Towards Virtual Communities in Rural Australia1

The farming community, in many parts of Australia, is widely dispersed and heavily dependent upon communication both within the community and outside. In this preliminary paper we explore the information needs and information flows of the rural sector and consider the farm as the potential focus of a virtual community. A virtual community may form a basis both for electronic commerce, in the traditional sense, and for rich telecommunications-mediated social activity. We describe factors apparently inhibiting the implementation of rural virtual communities in Australia and, finally, we introduce a research project which will evaluate a model of inhibiting factors for the development of virtual communities within a real-world rural setting.