The role of the media in "communities' and "community-building" has been a fundamental question since the beginning of media and communication research. However, the focus of this research had mainly been the single community as such. To take some examples, one line of investigation has been the role of the media in building up the imagined community of the nation; another, the media as a reference point of fan cultures or certain scenes. More recently there has been increasing research on new forms of community-building in the internet and social web.