Not Community; Identity

It crossed my mind that what I'm looking for in a mediated experience isn't exactly a sense of community; instead it's a sense of shared identity: that the people in the mediated experience are, in some sense, part of me; that we share a common identity.

The word community, on the other hand, has specific meanings in the physical world, but is a very vague term when applied to online experiences. Naively, I think of shared identity as one element of a community, and that a community implies support, intimacy, trust, recognizable individuals, continuity of relationships, etc. In contrast, I think (again Naively) of shared identity as simply defining an "us" vs. the world of "them".

This is a useful distinction, because I believe a sense of group identity can be established and communicated far more easily than a sense of community can.