Counting on community in cyberspace

In this panel, a group of researchers, each of whom has either constructed tools for communicating and community building in cyberspace or studied the process, present their own work and critically evaluate each other's work. Our perspective explores the relationships between individual usage of these tools and the formation of lasting social relationships and groups. Each panelist presents a current research project that documents the empirical patterns of use and interaction with existing forms of social cyberspaces. The panelists comment on the ways in which the their findings cast new perspective on each other's findings and on the prospects for the formation of both online communities and physical communities augmented by online interaction.