engleski

Virtual sociability - between virtual communities and networked individualism

The term virtual since 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, became one of the most used in media and in everyday speech. There is more and more research on new reality, results of which are still awaited. However, it is insufficiently known in scientific periodicals that concept of virtual reality enabled by information technology has existed in the sociological literature since 1990s, when Castells introduced it to the theory of network society. Therefore, the main goal of the paper is to consider some basic concepts such as virtual reality, real virtuality, virtual communities, virtual sociability and networked individualism. We will also briefly look at the forgotten classical notion of community as a fundamental form of sociability defined by the sociologist F. Tönnies, which re-enters the focus of scientific interest, without a clear but sociologically known classical definition. Starting from this framework, paper exams the key question of whether these new virtual communities are truly communities in the classical sense of term, or whether it is a form of networked individualism.

COVID-19 pandemic ; community ; networked individualism ; real virtuality ; virtual communities ; virtual reality ; virtual sociability

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