Producing New and Digital Media

CHAPTER 2

Creativity in the Online Environment

Traditionally, communities are a group of people living together in one place, thereby creating a feeling of fellowship as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. The group of people has to include multiple citizens interacting with a vast amount of individuals in the same place, such as a municipality, city, or state. Communities are also groups of people with common (and especially professional) interests within a larger society.

In our hypermedia landscape, communities belong, no longer solely to the physical space, but to the new and digital environment. According to Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman, communities online are a new social operating system that gives rise to “networked ...