Internet Communities

The Global Internet Community

A Research

Prepared by

Date

Table of Contents

Serial Details Page

1 . Introduction 3

Overview 3

Research Objective 4

2 . Research 5

Methodology 5

Research 5

Growth of Internet and World Wide Web (WWW ) 5

Establishment of the Global Internet Community 9

Educational and Research Benefits 10

Medicine Health Benefits 12

Social Movements 14

Community Bonding 15

Crime and Terrorism on the Internet 16

3 . Conclusions 18

References 20 1 . Introduction

Overview

Communities

, in common perception , represent groups of individuals bound by a certain commonality , be it language , religion , race , culture interests , geographical location or any of a myriad other things . While a discipline like sociology defines the concept of community in numerous ways , it by and large refers to a group of people who share certain fundamental characteristics and are in a position to interact with each other (Wenger , 1999 . Communities are generally taken to denote groups that are larger than families (notwithstanding the existence of many extended families that can very easily be considered to be communities and represent people who share certain social values , have a clearly determinable cohesion , and share a common geographical location (Wenger 1999 . The word is now also used to refer to much larger and geographically dispersed groups of people , for example , the Muslim or Christian communities , the global Diasporas of particular nations national communities , and global communities (Wenger , 1999

Whilst national communities have been instrumental in the creation of common purpose , national identity and pride , collective mobilization...