Summary of Virtual communities as communities: Net surfers don't ride alone
by Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia.

This article discusses the question of whether communities can exist online at all, and whether people can create and maintain meaningful relationships online. The supporters of the concept of online community say that it is a powerful new means of communication that can only strengthen interpersonal ties, while the detractors say that the Internet takes the place of face-to-face communications, leading to a loss of contact with or in extreme cases an escape from the real world. Wellman and Gulia take a positive approach to the question, and note that social networks or communities include not only ties within neighborhood and kin, but also friends and workmates who are not necessarily geographically close. They argue that these ties were maintained by phone, cars, airplanes and other technology before the advent of the Internet and that the Net will only serve to support these same ties while allowing other new community ties to be formed.

Wellman and Gulia consider seven questions pertaining to the development and sustenance of communities online, addressed below:

1. Are relationships on the Net narrow or broadly based? What kind of support does one get from virtual community?
They find that most community ties, online or otherwise are narrowly specialized, except for kin and very close friends. This means that a person generally goes to different members of eir social network for different means of support, such as financial or emotional support. The Net serves well as a medium for information swapping, since groups tend to form a round similar interests and heterogeneous network members provide a more diverse set of "answers" to questions or requests for data. However, they also found that even information groups tend to be "supportive" since people are "naturally social." For example, users of the Third Age site noted that they were primarily interested in information, yet the most used features were email, forum and conferencing, all social activities.

2. How does the Net affect people's ability to maintain weaker, less intimate relationships and to develop new ones? In what ways are the many weak ties on the Net useful?
Online community members tend to experience the Net as "one-on-one," rather than as a loosely affiliated group, since they read requests for help or information alone at their terminal. Wellman and Gulia observe that bystanders are more likely to help when they are the only ones around, and less likely when there are many others. The communities also reward each other for assistance by, for instance, responding , more quickly to an "active" community member's request (that is, one who participates fully and answers others' questions often. This ties into the question of reciprocity, below.
The Net also supports ties between people with heterogeneous social characteristics, which often are not supported in 'real-life' communities.

3. Is there reciprocity online and attachment to virtual communities? Reciprocity is a feature of most "real-life" communities as a way of sharing resources, but since online communities consist of mostly weak ties, between people who have not and may never meet face to face, it appears to be difficult to "enforce" ordinary community norms of reciprocity. However, reciprocity does take place as a means of expressing an identity and respect from others, even in cases where expressing identity is potentially dangerous (as in hacker communities). People who are attached to the community though frequent participation or contribution are more likely to provide assistance, even if it's unlikely that the recipient will return the favor, since they are aware that in the future they may be in the position to be helped by another community member.

4. Are strong, intimate ties possible online? In order to be strong, a relationship needs to exhibit some subset of these characteristics: n a sense of it being intimate and special n a voluntary investment in the tie n a desire for companionship with partner i. as frequently as possible ii. in multiple social contexts iii. over a long period of time n a sense of mutuality i. with other partner's needs known and supported n with some shared social characteristics In real life, many strong ties do not exhibit all these characteristics. Additionally, much of the online contact is among people who have ties offline as well. Wellman and Gulia quote Walther in saying that online interaction simply slows the process of relationships growing closer and does not "preclude" intimacy. They note that participation in online communities increases when the community is perceived to be long-lived. This could be true in real life as well -- their real-life study of Torontonians indicated that only 27% of people's 6 closest real-life ties were the same a decade later.
On the other hand, the text-only medium facilitates misunderstandings and miscommunication, which could derail a relationship. The specializations of groups, which often frown on conversations outside the given topic, such as the BMW discussion list, may also limit getting to know others intimately.

5. How does virtual community affect real-life community?
Or, as seemed to be of great concern a few years back, do people turn away from their real life existence because they become obsessed with their online relationships?
Their answer is primarily "no." They note that participants in online communities may invest more overall time in communities as a whole, rather than reducing time spent in real-life communities in favor of online ones. Further, most real-life social networks are not maintained strictly through face-to-face communications but by telephone, which (like the Internet) used to be seen as "exotic and depersonalized." These are therefore further supported by online communications. In some instances, members of a close online social network are integrated into the offline network through offline contact (as through addicts' support groups and the example of the wedding guests).

6. does the Net increase community diversity?
Unlike the idealized vision of the village as community, most Western social networks consist of people who are "limited" members in multiple communities, with often shifting memberships, which provide a more diverse network than otherwise. The relative lack of social and physical cues also make it harder to determine the social characteristics of other members, leading to a more heterogeneous group. This means a richer diversity of answers to questions posed to the group. However, since groups are often narrowly based around a certain shared characteristic, like a hobby or illness, this can sometimes lead to less diversity in the community.

7. Are virtual communities 'real' communities?
Although Wellman and Gulia hesitate to come right out and say it, their answer is yes. However, they waver between the idea of virtual communities as those that are created and sustained wholly (or at least primarily) online and virtual communities as offline communities that are maintained partially online. They note that the Internet helps maintain ties between people who cannot meet frequently face to face, with its asynchronous communication especially useful for those relationships that cross time zones, which applies more to social ties existing prior to the Internet. However, they also note that relationships are based more on shared interests, rather than shared characteristics, making communities are more heterogeneous and applying more to communities that are developed solely online.

Summary of Virtual communities as communities: Net surfers don't ride alone by Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia.

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Summary of Virtual communities as communities: Net surfers don't ride alone
by Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia.