The Power of Virtual Communities

Today, The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering released their report, 'The Power of Virtual Communities’, which examines the role some online groups play in creating opportunities for people to build new kinds of meaningful communities they often could not form in real space.

This research was built on interviews with 50 Facebook community leaders and dozens of global community experts, Facebook internal research, a literature review and a 15,000 respondent global survey conducted by YouGov of people who are currently members of online and in-person communities. The study shows that in 11 of the 15 nations surveyed, the largest proportion of people said the most important group in their lives is primarily online.

Many of these communities exist in Facebook Groups. More than 1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month, and more than half of all users are in five or more groups. The GovLab’s report findings note that:

• People can experience a strong sense of community from membership in Facebook groups despite the lack of physical proximity.
• In many cases online groups attract members and leaders who are marginalized in the physical societies they inhabit, and who use the platform to build new kinds of communities that would be difficult to form otherwise.

We see examples of these findings across many impactful Facebook groups, including Female IN which was created as a safe space for women in the Nigerian diaspora to discuss and seek support for challenging problems, ranging from relationship struggles to health issues, abuse, grief and loss. News of the group spread by word of mouth, and Female IN grew into a 1.8 million-person community with members in more than 100 countries.

With more than 70 million admins and moderators running active Facebook groups, it’s important to understand the conditions under which these groups are able to successfully become meaningful communities, as well as the characteristics of the community leaders that create and support them. The GovLab’s report findings include:

• New kinds of community leaders have emerged in these groups with unique skills in moderating often divisive dialogues, sometimes among millions of members.
• Most groups are run as a labor of love; many leaders are neither trained nor paid and the rules that govern their internal operations are often uncodified

Further, results from the YouGov survey and the interviews with group leaders indicated that the three most essential traits for a leader to have were welcoming differences of opinions, being visible and communicating well, and acting ethically at all times.

This report further shines a light on the role leaders have and why it is important to further support them in running their community. We are excited to see community leaders’ work recognized in such a public way and aim to provide support to all community leaders through tools and programs such as the Facebook Certified Community Manager program and Community Accelerator.

You can download the full report and the executive summary here, and read a reaction to the report from The New York Times columnist, David Brooks, here.