Municipal Virtual Communities (MuViC): Expanding Cities to the Virtual World

Abstract

Adoption of Online Social Networks keeps growing, leading to intertwine virtual life into social context. However, creating effective virtual communities with deep and meaningful interaction among members remains challenging. The factors that make a certain virtual community to bond are still not well known. We present a five-year experiment involving a Facebook Group for a city, adopted by 83% of its citizens as an extension of the city in the virtual world. A set of rules to manage the group formulated during the experiment is presented, created by observing its members' behaviour, which led to an effective management for a Municipal Virtual Group. The main rules are: (i) Unidentified profiles cannot have opinion in the group; (ii) Posts cannot be removed; (iii) It is not allowed to talk about politics beyond the city's context. Three cases that occurred in the group under such rules and their consequent impact are reported.