Online Communities as strong as Real World, suggests Study

Large numbers of American Internet users hold such strong views about their online communities that they compare the value of their online world to their real-world communities, according to the sixth annual survey of the impact of the Internet conducted by the USC-Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.

Among a broad range of findings about rapidly-evolving methods for online communication, the 2007 Digital Future Project found that 43% of Internet users who are members of online communities say that they "feel as strongly" about their virtual community as they do about their real-world communities.

'More than a decade after the portals of the Web opened to the public, we are now witnessing the true emergence of the internet as the powerful personal and social phenomenon we knew it would become,' said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.

The findings about online communities are published in the 2007 Digital Future Project, a comprehensive annual examination of the impact of online technology on the USA.

The project surveys more than 2,000 individuals across the United States, each year contacting the same households to explore how online technology affects the lives of Internet users and non-users. It also examines how changing technology, such as the shift from internet access by modem to broadband, affects behavior.

The 2007 Digital Future Project found that Internet use is growing and evolving as an instrument for personal engagement - through blogs, personal Web sites, and online communities.

The study also found that involvement in online communities leads to offline actions. More than one-fifth of online community members (20.3%) take actions offline at least once a year that are related to their online community. (An "online community" is defined as a group that shares thoughts or ideas, or works on common projects, through electronic communication only.)

And participation in online communities leads to social activism. Almost two-thirds of online community members who participate in social causes through the Internet (64.9%) say they are involved in causes that were new to them when they began participating on the internet. While 43.7% of online community members participate more in social activism since they started participating in online communities.

A significant majority of members of online communities (56.6%) log into their community at least once a day.

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