ABSTRACT
Internet-based information and communication technologies have enabled the emergence of new types of communicative practices. Traditionally, establishing a community entails live interaction and people meeting face to face. Digital communities (also known as online communities or virtual communities or social networks) are groups of people who share common interests and interact with each other. The term “online community” and its synonyms are used to connote communities in which electronic media facilitates communication and, in particular, for communities where interaction takes place over the Internet. Probably the most well-known definition has been provided by Rheingold, who defines virtual communities as “. . . social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace” [1]. Contrary to physical communities, which are usually confined to one location, virtual communities supersede geographical constraints. Physical communities are usually much smaller than digital ones. In recent years, online social networks have experienced exponential growth in membership; the user population in some of them is in the tens of thousands.
