Abstract: The authors examine the experience of the residents of Netville, a suburban neighborhood with access to some of the most advanced new communication technologies available, and how this technology affected the amount of contact and support exchanged with members of their distant social networks. Focusing exclusively on friends and relatives external to the neighborhood of Netville, we analyze "community" as relations that provide a sense of belonging rather than as a group of people living near each other. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is treated as one of several means of communication used in the maintenance of social networks. Contrary to expectations that the Internet encourages a "global village," those ties that previously were "just out of reach" geographically, experience the greatest increase in contact and support as a result of access to CMC.

27 double-spaced pages in Acrobat PDF. Citations include Don Norman, Howard Rheingold, Marc Smith and Peter Kollock. Several of the references look particularly interesting.

Long Distance Community in the Network Society [PDF]