Gathered Around Virtual Communities

Abstract

This issue of Voices of Mexico, co-published by the Center for Research on North America and the Library Science and Information Research Institute, was financed with resources of the PAPIT Program IG300724. People from the generations who, despite benefiting from information technologies, grew up without computers or Internet are still surprised that our daily lives go hand-in-hand with the digital world. Also surprising is that not only are platforms and apps not part of a “parallel reality,” but many of us actually spend an enormous part of our life in them. In fact, we must become aware of this: the borders between our online and offline activities both blur and intensify. Given this, a group of CISAN and IIBI researchers have developed a collective project starting with the affirmation that virtual communities are, indeed, communities; and where we ask ourselves how collective knowledge is built in them through shared interests, the exchange of ideas and knowledge, dialogue, and even, on occasion, confrontation.