The Internet is creating an increasing number of virtual communities and organisations. For many people, these virtual spaces are more real and important to them than anything in the physical world. The nature of these virtual communities and the way they are changing the relationship between market and non-market forms, are the focus of this article. As our study of the independent music scene in South Korea will show, fans have created their own virtual community, which has developed powerful non-market practices that coexist with and influence existing market practices to create a new, hybrid economic mechanism. To understand how this apparently chaotic and unregulated hybrid economic mechanism operates, we draw on studies of digital economy. This perspective seeks to understand hybridity in the economy and widespread participation and power equalisation as core factors in the development of virtual communities.

互联网正在创建越来越多的虚拟社区和组织。对于许多人来说，这些虚拟空间对他们来说比现实世界中的任何事物都更加真实和重要。这些虚拟社区的性质以及它们如何改变市场与非市场形式之间的关系，是本文的重点。正如我们对韩国独立音乐场景的研究所显示的那样，粉丝们创建了自己的虚拟社区，该社区开发了强大的非市场惯例，与现有的市场惯例共存并影响现有的市场惯例，从而创建了一种新型的混合经济机制。为了了解这种看似混乱无序的混合经济机制是如何运作的，我们借鉴了数字经济的研究。