Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the
Julie/Julia Project

Anita Blanchard, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community

Researchers, practitioners, and the media have used
the term virtual community to refer to vastly different computer-mediated
communication (CMC) groups. EBay, a soap opera newsgroup, The WELL, a website
for wristwatch enthusiasts, and more have all been referred to as virtual
communities (Baym, 1995; Boyd, 2002; Rheingold, 1993; Rothaermel & Sugiyama,
2001). Should blogs be considered virtual communities, too?

To answer this question, we must understand,
first, why virtual communities are considered important, and, second, what
the characteristics of a virtual community are. Then, we must determine if
at least some blogs have these characteristics.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogs_as_virtual.html