Social networks and the nature of communities

Abstract

If I had encountered sociologist Barry Wellman and learned about social network analysis when I first wrote about cyberspace cultures, I could have saved us all a decade of debate by calling them online social networks instead of virtual communities. Social networks predated the Internet, writing and even speech. Indeed, humans are not the only creature that makes use of social networks. I metWellman, author of many social science journal articles about social networks; he had justwritten an insightful paper comparing online social networks to virtual communities. Think of the people you encounter regularly - every month, let us say - your biological family, the people from your job you hang out with, your congregation, service organisation, the people in your neighbourhood who would loan or borrow things, the people you talk with regularly on the telephone in the course of your professional or social activities, the delivery people who show up every day at your business, the people you e-mail regularly. © 2006 Springer.