“Geographic Facebook communities”: Fostering connectivity within and between communities

By 2018, 1.4 billion people were members of Facebook groups, of whom 200 million belonged to significant groups defined by Facebook as “communities.” This qualitative study examines geographic bounded Facebook based communities to understand their role in community life and determine whether they are communities “without kinship” or extensions of the traditional community. Based on thematic analysis of interviews with fifteen community managers, the findings indicate that geographic Facebook communities exist not only online, but in real life, blurring the distinction between online and offline spaces. The Facebook community is perceived as a geographical meeting space, despite extending beyond physical limitations. This is a paradigm shift in the concept of community development–from involvement limited by physical space to involvement in online space as well. Sustaining both requires vision, flexibility, and skills to allow constant shifting between spaces in the same community or across different online and offline communities.