[Air-L] Interrelations of "Virtual Communities" and "Social Networks"

[Raquel Recuero]

Hello. :-)

My thesis was actually about virtual communities in social networks. The 
idea was to explore how communities would appear in social networks, but 
not considering communities just an structure (as part of literature 
does) but also as a group of people with strong ties and social capital 
( Rheingold's concept and sociological concepts).

The original point was to track the structure of a cluster in the 
network of a social network site (in the end I just analyzed Fotolog, 
but I started with weblogs and Orkut as well) through reciprocal social 
interaction within the users (comments in fotologs and weblogs and 
scraps in Orkut). Then, after observing the network structure and 
identifying the nodes in the cluster and their ties, I analyzed the 
comments contempt (interaction, social ties and social capital) and 
afterwards, the cluster structure within time (dynamics).

Well, there is a lot to talk about that but the conclusions were, basically:
- it is possibile to find at least 2 types of clusters in fotologs: One 
is created through interaction between users and represent a type of 
community very close to sociological concepts of VC. Those usually have 
strong ties and also strong social capital within users. The second one 
is created through association and is not related to social interaction 
at all.
- Most of the interaction-centered clusters are strongly related to 
geographic spaces and language;
- Users recognize these nodes as their "group of friends" most of the time.

So, I think virtual communities are a part of social networks as you 
said. But I also think there is a very important difference between the 
community (the users and their ties) and the space (or system) where 
they share these interactions. Orkut, for example, is *not* a virtual 
community but it can help people create one.  Most of the  "communities" 
in Orkut, for example, have no interaction between users at all, only 
spam. People join these communities as a statement (an addition to their 
profile, for example, to show likes and dislikes). So are those *real* 
communities? In my opinion, a VC is basically a group of people so, 
orkut communities may help them appear, but they are not a VC just 
because they exist.


[]s
Raquel