Mediated communication and mediated communities in the information age

Abstract

This article argues that the electronically mediated communication contributes to the construction of new, mediated forms of communities which are based on the synthesis of virtual and physical communities. The appearance of these new forms of communities leads to a new conceptualization of the relation between self and community. The aim of this article, on the one hand, is to show that with the mediatization of communities, our concept of community becomes more comples. On the other hand, in this essay we consider the assumption that the medium of the mediatization and new conceptualization of community is a specific, pictorial language of electronically mediated communication.