Elitist Communities

The history of elites is in many ways a history of networking—a history of wielding strength by making and maintaining powerful connections, whether through military alliances, strategic marriages, or involvement in business, political, and voluntary associations such as secret societies and fraternal organizations. While today's ubiquitous Internet and the creation of user-generated content capabilities accompanying the evolution of Web 2.0 have been hailed as democratic platforms that wield potential for flattening traditional social hierarchies, the development of applications to produce and manage social connections in this context has also been taken up as an opportunity to create exclusive communities for society's most influential people, commonly known as elites. A small niche of social networking Websites focuses on providing a place for elites to meet and connect with each other in a private online environment where their social qualifications have already been vetted. These sites act as gated communities in the virtual world, promising members that once inside, they will find themselves in a familiar and trustworthy setting. Such organizations, while technologically new, are not sociologically novel. Rather, they represent the most recent means by which social, political, and business elites create and maintain networks of socially approved, and useful, connections.

Current studies of current and historical explorations of elitist communities have been inspired by a renewed interest in network theory by scholars in fields such as history, sociology, and political science. The phenomenon of elite social networking Websites can be explored in the current landscape of online elitist communities. These exclusive communities have been compared with the more open social networking forums, and research indicates that with more exclusivity comes limitation to the dynamics that have made online communities so popular. While scholarship in this area, particularly in respect to online social networking for elites, is limited, the available research presents a general understanding of the relationships among structure, functionality, and social capital in elitist communities.