Sense of Virtual Community: Antecedents and Implications for Community Management

In 2004 Blanchard & Marcus presented their qualitative study of an online community (a member-initiated newsgroup for multiple sport enthusiasts) and introduced the concept of "sense of virtual community" (SOVC). SOVC in a virtual setting is basically the equivalent of McMillan and Chavis' (1986) sense of community observable in real neighbourhoods and face-to-face communities of interest, but there are some differences.

Congrats! 2013 is the 20th anniversary of Howard Rheingold's book "The Virtual Community"

For people who haven't yet read the book, here is the link to the html-version on Howard Rheingold's homepage: http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html.

My favourite part of the book is chapter 10: Disinformocracy. And this is how it opens:

"Virtual communities could help citizens revitalize democracy, or they could be luring us into an attractively packaged substitute for democratic discourse."

In 1987 Howard Rheingold wrote the article "Virtual Communities - exchanging ideas through computer bulletin boards". It seems that this article is the first known publication of the term "virtual community".