The Scattered Members of an Invisible Republic: Virtual Communities and Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics

Abstract

Communities, whether they are "real" or virtual, are mediated by interpretation. One's place within a community is also constituted by an ongoing metaphoric "reading" through which one attempts to understand what others within the community say and do. Virtual communities are unique in making such reading explicit through further acts of writing: participants form their communities through public performances of writing, reading, and interpreting of texts. Any analysis of virtual communities must take into account both the exchange of meaning through texts and the fact of a mediating distance between participants. The hermeneutic theories of Paul Ricoeur can support an analysis of these activities, which accounts for temporal and spatial distance in the exchange of the community's texts. Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory can be used to describe the process that drives virtual communities, which makes them into forums that attempt to "connect the scattered members of an invisible republic" [1, p. 43] in an electronic world.