USC Reports Meshing of Real, Virtual Communities
This from a USC press release:
…the 2007 Digital Future Project found that 43 percent of Internet users who are members of online communities say that they “feel as strongly” about their virtual community as they do about their real world communities.
Here are some highlights from the report:
- The Digital Future Project found that involvement in online communities leads to offline actions. More than one-fifth of online community members (20.3 percent) take actions offline at least once a year that are related to their online community.
- Participation in online communities leads to social activism. Almost two-thirds of online community members who participate in social causes through the Internet (64.9 percent) say they are involved in causes that were new to them when they began partic ipating on the Internet. And more than 40 percent (43.7 percent) of online community members participate more in social activism since they started participating in online communities.
- A significant majority of members of online communities (56.6 percent) log into their community at least once a day.
- Online communities are online havens for interaction among members; 70.4 percent of online community members say they sometimes or always interact with other members of their community while logged in.
- Internet users report an average of 1.6 friends met in person whom they originally met online — more than double the number when the Digital Future Project began in 2000.
- While large percentages of Internet users say that going online increases contact with family and friends, almost all users report that the Internet has no effect on the time spent with close friends or family face-to- face.
Then after all this talk about community, here is the real kick in the teeth administered by the Center for the Digital Future:
2007 Digital Future Report:
Individual Use – $500 for individual use and permission to make one copy. Neither the electronic report nor the photocopy may be distributed within or outside of any organization.
