Ripamonti, Laura Anna, Fiorella De Cindio, and Mario Benassi. "Online communities sustainability: some economic issues." The Journal of Community Informatics 1.2 (2005).

This paper delves into the crucial aspect of economic sustainability within the realm of community networking and community informatics, emphasizing its significance in fostering the Information Society through citizen and community engagement. Despite the extensive coverage of survival and growth themes in organizational literature since the 1960s, online communities present unique challenges that do not fully align with existing frameworks. The study aims to bridge this gap by proposing theoretical insights on economic sustainability based on comprehensive research and experiences in online communities, highlighting their distinctive evolution as either bottom-up entities or top-down quasi-organizations.