Methods of Research in Virtual Communities

Abstract

The Internet has developed from an informative medium to a social environment where people meet together, exchanging messages and emotions and establishing friendships and social relationships. While the Internet was originally conceived as a commercial marketspace (Rayport & Sviokla, 1994) with new opportunities for both firms and customers (Alba, Lynch, Weitz, Janiszevski, Lutz, Sawyer, & Wood, 1997), nowadays the social side of the Web is a central phenomenon to truly understand the Internet. Social gratification is among the most relevant motivations to go online (Stafford & Stafford, 2001). People socialise through the Internet, adding a third motivation to their online activity, other that the pleasure of surfing in itself (the “flow experience” described by Hoffman and Novak, 1996) and the usefulness of finding information.