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When, then, does a group of individuals with something in common becomes a community? Precisely when, as Rheingold argues, they start to form webs of personal relationships between their members; and those relations can only emerge through rich and constant communication between those involved. Hence, as Fernback proposes, community might be understood as process: Community is both an object of study (an entity, a manifestation) and the communicative process of negotiation and production of a commonality of meaning, atructure and culture. The terrain of community is mapped through a process of reconciling interpersonal dynamics, collective dynamics, and ideologies.10
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10FERNBACK, Jan, “There is a There There: Notes Toward a Definition of Cybercommunity”, in Doing Internet Research - Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Web, ed. Stev
Anabela Gradim (2009) Digital Natives and Virtual Communities: Towards a New Paradigm of Mediated Communication , Estudos de Comunicação, 5
