Problems and Promises in the Study of Virtual Communities: A Case Study

Ethnographic case study
Virtual communities, which are exclusively voluntary associations, deal with at least some of the same issues as material communities, e.g., gatekeeping and normative value construction. Electronic communities, however, often rely on a moderator to set and maintain boundaries, reduce conflict and control the flow of discourse. In the following participant-observation study of 246 listserv messages in a peace activist virtual community, a naturally occurring change from a monitored to an unmonitored list elicited the following research questions: 1) What is the impact of list monitoring on the content, type and scope of community participation? 2) What is the impact of list monitoring on the conflictual tone and personal content of the messages? 3) What is the impact of list monitoring on the emergence of individual voices?