Dichotomy of the Personal and the Public in Virtual Communities

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the characteristics of online communities in the virtual space. The study is based on the review of manuscripts on social interactions within online and offline communities in social reading of this term, and represents the key characteristics, similarities and differences of interaction in such communities. The analysis of sources suggests that online and real (offline) communities are largely similar in their features, and that virtual communities as self-organizing networks of interactive interaction, like real social communities, are formed on the basis of the common interests and goals of their participants. Real and virtual communities are located in the same social space, virtual communities take on some characteristics of traditional ones, and vice versa. The possibility of supplementing or replacing spatial connections in real communities with virtual interaction forms the socalled convergent communities. Like virtual ones, they are characterized by a high emotional involvement of community members in the communication process, but at the same time, they lose some of the properties traditionally inherent in communities due to a single territory, history, culture, and have a high potential to form a modified, virtual environment of interaction.