ABSTRACT
Throughout the world in recent years there has been a dramatic surge of activity by hundreds of community groups, social support networks, voluntary agencies and government organisations dedicated to exploring the transforming qualities of the new information and communications technologies (ICTs) such as the Internet for the development, economic regeneration and democratic stimulation of communities. A rich variety of social experiments in what we term community informatics (CI) are giving community activists, policy-makers and citizens a new set of possibilities for fostering social cohesion, strengthening neighbourhood ties, overcoming cultural isolation and combating social exclusion and deprivation. For some commentators the new media offer us the prospect of resuscitating community life from its torpid condition in the modern world (Rheingold 1994, Schuler 1996). Computer-mediated social relations are depicted as the conduit through which new forms of community structures and culture can evolve through spontaneous electronic interaction.
