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B R I D G I N G T E M P O R A L A N D S P A T I A L
‘ G A P S ’
The role o f info r m ation a nd co mm un i c a tion
tec h no logies in d ef ining communiti es
Paul M.A. Baker and Andrew C. Ward
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
A b s t r a c t
The diffusion and use of digitally based information and communication
technologies (ICTs) offers the opportunity to redefine and reconceptualize
‘community’ both in terms of delineating the boundaries of community, as well
as the modes of communication used between members. The creation of an
electronic infrastructure, the Internet, permits the possibility of widespread
public communication that is inexpensive and relatively easy to access. A second
consequence builds on the rst; the emergence of (virtual) communities based
on geographically distributed sources of information production and exchange
rather than the geographic proximity of community members to one another.
An assessment of three cases of ICT-linked communities suggests that one
component of sustainability of these virtual communities of interest may be a
geographic linkage. While interests not based on geography are, at least at present,
more transitory and less important than those created by the use of the Internet
and similar kinds of ICTs. While we may join a virtual community because of an
interest we have, unless that interest affects us in our daily lives, in our lives as
physically-instantiated and geographically-centred individuals and citizens, there
is no good reason to believe that we will long continue an active membership
in the virtual community. Indeed, this is precisely what the three case studies
presented in this paper suggest.
K e y w o r d s
information and communication technologies (ICTs), community,
geography, virtual, social
C O M M U N I T I E S : V I R T U A L A N D R E A L
B O U N D A R I E S
The development of digitally based information and communication technologies
(ICTs) has had a number of important consequences, including a re-
conceptualization of what it means to be a ‘community’. Another consequence
of no small import is the role of these technologies as a facilitating component of
communication, and hence, a change agent. A third consequence, with special
Information, Communication & Society
ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/13691180210130789
Information, Communication & Society 5:2 2002 207–224
social signicance results from the transformation of what were originally closed:
electronic channels of information exchange designed for highly specialized
academic and governmental uses into commercially viable products.1This
transformation has sparked widespread public communication that is inexpensive
and relatively easy to access. In turn, this has permitted the development of
communities based on characteristics other than the traditional, geographic
proximity of community members to one another; communities where the
‘binding’ factor is one of common interests rather than a default condition of
sharing common space.
In this connection, Virilio, in his 1991 book The Lost Dimension, speculates that
the cities of today – the ‘Neo-geological . . . fossil of past societies whose tech-
nologies were intimately aligned with the visible transformation of matter’ (1991:
27) – will be displaced by electronic (virtual) constructs generated by use of the
Internet.2He writes:
From here on, urban architecture has to work with the opening of a new ‘technological space-
time’ . . . Instead of operating in the space of a constructed social fabric, the intersecting and
connecting grid of highway and service systems now occurs in the sequences of an imperceptible
organization of time in which the man/machine interface replaces the façades of buildings as
the surfaces of property allotments.
(Virilio 1991: 13–14; also see Ostwald 1997: 128–30)
Virilio’s 1991 speculations are well on their way to becoming reality in the
early part of the twenty-first century. The simple, well-defined geographical
boundaries and transportation-limited neighbourhoods are no longer the only
natural limits of community.3People geographically distant from one another are
able to readily communicate with each other4, and with institutions such as banks5
and department stores (see Ignatius 1999), though the mediation of the Internet.
Social organizations and interactions are no longer bound exclusively by the
traditional limitations of geography, but have been offered new possibilities within
the vast electronic matrix of cyberspace, the virtual world (see Rosenau 1992:
70–6).
A cursory review of the effects brought about by the public deployment of the
Internet seems to support many of these speculations. In virtual communities, the
role of the individual is shaped more by the intensity of shared interests than by
the mere coincidence of geographic proximity. The connection between
individuals in virtual communities is not one primarily characterized by shared
spatially proximate events like the weather turning stormy, the neighbours being
too loud or the trash collectors going on strike. Instead, what ties people together
is their interest in engaging in relationships of receiving, creating and exchanging
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certain kinds of information that are not tightly tied to their geographical location.
That I am interested in osteoporosis or recent developments with the International
Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor does not depend on my being in the USA,
or even on the face of the earth. To vary a remark by Hayles (1993: 72), the
boundaries of the virtual community are dened less by physical geography than
by feedback loops. Thus, my ‘location’ or ‘place’ in such collections of people
does not depend on my geographic location. Rather, if we think of people being
engaged with one another in terms of their desire to access, create and exchange
information, then one’s place in a virtual community can be thought of in terms
of one’s role within a large, complex web of engagements.6
Observing these effects has led some of the most ardent proponents of the
Internet to speculate that it can provide solutions to many of our social problems.
For example, Dertouzos, in his 1997 book What Will Be: How the New World of
Information Will Change Our Lives, suggests that use of the Internet will promote
what he calls ‘computer-aided peace’. ‘Once governments really begin using the
Information Marketplace to alter their internal practices,’ writes Dertouzos,
‘they will be a short step away from improving intergovernmental activity’. The
‘common bond reached through electronic proximity,’ he continues, ‘may help
stave off future flare-ups of ethnic hatred and national breakups’ (1997: 218,
282–3).7The same sentiment is echoed in Mulgan’s Connexity: How to Live in
a Connected World, where he writes that ‘[A] more connected world would be a
more moral one, or at least more sophisticated about morals’ (1997: 124). The
thread that connects Dertouzous, Mulgan, and writers like them is, as Giddens
notes, the idea that the ‘emptying of time and space’ (1991: 27), first by the
printed text and later by the ‘electronic signal’ ‘set in motion processes that
established a single “world” where none existed previously’. In this single world
‘humankind in some respects becomes a “we”, facing problems and opportunities
where there are no “others”’ (1991: 27).
While a more peaceful, moral world is surely something we would all
welcome, even a perfunctory examination of the history of science and technology
reveals that such claims almost always follow the introduction of new information
technologies. For instance, in 1898, in his book Submarine Telegraphs, the British
electrician and telegraph expert Charles Bright wrote:
An entirely new and much-improved method of conducting diplomatic relations between one
country and another has come into use with the telegraph wire and cable. The facility and
rapidity with which one government is now enabled to know the ‘mind’ – or, at any rate, the
professed mind – of another, has often been the means of averting diplomatic ruptures and
consequent wars during the last decade.
(quoted in Standage 1999: 161–2)
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Given that use of the telegraph, and other ‘modern’ forms of communication
such as the telephone, has not ‘created’ any sort of idyllic community, it seems
reasonable to be wary of claims that, by itself, increasing public use of the Internet
will create new, morally advanced communities.8
But if we cannot reasonably expect the creation of new and morally improved
communities from increasing public use of the Internet, what should we expect?
What we have already seen reported in the popular press and in professional
journals is that use of the Internet facilitates the tendencies of latent, or potential
communities to become self-aware by providing a way for individuals and groups
of individuals to regularly interact with one another. Use of the Internet
also provides opportunities for communities that already exist to expand and
better serve the members of that community. The Internet allows community
members to be anywhere and, to some degree, ‘any-when’, while retaining
their membership and the possibility of some measure of participation in their
community. It permits members of a geographically defined community to
interact and maintain the communications ow of ‘community interest’ without
requiring a concurrent proximate physical or temporal presence. Moreover, the
Internet allows people with temporary or permanent handicaps, who might
otherwise be excluded from community membership, to be active participants
(see Bock 1994).
However, in spite of all these advantages, what the Internet does no t do is create
a community if there are no pre-existing common interests. A central theme of
many political theorists, ancient and contemporary, is that people living in physical
proximity with one another do not, just by their proximity to one another,
constitute a community. What happens is that such people come together and
create communities because the satisfactions of many of their day-to-day interests
depend directly upon their cooperation within their shared physical environment.9
Once people form themselves into communities because their satisfaction of
shared interests requires co-operative efforts, additional interests arise because
of the dynamics of the community they have created. This, in turn, reinforces
the shared interests and creates new ones, and encourages further levels of
co-operation. The key point, though, is that communities do not simply spring
up for no reason. Rather, it is because of the co-operative satisfaction of shared
interests that are directly affected by the physical environment – and more
speci cally, because of real or perceived deciencies in the physical environment
– that geographically defined communities come into existence. What an
examination of virtual communities reveals is that, in terms of their origins, there
is no reason to suppose that they are any different than geographically-based
communities. Accordingly, without the affect of geographic proximity both
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demanding and permitting co-operative behaviour, a necessary condition for the
existence of virtual communities is the presence of some other kind of cohesive
force. What this strongly suggests is that while a pre-existing geographically
defined community can be reinforced and enhanced by use of the Internet,
ensuring that everyone is ‘hooked up to the Internet’ cannot, by itself, create a
community that does not, in one sense or another, already exist. Wires do not
a community make.
C O M M U N I T I E S – V I R T U A L A N D G E O G R A P H I C
The animadversions above require that we now directly address the question:
‘What exactly is a community?’ On the one hand, the word ‘community’ has, as
noted by Graham, ‘become a vogue word on almost every lip, a word now used,
or abused, to the point of meaningless’ (1999: 131; also see Talbott 1995: 63).
On the other hand, what these animadversions suggest is that the concept of
community can be operationally dened as a self-organizing group of individuals
whose organizing principle is the perceived need for co-operation so as to satisfy
a shared interest or set of interests (see Castells 1996: 32; Rheingold 1993: 4, 24;
Talbott 1995: 65). Sometimes communities will self-organize because of minimal
outside inuences – e.g. communities of scholars, and organized soccer teams
where the shared interests provides a gravity of attraction. Sometimes they will
self-organize in direct response to an invasive outside in uence, for example,
unions. Though frequently used in a geographic sense, there is nothing that
necessitates the meaning of ‘community’ be narrowly linked to a specic spatial
location. For instance, a metropolis is often best characterized functionally in
terms of shared services, governance and the economic relationships amongst its
constituent components. A similar story can be told of a community of subscribers
to a published magazine, journal or newspaper, or a community of people
who follow their favourite sports teams on television or radio.10 It is, in fact, the
story that Rogers tells about ‘the invisible college of rural sociology diffusion
researchers’ in Diffusion of Innovations. As Rogers writes:
In the 1950s, a decade after Ryan and Gross set forth the diffusion paradigm in 1943, an
explosion occurred in the number of diffusion studies by rural sociologists . . . New PhD’s in
rural sociology, produced at Madison, Columbia, and Ames in the 1950s, then became
professors at other state land-grant universities where they, in turn, established diffusion
research programs . . . The [resulting] invisible college of diffusion researchers in the rural
sociology tradition was a highly interconnected network of scholars who shared a common
theoretical-methodological framework.
(1995: 55)
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What makes Rogers’ ‘invisible college’ and other such collections of people
a community is a shared set of interests, the perceived need for, and interest
in co-operation to satisfy those interests as a community organizing principle,
and a set of guidelines for what counts as appropriate or inappropriate inter-
actions.11
Rogers’ observations about the role of shared experiences and academic
pursuits that generate communities of interest are ones that predate the current
fascination with the role of information communication technologies (ICTs) such
as the Internet in facilitating change. Likewise, the expression ‘community
networks’ appears in the literature of several disciplines and frequently is as
likely to refer to the communication ows between actors in a community, as to
digital technologies, and computer networks. Thus a discussion of ‘community
networks’ carries embedded in the phrase a conceptualization of the inter-linkages
between individuals both purposeful and coincidental (the connections) and well
as the content of the ow (communication and/or content).
We make a distinction then with ‘virtual community’ representing a special
case of ‘community network’, used in discussions of information infrastructures
(digital networks), that is non-spatially oriented. In this latter usage, a virtual
community connotes a gestalt of content, communication, context, as well as the
actors that ‘flow’ through a non-geographic space (‘cyberspace’, ‘webspace’,
‘the Net, etc.’) – the Internet matrix represented by an electronic co-ordinate
system used for routing communication protocols. Thus, virtual communities
can be thought of as digitally enabled information overlays that may or may
not map onto the extant geographic community networks, made possible by
the development and implementation of ICTs such as the Internet. A ‘virtual
community’ might have a proximate linkage (for instance, virtual community
of gay and lesbian users of AOL that identify with living in the city of Atlanta,
but may never have met face to face) or a purely conceptual linkage (the
community of members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) who
interact via threaded listserve computer mediated communication, but do not live
in a common geographic area). In either case, while the common binding element
‘interest’ has the dimension of intensity, a key component of sustainability
of these communities is the development of common set of practice, and beliefs.
The special case of communities in which electronic modalities of communities
allow for multiple types of connection lead to a new speculation: that there are
several components of ‘binding’ operative in the sustainability of communities.
In geographic communities there are multiple components of interest: cultural,
geographic, educational political etc. In a virtual community, the connection has
frequently substituted intensity of interest for the more common multiple points
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of interest traditionally found in geographic community. We speculate then that
the ecology (and thus sustainability) of communities may be inuenced by two sets
of factors: the intensity of interest exhibited by the members of the community,
which then relates to sustainability by key actors; and the diversity of interest, as
indicated by the multiple points of commonality (or connection). In the latter
case, the greater the number or kinds of connections, the greater the depth of a
community. So a community that has both intensity of interest as well as multiple
points of types of connection will be more likely to continue and develop as a an
ongoing entity.
T H R E E C A S E S T U D I E S O F V I R T U A L
C O M M U N I T I E S
To give empirical content to our remarks about the dynamics of virtual infor-
mation communities,12 we now turn to three cases of community/city-oriented
information networks as ‘precursor forms’ of virtual communities. In each case
we see that unless the virtual information infrastructure (i.e. virtual community)
links its inhabitants to one another by providing access to antecedently desired
information, or creates the need for new information based on antecedently
desired information, the community is likely to be abandoned. When this
happens, the virtual information community becomes what has been termed a
‘ghost town’ in cyberspace or worse, vanishes without even a trace (Kanfer 1997).
Such is the cold, clean reality of electrons. Virtual communities, as informational-
functional entities, only exist as long as they serve one or more vital functions.
For virtual communities, that is, community-oriented information networks
created and sustained by the use of the Internet and other ICTs, this means that
a two-fold commitment must exist. First, to identify and meet the pre-existing
needs of the community members, however identied, and second, to identify
and meet those needs that emerge as community members dynamically interact
with one another. Without this two-fold commitment, participation rates decline
and the virtual information community runs the risk of becoming irrelevant, and
eventually abandoned.
Within this context, the first case we examine is The Regional Information
Infrastructure Policy Project (RIIPP), funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s
National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration.13 The RIIPP
was a 12-month policy demonstration project of the role, function and bene ts
of an infor mation and communication infrastructure in community and com-
mercial life. It represents an urban-exurban information infrastructure linkage
between the City of Alexandria, and Fauquier County, Virginia, where the
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creation and use of various information communication technologies were
used to extend Internet access to an area where users had to make a long distance
call to achieve Internet access. The second case is The Rockville Community Network
(RockNet) in Rockville, Maryland.14 RockNet represents the successful imple-
mentation of a local government initiated ‘virtual community’ with a geographic
foundation. The third case, the Potomac KnowledgeWay, represents a private/public
partnership focused on developing a regional ‘virtual’ community network that
was centred loosely on the Northern Virginia portion of metropolitan Washington
DC.15
E n v i r o n m e n t a l C o n t e x t
The three cases are especially instructive in that they demonstrate how virtual
communities face problems with technologically-based policy innovations
even in one of the most ‘wired’ environments in the USA. Lack of resources,
capital, infrastructure and knowledge are frequently cited as signicant factors
that hinder the adoption of innovation (Rogers 1995). Results reported from
studies conducted on the adoption of many of these types of information
innovations indicate that putting the ‘wires in places’ – e.g. computers, networks,
programmes and telecommunications links – appears to be, in the long run,
the least difficult step in adopting innovation. In the cases under discussion,
several variables, in addition to the purely technical factors, appeared to have
inuenced the implementation of the system. For instance, because of pre-existing
commercial and political links, delivery of services and information is not only
an innovation to specic segments of local government, but also to many potential
users both internal and external to those segments. Bringing users up to speed,
training, managing content and operational considerations all rapidly become
more difcult challenges than merely achieving ‘access’ or connectivity. This is a
matter more of awareness than access.
Besides geographic and structural variables such as population, connectivity,
income, density, location and age of the locality (see Clingermyer and Feiock
1997), environmental (or ‘context’) variables also include political variables.
Group activities included in this variable might be the involvement of various
stakeholder groups, the presence of policy entrepreneurs (in either or any
combination of the public, private or third sectors), and the regions’ political
culture16 of the region. Unfortunately, just how these variables are to be accounted
for in well-principled ways can be very difficult. Unlike variables that can be
quantified using generally valid and reliable socio-demographic data, the
standardized sources for data relevant to these variables is rare, and what data
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there is, is frequently generated piecemeal by qualitative researchers examining
speci c, tangentially research questions, using in-depth eld interviews, or, in
some cases, surveys. In all three examples, both socio-demographic and more
broadly political variables appeared to be in uential.
G e o g r a p hi c Co n s i d e r a t i o n s
Frequently the virtual communities associated with community networks have
a strong geographic element, usually re ecting an emphasis on the locality or
underlying community. The Regional Information Infrastructure Policy Project
of Northern Virginia was initially organized around community needs for
education, training and public information. Here the organizational principle
of the virtual community was an external agent that served to provide a cohesive
energy though the provision of external resources and advanced technologies.
It focused on community and educational access in Fauquier County, Virginia, a
rural exurban county of Washington DC, and more narrowly, on educational
Internet access in suburban Alexandria, Virginia. The primary institutional par-
ticipants were public school systems in two geographically separate jurisdictions,
an academic institution of higher learning, George Mason University, acting as a
system integrator and policy consultant, and the Federal Government. The second
case, the Rockville Community Network, represents an example of a system that
was developed as a means of ‘testing’ a policy innovation by stimulating the
formation of a citizen’s group to develop an information network and outreach
to members of the community.17
The third case, the Potomac KnowledgeWay, a virtual community in perhaps
the most pure sense, though one organized externally rather than generated from
an intrinsic underlying or unmet aggregation (or commonality) of interest.18 It
represented a hybrid of both geographic and non-geographically localized
information networks. While physically based in the Northern Virginia suburbs
of the Washington DC metropolitan area, its information reach was much broader
due to the participation of Maryland’s Public Library Sailor Project, the
Blacksburg Electronic Village Project, and Washington DC’s CapAccess System.
A S S E S S M E N T O F C A S E S
K e y Ac t o r s
Each of the three examples represents a different organizational structure and
set of objectives, relationships between the virtual community managers and
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connection to a geographically-based community. Moreover, each case displays,
to varying degree, limitations on community membership, shared norms of
community members, and shared affective ties. Another context environmental
variable of interest in assessing these cases is the role of centres of ‘intellectual
capital’. Independent of the generally higher education and income levels in the
subject areas, the presence of networks of knowledge, or clusters of rms engaged
in similar technological and/or professional activities, may be an influencing
factor. The RIIPP project clearly indicated that a system that was optimized for
technical objectives might not necessarily be optimized in terms of the needs or
desires of the members of the community. There is also some evidence that this
might ultimately be a factor in the demise of the PKW regional network with the
least definable proximate linkages. Simply calling a communication network
platform a community does not make it so.
I n n o v a t i o n Fa c t o r s
Several units of analysis appear in the three cases depending upon the frame
of reference one adopts. If the analysis focuses on the technology utilized by the
virtual community, then the variables are principally system implementation
ones. This interpretation is especially pertinent in those cases where the primary
function of the virtual community is to provide a means of information exchange.
In such cases, the members of virtual communities are characterized is a passive
audience of broadcast information, rather than as creators of and participants in
the information exchange. It is also important to remember that all three virtual
communities were initially, and principally, superimposed as an additional
information overlay on densely populated urban areas. Since at least one factor
that bears directly on the interaction of members in any community, virtual
or otherwise, is the role of jurisdictional boundaries; it is also imperative to
understand the role of local governments in the delivery of information. In this
connection, in the RIPP case there is some evidence that the initial reluctance of
the exurban locality to participate may be related to its perception that, as an
non-urbanized locality, there is less need to engage in the superimposed delivery
service. In other words, what is illustrated by the RIIP example is, amongst other
things, that without some antecedently perception of an ‘information gap’, there
is little impetus to participate in the creation or on-going activity of a virtual
community. In this case, the community consisted of those members of an under-
lying community (physical on one end of the RIPP project, a community of
interest – educators on the other end), rather than having a formalized connection
with a political power structure.
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A related point is revealed by the other two cases, both of which were
developed in densely populated urban areas. Speci cally, if the primary intention
behind the creation of a virtual community is to provide some sort of ‘information
connectivity’, then it will generally be in direct competition with established
information provider such as newspapers, radios, televisions or private sector
Internet Service Providers. Moreover, if the virtual community conceives of its
purpose exclusively as a source of local community/governance type information,
it may either duplicate information that was already widely available, or run afoul
of the localities efforts to disseminate information. In either case, the implication
is that a necessary condition for virtual communities having justifiable and
sustainable roles is their establishing unique identities based on extant unmet
information needs. Once met, more needs to be done. Not only must extant
unmet infor mation needs be met, new and dynamic information needs must
be created whose satisfaction can only be met by the continued operation of
the virtual community. Without this, even a viable virtual community is doomed,
like its geographical counterpart, to abandonment and eventual dissolution.
Perhaps one of the most expeditious ways of satisfying both demands is to
precisely determine what informational needs are not being delivered in a
specific geographically based community, and then using cost-effective and
efcient information technologies to create information links for members of
the under-served population. What is important to see and appreciate here is
the dynamic relation that exists between the geographically bounded community
and the geographically distributed virtual community. The latter, pronounce-
ments of many notwithstanding, do not arise ex nihilo out of the clusters and
constellations of data composing ‘cyberspace’. Rather, they evolve out of a
geographic foundation to find life in the higher regions of the information-
theoretic world.
I n t e r n a l O r g a n i z a t i o n a l F a c t o r s
In general, the availability of personnel, and technical and fiscal resources is
generally linked to higher levels of innovation (see Rogers 1995). The same link
is also present with respect to the ability to react more quickly to changes in the
needs of the networked community. It follows from this that the larger the served
population, the more likely the variation in skills, talents and communities of
interest will be conducive to the establishment and support of virtual community
networks. Moreover, in a larger, densely populated urban environment, the ready
presence of organizational resources permits a greater margin of error in the
introduction of innovations and, in this regard, reduces the risk factor.
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Previous studies on innovation have indicated that organizational redundancy
is related to higher level of innovation (see Rogers 1995). This factor is relevant
in the three examples being considered since organizational resources (at least
capital resources) were not in critical shortage. On the other hand, certain
operational areas such as technical support for users did exhibit some evidence
of strain on resources. The results of these strains were various system problems.
For instance, while implementation of the systems per se was generally unaffected,
the requirements of the users were not always immediately met. In the case of the
RIIPP, limited personnel initially delayed necessary training or support in either
a technical support capacity or training. Another element present in all three
cases is that these virtual communities were the result of multi-organizational
collaborations and partnerships. Accordingly, it is difcult to clearly separate the
inuence of organizational culture from political variables related to agendas of
the various participating stakeholders.
P o l i t i c a l F a c t o r s
The virtual communities discussed in this paper were chosen for the apparent
presence of a readily identi able connection with a geographic locale. In each
case, at least one of the participants was a locality, which added political variables
to the operation of the systems. A review of the outcomes of these examples leads
to the conclusion that political variables – such as the role of individual stake-
holders, the political environment (vis-à-vis political risk) and high visibility of the
projects – may have affected the projects’ outcomes. In each example, there were
clear roles for policy entrepreneurs or organizational visionaries either directly
as key actors (system implementers such as the schools) and decision-makers, or
as change agents (such as a university or elected politician).
At this point, without the development of more precise analytic tools, it
is difficult to determine the role of other factors. As noted above, the three
communities were realized in relatively resource-rich environments. However
there is suf cient evidence from the literature on organizational innovation that
these factors may also be important in resource constrained environments, where
they serve to ‘marshal resources’ or generate sufcient community resources by
encouraging collaboration. Alternatively, in environments that are not resource
constrained, but in which organizational factors are key, the change agents or
entrepreneurs may act as risk ‘buffers’ by expending sufcient political capital
to absorb the policy risk generated by adopting innovations. In this case, the
scenario would be one in which the administrative arm of the locality is reluctant
to risk innovation, but acting under the leadership (or pressure) of the policy
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entrepreneur, would implement the policy innovation. At the very least then,
virtual communities need to consider the role and participation of governmental
institutions in their operation. While often benefiting from the tremendous
bene ts from the reduced impact of distance and the boundaries of location, the
crucial insight is that virtual cannot ignore the proximate.
C O N C L U S I O N S A N D S U G G E S T E D A V E N U E S F O R
F U R T H E R R E S E A R C H
The development and widespread dissemination of digitally based information
and communication technologies such as the Internet for individual and private
use has once again focused attention on the changing dynamics of communities
and their functions. Such access has reminded us that there is more to the identity
of a community than a specification of geographic boundaries. The growing
deployment of sophisticated ICTs such as the Internet permits new modes of
communication and information exchange, and the concomitant emergence of
an entirely new array of relationships. In the assessment of the cases presented
above, we have begun to see some of the dynamics of the new relationships.
However, as is almost always the case in empirically based research, there remain
many unanswered questions that merit more in-depth research. These questions
include, but are not limited to the following:
If the importance of ‘place’ and the effect of distance are significantly
minimized by the introduction of increasingly sophisticated ICTs such as the
Internet, then just what separates ‘places’ in a virtual context? For instance,
do rewalls take the place of national boundaries, and moderated ‘chat-rooms’
the place of community forums? In a virtual community, does a metric of
interest act as an analogue to a metric of distance? Is it more proper and
less misleading to conceive of the Cyberspace concepts of ‘there’ and ‘not
there’ in terms of how frequently a ‘cybercitizen’ communicates about a given
topic?
While the decentralizing effect of ICTs such as the Internet has been
noted, conversely an opposite effect is noted with respect to concentration
of the ‘physical Infrastructure’ – i.e. the actual wires, servers and access to
bandwidth. The Internet, as a paradigm example of ICTs at the beginning
of the twenty- rst century, allows a user to be anywhere, but the density of
physical infrastructure underlying communication technologies allows for
a richer denser flow (in this case speed) of information. While a vir tual
community may spread over a large physical area, a fast link to the Internet
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seems to provide a reason to re-centralize. Thus, just how do the limitations
of physical infrastructure affect the formation, operation and dynamics of the
virtual?
As the physical infrastructure itself becomes more distributed – e.g. though
the use of satellites and satellite telecommunication linkages – what will
happen to the virtual community? If I no longer need a personal computer
that is linked by physical wires (e.g. telephone lines) to a server in order to
participate in a virtual community, what does this portend for the character
and dynamics of such communities? In other words, what does the shift to
‘wireless communication’ portend for the creation, maintenance and character
of communities?
While not a community issue per se, the issue of governance, the context of
community, has become more complex. Much of the legal operation of the
world is geographically based. Taxes and regulation are generally applied at
xed points of place. At what point is information regulated on a global net?
How does a virtual community regulate the interactions of the members, and
to what standard are they held?
The creation and maintenance of virtual communities presents tremendous
possibilities for geographic communities, as well as for those charged with
governance of the polity. In addition, the potential exists for nascent ‘virtual
groups’ who may not yet realize their commonality of interests to become
significant competitors for the attention of citizens. Administrators, elected
ofcials and other interested stakeholders must proactively attempt to ‘colonize’
the virtual world (Cyberspace) or risk being left behind by these other ‘virtual
interest groups’.
Even as telephones and automobiles did not eliminate geography, so too the
Internet and other, similar kinds of ICTs will not replace the need to meet face
to face. We see that in those places where a geographic sense of community exists,
ICTs such as the Internet can serve as intensi ers or more efcient conduits for
information flow – be it social or political. In this case, virtual communities
provide an adjunct or additional information overlay that ampli es the existing
geographic community interests. Moreover, ICTs such as the Internet enable
and facilitate various types of interests to reach more readily a critical mass of
survival within a geographic community that might not have been otherwise
practical
While the development and dissemination of digitally based information and
communication technologies will give rise to new ways of interacting and the
exhilaration of nding communities of interest to participate in with a myriad of
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ways, in the nal analysis, we must anchor the virtual to the physical. When the
thrill of nding individuals with similar, albeit relatively unimportant interests
begins to wear off, we will realize that these communication flows, based
primarily on the trafc of cold electrons offers thin communion without additional
geographic or physical linkages. Interests not based on geography are, at least at
present, more transitory and less important than those created by the use of the
Internet and similar kinds of ICTs. While we may join a virtual community
because of an interest we have, unless that interest affects us in our daily lives, in
our lives as physically instantiated and geographically centred individuals and
citizens, there is no good reason to believe that we will long continue an active
membership in the virtual community. Indeed, this is precisely what the three case
studies considered above show.
Paul Baker and Andrew Ward
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
paul.baker@pubpolicy.gatech.edu
andrew.ward@pubpolicy.gatech.edu
N O T E S
1. Access to the Internet has not always been public. For a short history of the origins of the
Internet, see Castells (1996: 342–58). Also see Kitchen (1998: ch. 2), Miller (1996: ch. 3),
Rheingold (1993: ch. 3 and 4) and Slevin (2000: ch. 2).
2. For an interesting, literate, personal account of the various forms electronic virtual
constructs took in the late 1980s and early 1990s, see Rheingold (1992). Poster (1995:
31ff) provides a critical discussion of the meaning and signicance of the real/virtual
dichotomy.
3. Conceptually this could take the form of analysis of the type and context of information, or
on visual constructs that attempt to convert the content, interrelationships and location of
information ow into a multidimensional graphic representation. Work done along one of
these dimensions is suggested by the sort of material present in Martin Dodge’s Cyber-
geography website [http://www.cybergeography.org/] and in greater detail in Dodge and
Kitchin (2000).
4. For a discussion of seniors’ use of the Internet, see Masland.
5. For example, Gallagher (2000: 1) reports that Chicago-based Bank One, the fourth largest
bank in the USA, launched ‘Wingspan’ in June 1999 with just four months planning, and by
the end of 1999 had 106,000 accounts. Similarly, Carr (2000: 4) reports that by early 2000,
Barclays had moved more than 7.5%, or 600,000, of its customers into online banking.
6. This way of characterizing location in a virtual community raises a host of interesting
questions. For example, what kinds of conditions are necessary for engagements to be
genuine and authentic? Do exercises of power over information result in inauthentic
relations?
7. Also see Etzioni (1995) and Talbott (1995: 64ff). Mitch Kapor (1993: 53), founder of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes:
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Life in cyberspace . . . at its best is more egalitarian than elitist, and more decentered
than hierarchical . . . In fact, life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas
Jefferson would have wanted: founded on the primacy of individual liberty and a
commitment to pluralism, diversity, and Community.
8. Talbott (1995: 74) expresses an even more pessimistic view when he writes that
‘[C]ommunity is, in the rst instance, something to be salvaged from information
technology, not furthered by it’. Also see Doheny-Farina (1996: 123), who writes that ‘the
[Inter]net, in connecting everyone, furthers our isolation by abstracting us from place and
virtualizing human relations . . . ’
9. As Graham points out, shared interests are a necessary but not a suf cient condition for
community formation. What is also necessary is some sort of organizational structure, what
Graham calls a ‘Rule’. Graham writes that: ‘[M]embers of the community properly so-called
are subject to a Rule, and this Rule determines both what their objective interests are and
what their subjective interests ought to be’ (1999: 133).
10. Notice that what counts as co-operation, as well as the perceived need for co-operation,
varies in the three cases. It is an interesting and important project to develop indicators and
indices to measure co-operation within virtual environments.
11. See Slevin (2000: 93ff). Some people argue that it is here that the Internet shows itself to be
a divisive force in community dynamics. Internet use seems to fracture to guidelines for
appropriate and inappropriate interactions.
12. The reason we refer to these communities as ‘virtual information communities’ is to
emphasize the fact that their existence depends on contemporary use of ICTs and that, as a
result, there is no direct link between the communities’ existence and their geographic
instantiation.
13. The effort did not result in a viable community network, but did result in the imple-
mentation of a local government website [http://co.fauquier.va.us], and websites for the
public school system, and two local newspapers providing community information, but no
community network per se.
14. See http://www.rocknet.org/
15. See http://www.knowledgeway.org
16. See Elazar (1994) for a discussion of the inuence of political culture in governmental
policymaking.
17. As the mission statement says:
The Rockville Community Network (RockNet) is dedicated to providing free community
access to networked community information to promote the spirit of community and
meet the information needs of Rockville City residents. RockNet concentrates its efforts
on segments of the community and categories of information that have not yet been
adequately served by the commercial sector, in much the same way that public libraries
and public broadcasting stations operate.
18. The Potomac KnowledgeWay declared ‘victory’ in achieving its mission as dened and
ceased operation as of November 1999 with the extant website operating only as an archive
for materials.
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