Are Virtual Communities True Communities? Examining the Environments and Elements of Community

Abstract

Critiques of modern societies often cite the loss of community as a result of weak connections with local places and changing modes of social interactions. We will argue that both the loss of community and attempts to regain community can be understood as a series of debates progressing from one environment to another. Specifically, community was seen as being lost from its original environment, the local place, typically a village or a residential neighborhood. Then came the claim that community could be regained in the environment of shared space, typically voluntary associations or work groups. The most recent candidate for regaining community is the digital environment of cyberspace. Using existing research, we seek to determine if virtual communities are indeed true communities. Can the virtual community provide two of the core elements—common ties and social interaction—without identification with place? We explore each of these environments as we search for community and the qualities necessary to establish community, finding that virtual communities are spatially liberated, socially ramified, topically fused, and psychologically detached, with a limited liability. In this sense, if we understand community to include the close, emotional, holistic ties of Gemeinschaft, then the virtual community is not true community. That does not necessarily imply, however, that Internet relationships are the antithesis of true community relationships. The Internet may either reduce community, reinforce community, or provide a weak replacement.