Online Community Evolves From Traditional Community

Online Community is an evolution of aspects and behavior patterns seen in traditional community.

1) Community usually refers to a social unit larger than a small village that shares common values. The term can also refer to the national or international community.

2) In biology, a community is a group of interacting social organisms sharing a populated environment. A community is a group or society, helping each other.


In human communities, intent, needs, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

Since the advent of the internet, the concept of community has less geographical limitation, as people can now gather virtually in an online community and share common interests regardless of physical location. Prior to the internet, virtual communities (like social or academic organizations) were far more limited by the constraints of available communication and transportation technologies.

Community Anthropology

Cultural or social anthropology has traditionally looked at community through the lens of ethnographic fieldwork and ethnography continues to be an important methodology for study of modern communities. Other anthropological approaches that deal with various aspects of community include cross cultural studies and the anthropology.

Cultures in modern society are also studied in the fields of ethnic studies, as well as online community. Since the 1990s, internet communities have increasingly been the subject of research in the emerging field of Online Community or cyber anthropology.

Community Archaeology

The term "community" is used in two ways in archaeology, paralleling usage in other areas. The first is an informal definition of community as a place where people used to live. In this sense it is synonymous with the concept of an ancient settlement whether a hamlet, city, town or village. The second meaning is similar to the usage of the term in other social sciences, a community is a group of people living near one another who interact socially.

Social interaction on a small scale can be difficult to identify with archaeological data. Most reconstructions of social communities by archaeologists rely on the principle that social interaction is conditioned by physical distance. Therefore a small village settlement likely constituted a social community, and spatial subdivisions of cities and other large settlements may have formed communities. 

Archaeologists typically use similarities in material culture, from house types, to styles of pottery, to reconstruct communities in the past. This is based on the assumption that people or households will share more similarities in the types and styles of their material goods with other members of a social community than they will with outsiders.

Article sourced and adapted from Wikipedia.