Once Upon a Time There Was PP7: The Birth of a Group on the Internet

Special Report: New Forms of Collectives
Revisiting the Online Socialization of a Student Community
By Stéphane Vial
English

The website of the French psychology students at Paris 7 University first opened on 20 September 2003. Three years later, in autumn 2006, the site was closed. In that interval a great adventure took place; an incredible technical odyssey and unexpected experience in sociability. In recounting and analyzing the story of this site, the present article shows how an online group emerges as a social entity by relying on a website as a technical system, and how new processes of identity construction and social interaction can appear and define a novel kind of sociability, thus altering traditional forms of social relations.

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Go to the article on Cairn-int.info