| Итог: | In the 1980s and ‘90s online communities were said to have freed us from geographical and time constraints. Yet they were defined by the virtual space used to host people’s interactions. Online communities were artificially constructed each with a distinctive theme agreed by their designers. Membership was granted by subscription. Users interested in the community’s theme joined to search for content and meet people with similar interests. In new Web 2.0 environments such as social networking sites (SNS), users sign up to the tool but not to the networks. These sites are not owned by one group of people but by many with different interests and purposes. Social networks are built by the links users create between them and strengthened by meaningful participation. Online communities can emerge from these socializations when groups of people empathize and discover similarities between them. Membership and boundaries of these communities are not defined by the space or the account but by people and participation. In this paper we present findings from ethnographic research of an online community that has emerged from converging social networks on Twitter. Face-to-face semi-structured interview data are triangulated with the results from an online questionnaire via Twitter and analysis of community discussion threads using hashtags to validate a conceptual framework of how communities form and grow via SNS. In this research we explore the different layers of use (one-to-one relationships, Twitter networks and online community), the roles individuals adopt in this emerging community, and their strategies for managing their co-existence with other networks in the same space. Furthermore we investigate how this online community has transitioned from its interest-driven origins to supporting friendship-driven interactions. We offer a contribution to knowledge in terms of providing a clearer definition of how contemporary communities are enabled by SNS, and how those communities overlap.
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