Life in now a days with the use of information, computers and the Internet has gone through changes. Before the invention of computers people had no idea any other type of reality could exist other than the one they lived in. Nowadays, everybody is aware of the second reality, also called virtual reality. No one can exactly explain what it really is, however the dictionary defines “community” as “a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage”. A virtual community consists only of people that use their computers as the means of communication; however, they never meet personally. People discuss various ideas, share common interests, and find friends and partners with the help of virtual communities. Virtual communities exist, and there are a lot of them nowadays. People like communicating on-line, thus, virtual communities also have some advantages in comparison with real communities. Both real communities and virtual ones serve the same purpose – communication, which creates lasting relationship between people.
There are many obvious distinctions between “real” communities and “virtual” communities. The most noticeable is the difference in communication, including the lack of physical presence within the “virtual” communities. In a “real” community, messages include much unspoken communication, such as body language, which can dramatically change the meaning of the message. “Virtual” communities have nothing more than their words and “emoticons” to portray emotion within their messages. This can be either a benefit or a detriment. Emotion may get in the way of the necessary communication, but it also might be a critical part of the message. The basic idea of a community is a group of people, which is characterized by common place of living, religious, cultural, racial or ethnical similarities. Usually a group of people that shares common interests or ideas is also called a community. These are what people call real communities. They can be found everywhere. Congregation of one church is a community, sharing common religious beliefs. Students of one university comprise a community, as they live at the same area, study at the same educational establishment and surely have common interests, such as sports or music. People of such communities live and interact with one another, developing certain communicative skills. In real communities people cannot avoid communication, due to the common place of living. Things are different with virtual community.
A virtual community is described as a group of people, who share common cultural, religious or other beliefs or possess similar interests and likings. However, members of virtual communities never meet personally, but only communicate with the help of their computers and internet. Virtual communities are represented by various discussion groups, chat rooms or newsgroups. If a person doesn’t want to communicate, they just don’t connect to the internet. However, virtual communities also contribute to the establishment of strong bonds between people, and possess similar benefits to those of the real communities. A wide variety of websites offer communication to people with common interests such as music, reading, sports, fashion, traveling; to people who are looking for new acquaintances or just have nothing to do at home. For some people it is even easier to be a member of a virtual community than of a real one, because virtual community doesn’t require personal communication, therefore people don’t have to see each other while communicating. Usually in this case people start to feel more self-confident while meeting new people, which is obviously helpful for future communication in real communities.
The first and the most important characteristic feature of real community is people. People create a community, thus, without people community does not exists. The same goes for a virtual community; the key characteristic of a virtual community is people because they are created by people. However, there are certain differences between people constituting real communities and people constituting virtual communities. Real communities consist of people who live on the same territory, who may be of the same race, culture and religion, while virtual communities can consist of people of different nationality, color of skin, culture or religion. People are united in virtual communities not by the common place of living, but they are united by common interests, ideas and beliefs. Communicating in virtual communities gives an opportunity for people of different race, culture and religion to share interests, to talk on the topics that are interesting to them, and to make new acquaintances. While people in real communities are almost always united by common place of living, people in virtual communities might live in different cities, countries or even at different continents. Another quality of community is common religion, culture, political or social views on life. Inhabiting the same territory, people in real community will surely practice the same culture and religion, most of them will be of the same race, possessing similar political and social views. Indeed, this is why a group of people is called a community. However, virtual community unites people who may have only one thing in common. For example, some people like rock music, while other people in the same city prefer pop music. Despite of the fact that all of them are of the same race, religion and culture, and have a common place of living, these people may belong to different virtual communities. The first part of them may belong to the virtual community of rock fans, while people of other part would be members of the virtual community of pop music listeners. Here obvious advantage of virtual community can be seen. For example, if two real communities, living in the same city, possess opposite views on politics, conflicts between them will inevitably appear, causing harm to people of both communities. However, conflicts are not likely to appear between virtual communities, where people actually never meet each other. The following feature of community is acceptance of new members. Sometimes real communities can be rather unfriendly and not welcome new members, due to certain reasons or just because a person is a newcomer. In contrast virtual communities welcome every new member, because the main goal of virtual communities is sharing interests regardless of belonging to any race, culture or religion. On the other hand, virtual communities that unite people of the same nationality, race, religion or culture also exist, and there are many of them. Virtual communities consisting of people of the same nationality exist in the countries inhabited by many immigrants. Immigrants organize virtual communities in order to follow their customs and traditions, in order to practice religion, in order to discuss events taking place in their home country, while inhabiting different countries worldwide. Despite of the fact that members of virtual communities may never meet personally, virtual communities possess qualities similar to real communities, because they are organized by a group of people, who share common interests and beliefs. Virtual communities can unite people of the same race, culture or nationality, however, virtual communities can also be composed of people of different nationalities, living in different countries and possessing different views, because virtual communities are organized on the basis of common interests and desire to communicate. Thus many things possible in one form of community are not possible in the other, and vice versa. The rules and protocols for “virtual” and “real space” communities are clearly and distinctly different; however, they both have the “community” aspect in common. Therefore when one asks are virtual communities real communities the answers seems to be yes, both virtual and real communities have all the aspects needed to be a community they just are preformed in different ways.