Creating a Virtual Academic Community:
Scholarship and Community in Wide Area Multiple-User Synchronous Discussions

from Computer Networking and Scholarly Communication in the Twenty-First-Century University
SUNY Press

IRC, MOO, and Community Building

Many researchers have noticed that the real-time environment extends and solidifies the solidarity and community one comes to feel after being part of scholarly e-mail exchanges like MBU for a while. Where the scholars interacting on e-mail are separated by both distance and time, IRC and MOOs bring them together in time, and allow them to quickly exchange feelings and ideas in a sort of "virtual roundtable" discussion that at times seems to have extraordinary power to generate new ideas. The synergy of "thought-coming-into-being," then, is a communal endeavor, fueled by the interactions that occur.