Abstract:

Studies on virtual communities have expanded over the last two decades, with the development of Information and Communication Technologies, and its dissemination over numerous domains. This article problematizes some conceptual categories used frequently in this field, on the basis of the results found in two case studies: virtual communities of media professionals and free software programmers. Throughout the article, we start by defining virtual communities and some of its possible typologies. We refer specifically to professional communities or communities of practice, related to specialists from different fields, engaged in sharing resources, expertise and knowledge. Along with this, we discuss three notions of life cycle associated with these spaces, focused on interaction platforms, participants and group goals. The cases considered allow us to recognize life cycles with similarities and differences. These include migration and conversion processes. Along with this we observe renovations on group goals, leaderships and generational replacements. The communities analyzed thus allow us to problematize the notion of life cycle from a socio-technical approach, in order to reconstruct the complexity of possible trajectories.

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