Virtual communities and social capital

Putnam has developed a theory of social capital to explain the effect of decreasing community participation and civic engagement on declining institutional performance. Subsequently, there has been much speculation as to whether emerging virtual communities can counteract this trend. The authors apply the findings of computer-mediated communication and virtual communities to the networks, norms, and trust of social capital and also examine the possible effects of virtual communities on the privatization of leisure time. They conclude that social capital and civic engagement will increase when virtual communities develop around physically based communities and when these virtual communities foster additional communities of interest. Through a preliminary analysis, the authors identify potential communities of interest including education, exchange of general community information, and opportunities for government and political participation. They conclude with a discussion of current trends and research needs. hue lack of citizen participation in the community has come under scrutiny recently.1 Although this trend might have started at least a century ago (Wellman & Gulia, in press), it is only lately that the implications of this decline in community participation have been more fully explored. Besides negatively affecting a person’s affiliation with his or her own neighborhood, this lack of community has been cited as a major reason for the decline in civic involvement that helps communities operate (Putnam, 1993). Putnam has developed a theory of social capital that attempts to explain the relationship between citizen engagement in the community and the performance of the government and other social institutions. Although Putnam’s theory is by no means unchallenged (Greeley, 1996), it has focused attention on understanding the processes that lead to increasing community involvement. Concurrently, researchers and community activists have observed that communities, or what appear to be communities, are developing over computer-mediated communication (CMC) such as electronic mail (e-mail), interactive chat rooms, computer conferences, an