Sense of Community: Across Online and Offline Communities

Mediated communities are a part of daily life, lending strength to local communities and building clusters of former strangers into communities around shared goals. Although some fields have been studying the interactions between online and offline communities for decades, this is still an emerging area in psychological studies. In this book Media Psychologist Jenny Fremlin provides a foundation for applying commonly used psychological scales across communities that exist online, offline, and in between. Beginning with a broad look at the implications of mediated communities on social interactions, Fremlin moves into an extensive literature review of sense of community research. She addresses well-established and emerging theories and includes a chronological exploration of scales. Fremlin then hones in on massively multiplayer online games as a home for communities to form. The book concludes with an original study on sense of community among World of Warcraft guild members across multiple communities including their local neighborhoods.