Community Networks: Where Offline Communities Meet Online

By Andrea L. Kavanaugh, John Millar Carroll, Mary Beth Rosson, T. Zin, Debbie Denise Reese. J. Comput. Mediat. Commun., 2005

298 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study explores the design and practice of the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV), a mature networked community. We describe findings from longitudinal survey data on the use and social impact of community computer networking. The survey data show that increased involvement with people, issues and community since going online is explained by education, extroversion and age. Using path models, we show that a person's sense of belonging and collective efficacy, group memberships, activism and social use of the Internet act as mediating variables. These findings extend evidence in support of the argument that Internet use can strengthen social contact, community engagement and attachment. Conversely, it underlines concern about the impact of computer networking on people with lower levels of education, extroversion, efficacy, and community belonging. We suggest design strategies and innovative tools for non-experts that might increase social interaction and improve usability for disadvantaged and underrepresented individuals and groups.

Subfields: Communication, Sociology and Political Science, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/12a9dba2c6c5e7bdc80d5736badb83a287e81cf4

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Citations in the corpus

The role of online and offline features in sustaining virtual communities: an empirical study (2007, background): “For instance, people who interact online in virtual communities generally got to know each other originally from a face-to-face context, or, if they have not met already, expect that they could encounter each other face-to-face in the future (Kavanaugh et al., 2005).”
Spatially Bounded Online Social Networks and Social Capital: The Role of Facebook (2006, background): “concluded that computer-mediated interactions have had positive effects on community interaction, involvement and social capital (Hampton & Wellman, 2003; Kavanaugh & Patterson, 2001; Kavanaugh et al., 2005).”
Social media and citizen engagement: A meta-analytic review (2016, background): “In contrast, some of the most popular social media platforms mainly tap onto existing offline networks of social ties, which has been shown to mitigate against some of the problems present in online interactions such as incivility and free-riding, while promoting reciprocity and commitment (Kavanaug”