[Air-l] Birth of virtual communities

[John Campbell]

Emile,

Are you only interested in asynchronistic online community formations such 
as Yahoo! news groups or mailing lists?  Or are you also considering chat 
rooms on IRC, AOL, and even ICUII?  If you are interested in chat rooms, I 
discuss the birth of an online community on IRC in my book, Getting It On 
Online.  The study focuses on three gay-male chat rooms on IRC and, to an 
extent, their historical development.  Notably, one of the chat rooms --  
#gaymusclebears -- came into existence when a group of individuals chatting 
on #gaymuscle felt that the existing community did not adequately reflect 
their erotic ideals.



You could also look at the proliferation of web-sites speaking to ever more 
specific identities.  For instance, there has been an explosion of web-sites 
oriented towards the gay-male "bear" phenomenon (see Bear411.com), and more 
recently, a growing number of web-sites that speak to a distinct subcultural 
group within the "bear community" known as "musclebears" (see 
BigMuscleBears.com or BeefyBoyz.com).  Many of these sites include various 
chat functions and internal messaging services for members and could be 
identified as vibrate online communities.



Very best,

John Campbell



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Radhika Gajjala" <radhika at cyberdiva.org>
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 6:15 AM
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Birth of virtual communities



You could find moderators of various lists (past
and still existing) and get lots of narrative
data about this sort of things.

and then you could find the participants of those lists -

narrow it down to a few lists of your interest
though or you will be overwhelmed by the volume
of what you get

;-)

r

>Hello everyone,
>
>I'm looking for examples of virtual communities that gave bearth to
>other virtual communities. I mean that the members of one virtual
>community (a mailing-list for instance) decided to have two virtual
>communities instead of one. The first one is about a subject and the
>second one is about another subject (linked to the first one, more
>specific, for instance).
>
>Have you ever heard of cases like this?
>
>Many thanks.
>
>Regards,
>
>Emilie Marquois-Ogez
>
>----------------------------------------------
>
>Emilie Marquois-Ogez
>
>Doctorante en informatique
>
>France Telecom R&D
>38-40, rue du Général Leclerc
>92794 Issy-les-Moulineaux
>Cedex France
>
>Equipes de recherche :
>- TECH/EASY/DIAG (France Telecom R&D)
>- Systèmes à objets coopératifs (IRIT - UT1)
>
>Tel : +33 (01) 45 29 81 91
>Fax : +33 (01) 45 29 69 26
>
>Page Web : http://www.univ-tlse1.fr/ceriss/soc/perso/marquois/Emilie%
>20MARQUOIS.html
>
>
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-- 
Radhika Gajjala
Associate Professor
School of Communication Studies
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403

http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik ; http://cyberdiva.typepad.com/teach/

http://www.cyberdiva.org
_________

or to glance at multiple blogs

http://www.cyberdiva.org/cyberdivalive.html
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