Redes de “comunidades personales” y “comunidades de grupo” en diferentes servicios de comunicación en línea Primeros resultados de un estudio empírico en Suiza

In this article, we present an on-going research project about “virtual communities”. After an introduction (1) we raise the main research questions and present some theoretical considerations (2). In part three we propose basic definitions for “communities”. In a fourth part, we describe preliminary results of a personal network study we conducted in summer 1998 with 101 frequent users of chatgroups and newsgroups in Switzerland. After a short discussion (5) we present an outlook for future research (6).