions in the entire sociological lexicon. It is not surprising, therefore, that virtual community has become a catch-all phrase for the new forms of culture and sociality predicated on Internet technologies. It is often associated with consumer culture in two senses: as emerging to fill the space left by the individualizing effects of consumer culture and as creating new markets and ways of consuming.

Rheingold's book is an important document for students of the history and sociology of the Internet. He identified some of the key issues for subsequent studies. He saw how many features of online relationships were much the same as in real life, only without the intermediary of the body so critical in everyday, face-to-face conduct. He understood how CMC radically concentrated time and space and led to questioning of established social divisions and [Page 1505]sources of authority. He remained optimistic about the potential of emergent virtual communities for positive forms of online activism while recognizing the threats posed by “disinformocracy.”

Virtual communities invite comparison with the real kinds (Smith and Kollock 1999). The difficulty in pursuing the comparison is that community is one of those essentially contested concepts that lie at the heart of the sociological tradition. Consensus about its meaning is absent. Further, as politicians' discourse constantly reminds us, community is a morally loaded term. Conventionally, sociologists have regarded community as founded on geographical propinquity, giving rise to shared interests between people and the potential for common affective responses and sense of belonging. Older definitions emphasized geographical place, especially the neighborhood. Newer conceptions stressed how communities are based in common interests and identities (e.g., through work, pastimes, and “communities of practice”). The subjective, imaginary dimension, the sense of being part of a “we,” has been an important element of many communities, up to and including the state. It was this element of human connection that attracted Rheingold in 1993 to the term community. However, as he later admitted, if he had read Barry Wellman's work earlier, his book would have been titled Online Social Networks.

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