Virtual Communities and the Socio-semiotic Approach

Research on virtual communities represents a way to relate to the vast question of collective imaginary, considered as "shared narrative modalities", where interactivity and storytelling are, in some cases, confused and mixed up by the users. Space, along with the interactions that take place in it, have thus become new topics of research for disciplines like socio-semiotics, sociology, ethnography. To enjoy being part of a virtual community means to enter a sort of fantasy or game world, with its inhabitants (and their bodies), its language and its rules. Those are the elements that sometime exceed the boundaries of fantasies and game worlds to become part of the collective imaginary, of a shared set of representations, meanings and values. The paper will focus on the connections between what is built "in" and what gets "out" of the Net, starting from the virtual communities and the imaginary they provoke.