The Relationship between Online and Offline Communities: The Case of the Queer Sisters

The popularity of Internet communities has raised the question of how they relate to offline communities. Yet there has been hardly any research that focuses on this question. This article examines the relationship between online and offline communities through a case study of the community formed on a bulletin board on the world-wide web and the women’s group in Hong Kong, the Queer Sisters, who created the board. The study finds that the community formed on the bulletin board is largely autonomous in relation to the offline group. Informed by ‘medium theory’, this article highlights the social potential of the Internet in forming communities. However the article also argues that contingent conditions have an important influence on whether online communities are autonomous in relation to the offline communities.