Many groups that form online, also meet face to face.
Many groups utilize multiple platforms for communication.
An irc channel may have a home page and an email list. Nicknames, Play and Identity on Internet Relay Chat by Haya Bechar-Israeli, in JCMC Volume 1 Issue 2, 1995. The World Wide Web as Social Hypertext by Tom Erickson, Communications of the ACM , January, 1996. Social research on the net about the net Studies in Culture and Communication on the Internet , Brenda Danet, The Hebrew University. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication , edited by Sheizaf Rafaeli and Margaret McLaughlin, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Southern California.