Rationale for Internet-Mediated Communities

This article discusses the theoretical foundations of Internet-mediated communities (IMCs), i.e., groups of people who share interests and make use at some time of the same Internet tools (for instance, a web site-the special concern of this study) in order to exchange information about the shared interests. From November 1999 to February 2001 a rationale was developed and validated for such communities and their web sites, due to the lack of theory unification in the field. The authors carried out five case studies of widely known IMCs, seven action researches with established groups of people who were given customized web sites to mediate their interaction, and an exploratory research supported by open-ended interviews with those groups. Additional empirical research is now needed to apply the theoretical grounds here developed to varying IMC contexts and to different communication technologies.