Third Places in the Era of Virtual Communities

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse virtual communities in the context of Ray Oldenburg’s third place theory. The author argues that virtual third places are a response to the needs of virtual communities and their features are similar to Oldenburg’s third places. The first part of the article presents the basics of Oldenburg’s third place theory while the second one shows the characteristics of virtual communities: a review of definitions, their typology and features. The criteria of collectivity of virtual communities are also discussed in the context of Oldenburg’s third places features.

Keywords

• third place
• virtual community
• network society