Contesting Community Online: Virtual Imagery among Dutch Orthodox Protestant Homosexuals

Whereas substantial scholarly attention has been paid to the online presentation of self, symbolic interactionist approaches are largely absent in the literature on virtual communities. Instead, recurrent questions are whether communities can exist online and whether specific online venues qualify as communities. This article aims to move beyond these dichotomous questions by studying how different meanings attached to an online venue can be understood from offline experiences. In a case study of a Dutch forum for orthodox Protestant homosexuals, two types of understanding of online community... Mehr ...