ABSTRACT
Online technologies allow people to create and participate in online groups called online communities. These groups have a number of differences and similarities with traditional face-to-face groups and virtual work teams, including differences in who participates, the communicative and technological tools used, and the goals of these communities. Despite being composed of pseudonymous volunteers, online communities can coordinate work, create group identity, and develop shared norms. Because online community platforms track the behavior of group members and store these in large-scale, longitudinal databases, researchers can study them using new approaches and can ask new questions. This provides a unique opportunity for understanding dynamics of groups such as how online communities and groups form, how groups and group members change over time, and how groups relate to and interact with one another.
