Connecting Community: On- and Off-line

link to website

by Barry Wellman

Connecting Community: On- and Offline

"<> The Internet is no longer a separate world for the in-group; millions of people routinely come online. Rather than isolating users in a virtual world, the Internet extends community in the real world, and connects people through individualized and flexible social networks rather than fixed and grounded groups.
.....
The Internet and other new communication technologies are facilitating a basic change the nature of community from physically fixed and bounded groups to social networks, which I have started to call “networked individualism. These technologies are helping people to personalize their own communities. Instead of being rooted in their homes, cafés, and workplaces, people are becoming connected as individuals, available for contact anywhere and at anytime. Instead of being bound up in a neighborhood community where all know all, each person is becoming an individualized switchboard, linking a unique set of ties and networks. In a society where people rarely know friends of friends, there is both more uncertainty about who will be supportive under what circumstances, more need to navigate among partial social networks, and more opportunity to access a variety of resources. The Internet provides both communication and information resources to keep in greater touch with community members – from neighbors to cousins left behind in international migrations."