Study Of The Communication Pattern And Formation Of Social Characteristic In Virtual Community

Although internet communication now had obtained considerable development, the discussion about the new type of communication and the social characteristic of networks which is based on sociology and communication science was still insufficient or took networks as one type of the new medium technology. Generally, the social characteristic of networks has not yet received the deserved doctrinal attention.This paper takes virtual network community as a social and propagational organization. The discussions on the social characteristic from the community communications in virtual network community have overcame in theory the insufficiency of former study in which virtual network community was just considered as research background or some element of propagation. The paper has also proposed a communication model of virtual network community which has summarized and predicted the communication pattern and the influence which is attributed to the community communications on the formation of social characteristic from the perspective of system theory. The study on the social characteristic of virtual network community would improve fundamentally the comprehension of internet communication, especially the view generation and communication pattern in virtual network community.According to the study, virtual network community is the mature organization form of forum. Forum is medium organization whereas virtual network community is aggregation morphology. The organization and presentation of virtual network community are based on the forum. Because of the special pattern, virtual network community generates the social characteristics such as secondary and independence. Virtual community still takes community communication as its main communication pattern and continues to develop corresponding to the communication"model"of virtual network community.Text analysis and in-depth interview are the main methods of this article. Specially, text analysis would apply to the research on the content and representative reply from the members of the essence quote, the rules and events in virtual community, for example Tianya and discuss how the virtual community communication practice and whether the specific pattern generates the social characteristic of virtual community. In-depth interview would focus on five to ten netizens who habitually browse at least one virtual community. The interview is for the purpose of understanding the opinion of the community residents to the languages, rules and communication behaviors in virtual community. This paper has also discussed the influence on the thinking habits and concerns of these netizens as samples.The main supporting theory is the conclusion from communication science about the relationship between communication and community, that is, communication and community are closely related. This theory is similar to an axiom which does not have thorough argument. So, this dissertation applies other relevant theory including agenda setting theory,gatekeeper theory, theory of the social groups shaping and publicsphere which established by media to argue systematically the formation and maintenance of the virtual community and other social characteristics. Simultaneously, this paper has also demonstrated the supporting theory and finally summarized the conclusion about the communication pattern of virtual community.