Dear all, I have a grad student who wants to look into this really interesting question in a literature review essay (see below) - I don't know what literatures to suggest to her however - the texts I am familiar with about virtual community all tend to look at them on a single platform. Are there multi-sited ethnographies and other studies examining this you can suggest?
I would like to look at how presence on multiple platforms (eg, Facebook, Twitter, Web, Blog, etc) either strengthens or dilutes a community. This springs off of the discussion you and I had last week about how the platform shapes the community (or not to beat the dead McLuhan horse - how the media shapes the message). I'm curious to examine how the community changes as the platform changes - eg, is it the same community spread across multiple platforms or does each platform represent a distinct community.
It's my fault for irresponsibly finding the subject interesting ;-) -- Dr David Brake, Researcher and Educator http://davidbrake.org/, @drbrake Author of "Sharing Our Lives Online: Risks and Exposure in Social Media” https://www.facebook.com/sharingourlivesonline <https://www.facebook.com/sharingourlivesonline>