The power of virtual communities

Dr. Paolo Spada collaborated to the creation of a recently released report which examines the role online groups play in creating opportunities for people to build new kinds of meaningful communities they often could not form in real space.

The report was written in collaboration with an international team of scholars and was published by the The Governance Lab (The GovLab).

This first-of-its-kind research was built on interviews with 50 Facebook community leaders in 17 countries, 26 global experts from academia and industry, unique access to Facebook's underlying research and an original global survey conducted by YouGov of 15,000 people in 15 countries who are currently members of online and in-person communities, which found that in 11 of those countries the majority of people said that the most meaningful communities to which they belong are primarily online.

For more information visit the GovLab website.