Virtual Community

A virtual community is a group of individuals who are connected through the use of information technologies, such as computers, mobile telephones, and the Internet. Attributed to Howard Rheingold and his book, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, the term is now associated with a broad range of online interactions among groups of people. Although virtual communities are now most often associated with the World Wide Web, electronic interactions began with earlier technologies, such as electronic bulletin boards, Usenet groups, chat rooms, and e-mail. Thus, virtual communities are seen to exist in cyberspace, the realm of activity created by computer networks. Members of these communities may also meet and know each other in the offline world. It is not necessary that members of a virtual community have strong links to each other, and a given person may participate in a community regularly, irregularly, or only for a period of time. There will also be variation in levels of participation and the range of topics discussed, from pure entertainment communities to those engaged in serious political discussions. The term community is then used in relation to virtual communities to refer more to communities of interest than to a group of individuals living and acting in close contact with each other.

Virtual communities are also seen as holding the potential for broad social movements unbounded by national borders. Rheingold argues that the technology enabling these communities can provide substantial intellectual, social, commercial, and political leverage for ordinary citizens, but this depends on their ability to learn about how to utilize these technologies. One of the most well-known political movements supported by use of the Internet is that of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. Information on the uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army against the Mexican government was circulated on the Internet and Usenet lists, and various interested organizations collected news and made it available online. This led to international awareness and an increase in support for the movement both inside and outside of Mexico. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have highlighted the ways in which actors in one country can gain the attention of actors outside their country to support a domestic cause. This kind of activity is facilitated by access to the Internet and the creation of virtual communities to share information about, and build support for, a cause. The Zapatista movement is also linked to a broader anti-neoliberalism movement that gained force in many parts of the world in the late 1990s. One major event that marked the potential of this movement was the protests against the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999. This protest involved significant organization through online discussions.

Analysts of the use of virtual networks more generally have argued that the virtual interaction of individuals can enable new modes of operation that are more effective than organizational structures of the past. The work of John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt emphasizes the ability of people networked together through technology to act in a nonhierarchical manner to achieve significant goals. In particular, they emphasize the use of networks by armies to perform maneuvers more efficiently and by terrorists to mobilize and conduct attacks. Business analysts have similarly argued that networked teams working together across long distances can be as productive as teams working together in an office environment. Web-enabled software programs such as Groove have been developed for the express purpose of facilitating virtual team project work. In this manner, technology-enabled communities can be used to facilitate group processes, whether they are for the public or private sector.

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