Virtual Communities: What Makes a Virtual Community?

Researching into online communities has been pretty interesting experience as I get to see myself in the articles and journals that I am reading about. The concept of communities is nothing new. But online communities on the other hand is pretty new, only coming into fruition when the internet did in about the last three decades. Before the internet, the formation of communities was heavily based on geographical proximity because it was required for people to meet each other face-to-face so that they could interact with each other. But with the internet having the ability to connect people all over the world at anytime, geological proximity was no longer a factor that influenced if a community could be created. Being online, virtual communities are able to function in both real time and asynchronously. The benefit of a virtual community running in real time means that members are able to talk and be more involved within the group. When members become more involved in the group, they are investing their time into the group and the people within it. With the rise of social media apps, it has never been easier to join a community of like minded people who share the same passions.

Although there are distinctions in how they differ from one another, they share many core elements that allow them to function. Within Anatoliy Gruzd's journal, Online Communities, he references a study done by Benedict Anderson where Anderson identified three elements that were vital to the formation of community, but were also applicable to virtual communities. Anderson found that

"the presence of common language, temporality(shared history), and 'high centers' (community leaders)"

are the three common factors that are key in the formation of group. A shared language amongst the group means that they share similar interests, backgrounds, values, and terminology that are understood within the group. A community develops because all the members of the group share experiences that they are able to go back to that builds upon their relationship with each other. Being online, the internet keeps a reliable and accurate history of what is shared with the group and how people have interacted with each other. Then the leaders that we have in our virtual communities are our group admins and moderators that filter through and make sure that the members of the group are abiding by the rules.

The shared language between individuals is what brings people together and what causes individuals to seek others out. People naturally seek out others who share the same interest, background, or values. Having a common interest makes it easier to build a relationship because both individuals value the same things. As brought up in the journal from Gruzd and Anderson, communities also develop slang and terminology that only members of the group would understand. Slang and terminology develop as a byproduct of the members growing closer to one another. They are able to understand what other members in the group are referring to because it is something that is only used within the group. Sharing similar slang and terminology allows for the members of the group to feel more connected to one another because it is something exclusive that they share and not just anyone will understand it. Many of the social interactions within the virtual community produces social norms and rituals that can only be found and understood within the group.

Anderson's second element to a community's success is the temporality or the history of the group. The shared history of the group is important as it acts as an archive to how the group developed as well as being a shared experience between the older members of the group. This shared experience of the group being built gives them an identity that connects each other as well as being able to share the group with new members. The benefit of having a group be online is that the platform will usually keep a record of text posts and other content that is shared amongst the group. Having a shared history that all members have access to allows them to be acclimated to the culture in the group.

Leaders in any group play a crucial role as the third element for the creation of a community. The members of the group are dependent on the leader as they influence the social dynamics of the group. In most cases there are not concrete rules or structure in virtual communities, so it is up to the leaders to moderate the group to ensure that the rules that they create are being enforced. Depending on the virtual community, leaders play a crucial role in the way their community functions. It is very common now with social media that virtual communities are formed because some people are looked up to as influencers. These online influencers have the attention of thousands and even millions of people who in many ways idolize them. Even though they may have not been directly responsible for the creation of the community, they are responsible for bringing them together. They are directly placed as the leader and can be responsible with how their community acts.

Again, the concepts of communities are nothing new. Communities have been formed since the early stages of human civilization with the main purpose of survival, but we now live in a time where we do not have to worry about that as much. With the internet at our fingertips, virtual communities have never been easier to join. We use them in our everyday lives to keep in touch with people, keep out interests relevant, as well as for our entertainment.

Gruzd A. (2018) Online Communities. In: Alhajj R., Rokne J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Social Network

Analysis and Mining. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7131-2_81