Media serve an important role in communities by allowing community members to keep in touch with community happenings and other community members. Mass communication and sociological scholarship on the function of media in communities have focused primarily on the role of community newspapers in traditional geographic communities. However, as communication and transportation technology have grown, so have people's worlds expanded past their own residential communities. Most people are members of nongeographic communities or communities of process which focus on a common interest, occupation, or some other common ground. One important way that people in all types of communities communicate is through the community media, including newspapers, magazines, new media, and other media.
A standard sociological approach to the study of community is to examine residents' community ties. This study uses community ties in a different way by applying the concept to a nongeographic community, the folk music community in the United States. Through a mail survey to members of the National Alliance for Folk Music and Dance and to individuals on folk artists' mailing lists, the relationship between respondents' community ties and media usage were examined. The final sample size was 471 with a response rate of 57.5%.
The majority of the respondents believed they are members of a folk music community, and many had medium to strong ties to such a community. Community ties were found to have stronger correlations to media usage than did length of membership. Communications scholars should take note that while only one-fourth of respondents use new media on the Internet which focus on folk music, these respondents had stronger ties to the folk music community than those who did not use new media, an important implication for the functions of new media. Participation in community activities also was found to be correlated to community ties. The two parts of the sample were compared, and differences were found in terms of age, education, occupation, music-related activities, community membership, ties, and media usage. Standard community ties measures were found to be appropriate for use on a nongeographic community. Academic and practical implications are discussed.