On cybersocialities. Networked communication and social interaction in the wired city of Blacksburg, VA, USA

In this article, the methodological sensibility that will lead to the consideration of the new forms of cybersociality is first advanced. With the term cybersociality one refers to the new expressions of “being together”, sharing emotions, and communicating in the networked social environments. It refers to the way that humans have to empathise and enter in touch with their community, and it takes into account the synergy between real interaction and virtual communication. With this term is introduced into the debate on cyberculture a discourse on fun, release and vitalism, and the forms of sociality which characterise the new dynamics of social relationship. Then, to illustrate this approach, the social interactions in the wired city of Blacksburg are analysed. After a general description of the city, three different groups of users are analysed, with a comprehensive sociological approach, to see how they actually use the new forms of network communication. To conclude, certain guiding ideas of this study are revisited and two hypotheses put forth for research concerning the growing complexification of urban and social territory due to technological development as well as the development of “S-lines”, lines of sociality.