Increased and diversified use of technology within our information-based society continues to form an expanding network of physical and virtual connections between users local and global. Doors have opened to communicative environments for users to peruse and interact with at their choosing. Communication between people that earlier may have been arduous or impossible is achievable by a few directed clicks of a mouse. The Internet signifies a movement away from prior unidirectional forms of mass media communication—such as radio and television—towards an interactive communicative environment presenting a context for users to form and become a part of communities. Communication plays a fundamental role in the establishment and continuance of communities, functioning as a medium by which people interact and form connections with each other.

The Internet’s emergence as a communicative form that participants use to create, sustain, and become part of communities presents a unique context to explore concepts of community that have been a central concern to such fields as anthropology and folklore. These online communities are “situated in a web of interrelations” (Bauman, 1983, p. 362), represented by specific social and cultural connections and patterns. Building on theories of communication, social organization, and the study of folklore in context, I seek to examine the ways that communities form and exist within the communicative terrain of the Internet, as well as to perform a contextual analysis of the social and cultural factors that give these groups’ shape, meaning, and existence.

To understand what a community is, we must first understand what brings a group of people together. In Acting in Concert: Music, Community, and Political Action (1988) Mark Mattern states that, “people live in a community by virtue of the things that they hold in common” (Mattern, p. 9). Mattern refers to these “things held in common” as commonalities. “Communities are defined by a set of common characteristics, and the identity of particular community is defined by the specific character of its commonalities” (Mattern, p. 9). The assertion of group identity and members’ ascription to this identity establishes vital connections between members, creating a community’s foundation and strengthening its infrastructure. Participants use communication as a primary medium to develop commonalities within the group. An alternate viewpoint contends that the formation and longevity of a community requires local settings in which members can engage in face-to-face interaction. This perspective suggests communities can only form locally where direct engagement is possible, relying on assumptions about the physical act of direct communication, rather than communication’s function within the context of community discourse and its meaning to participants.

Communication and interaction between people create and sustain the commonalities of their community. The communication by which this is accomplished exists in various forms. Communication between online community members creates connections around common points of interest. For instance, discussion boards and guest books are popular venues for members to discuss central community issues. For a community to exist, members also must identify themselves as a part of that particular community. “If community does not require local, face-to-face, personal contact, it nevertheless is always connected to particular times and places because people’s identity is formed in actual concrete interactions with specific social and cultural environments at specific historical times” (Mattern, p. 15). The key criterion becomes the existence of concrete interactions within a particular community, while not necessarily requiring physical proximity and engagement.

Communication and points of commonality among members collectively play a key role in creating a sense of belonging among participants within a group. In the following paragraphs of this section, I review Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined community” to provide a context by which to better understand how groups form and members feel connected, even in cases where they have never met. From this idea, I move to Fredrick Barth’s discourse on social theory involving groups’ social organization as well as the construction and maintenance of group-defining boundaries. Anderson and Barth’s theories form the theoretical foundation from which I analyze how groups form and organize online as well as how these groups continuously reproduce social boundaries.
Benedict Anderson’s (1987) book, Imagined Communities, explores how print-languages and technologies form the foundation for national consciousnesses, for a “feeling” of being part of a nation. The widespread distribution of media such as the newspaper creates a standardized flow of communication capable of reaching citizens over wide ranges of geographical terrain. Although readers may have never met, they “become” connected and unified through ideas in print. These shared sense of connections lead to the birth of imagined communities, “distinguished not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (Anderson, p. 7). Collective ideas emerge within the finite boundaries of these imagined communities leading to, in Anderson’s study, the emergence of nationalism and subsequently the nation.

Similar to the print-based languages and technologies Anderson studied, the Internet creates a unified field of pervasive communication, information exchange, and identity construction. Information on websites, such as discourse, images, and links are key elements that aid in establishing connections between members and shaping group identity. Much of the discourse used within a website displays how participants refer to group and individual identity. Images presented within a website aid in shaping the visual perception of a community and its members. The scope of members included within a single online community can vary exceedingly. For instance, descriptors found on websites such as Amerindian, Indigenous, or tribe-based terms (Seminole, Cherokee, etc) discursively refer to Native Americans and to a diverse range of members encompassed within a website’s scope. Images present on websites also vary considerably; an image of traditional Cherokee dress is present on one site, where as a map highlighting Amerindian concentrations throughout the Caribbean is found on another. The emergence of hyperlinks on tribal websites may point to other communities that are perceived to exhibit similar characteristics. Portal websites encapsulate a diverse array of tribes and indigenous groups within their scope, using an assortment of embedded links to expand a broader notion of community and extend “indefinitely stretchable nets of kinship and clientship” (Anderson, p. 7). A wide variety of tribal links appear within portal websites, however the broader supratribal qualities of these tribes are stressed over their demarcating distinctions. Although all participants may not directly interact with each other, representation of group identity and the subsequent fostered connectivity create an imagined community. I expand upon Anderson’s theories to explain how the Internet is a space that further allows tribal “imagined communities” to demonstrate their sovereignty, by exhibiting unique cultural traits as well as to extend a broader notion of community.

Although cultural traits play an important role in the members’ ascription to group identity and construction of community, Frederick Barth’s (1969) introduction in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries proposes that groups are not defined by their cultural traits, but by social organization. Social interaction and recognition among group members is essential to producing the foundations of social systems and creating ethnic distinctions. Group members ascribe to these distinctions, forming a conception of identity by continuously defining and maintaining ethnic boundaries. Members may cross boundaries by changing their practices—by becoming cultivators rather than pastoralists—however, ethnic boundaries and cultural distinctions continue to persist. Cultural objects, practices and material objects, primarily are used to demarcate groups from each other, constructing and reinforcing boundaries. As Susan Leigh Star (1988) points out, objects on the edge can have a radically different function, to blur the boundaries and ease the passage from one side to the other. An ethnic group is not reducible to its members, but its own organizational existence, meaning individual members can connect to and become a part of multiple groups. I examine the use of cultural identity on websites to continuously reproduce group-defining social boundaries and assert ethnic distinction. At the same time, I seek to understand how cultural objects are used on websites to blur boundaries between groups and shape a broader ethnic identity.

Cultural traits, member characteristics, and organizational form are continually signified in new and different ways, while members dynamically remain connected. Identity and culture are not statically bound to a particular space and time, but are “continuously changing dynamically in relation to time, space, and significance of meaning” (Christensen, 2003, p. 13). Social interaction as well as the setting it takes place in, physical or virtual, characterize and signify culture. The use of the Internet as a communicative space to reproduce cultural identity and social boundaries symbolizes the fluid nature of cultural signification and change. The Internet allows groups to extend their defining ethnic boundaries, signifying groups’ and their cultural objects as well as the digital space communication occurs within.
The theoretical concepts of imagined communities and social organization are the foundation of my contextual analysis of the social and cultural factors that give online communities shape, meaning, and existence. Cultural objects and representations largely comprise website content, which foster connectivity between group members, assert group identity and reinforce ethnic distinctions and boundaries. The analysis of cultural context reveals systems of meaning and symbolic interrelation, while the examination of social context discloses the processes through which community social structure and interaction form. The cultural and social contexts comprise the content and structural analysis performed in this study.