Digital unity or tribal echo chambers? Paradoxes in online residential communities Open Access

The distinction between physical communities and digital interaction has become less defined. As social media platforms reshape how people connect and engage with civic life (Shirky, 2008; Rheingold, 2002), new spaces for hyperlocal engagement are emerging. Among them, online residential communities (ORCs), stand out as hybrid spaces, blending place-based belonging with digital interaction. Precisely, an ORC is a digitally mediated, membership-bounded network in which people, who live in the same real-world residential area (e.g. a building, homeowners association, or neighborhood), interact primarily about place-based matters, sharing information, coordinating local activities, and offering mutual support. ORCs typically align virtual membership with residence to maintain the one-to-one mapping between the local place and the online space (Robaeyst et al., 2022; Brown et al., 2024; Zahnow and Smith, 2024; Zahnow et al., 2024).

Initially shaped by physical proximity, these communities have evolved through the active participation of local users on platforms like Facebook. They now operate as digital “third places” (Soukup, 2006; Rosenbaum, 2009), providing informal and familiar settings where social bonds are nurtured, local knowledge is exchanged, and place-based engagement is reimagined through everyday interaction. Although other platforms also host neighborhood exchanges, Nextdoor in several countries, nebenan.de in Germany, Front Porch Forum in Vermont, or neighborly in New Zealand, their scope tends to remain geographically narrow or focused on specific aims such as safety alerts. Facebook, by contrast, combines global diffusion with an exceptional density of residential groups, making it an especially revealing space to observe how everyday digital interactions cultivate belonging, redraw boundaries, and bring latent civic paradoxes to the surface.

Yet, every promise of connection is shadowed by an opposite pull toward exclusion. This paradox (Smith and Lewis, 2011) refers to the tension where the very mechanisms that build solidarity can simultaneously erect boundaries. The same dynamics that foster a digitally mediated sense of place (Tuan, 1977; Relph, 1976), sense of community (McMillan and Chavis, 1986; Boyd and Nowell, 2014) and sense of citizenship (Isin and Nielsen, 2008; Lister, 2007) may also marginalize dissenting voices and reinforce dominant norms. While often perceived as open and participatory, digital platforms are not neutral in their design or dynamics; they are shaped by sociotechnical forces that influence which voices are amplified and which are silenced. Such unintended effects may arise from algorithmic gatekeeping, normative pressures, and disparities in digital literacy, all of which create barriers to inclusive engagement (Hazée et al., 2020). In culturally diverse contexts, these barriers can deepen fragmentation and hinder mutual understanding, turning platforms that aim to foster connection into spaces of polarization and exclusion (Fuchs, 2017). This ambivalence is particularly relevant in contemporary Europe, where intensified migration and shifting demographics have redefined many urban and rural areas as sites of super-diversity (Vertovec, 2007). In paradox terms (Smith and Lewis, 2011), such diversity heightens the tension between a community’s impulse to integrate newcomers and its desire to preserve inherited meanings of place. ORCs render this paradox visible, sometimes intensifying rather than mitigating it: group ranking and recommendation systematically privilege posts that trigger rapid agreement or strong affect, while downranking dissenting or low-engagement contributions; over time, members who introduce counter-narratives receive less visibility and feedback, self-censor, and disengage, while high-consensus “insider/outsider” frames are repeated and normalized (Bakshy et al., 2015). Algorithmic personalization then routes each user toward like-minded subthreads seeded by homophilous member networks, shrinking cross-cutting exposure at the margin, effects that seem modest per interaction but compound across weeks into exclusionary echo chambers that reframe neighborly “help” as boundary-keeping (Colleoni et al., 2014).

It is within this ambivalence that our viewpoint takes shape. We argue that ORCs operate as double-edged civic spaces: they can strengthen social cohesion, and foster a renewed sense of local belonging and shared identity (Ellison and Hardey, 2014; Lappas et al., 2022) while simultaneously intensifying social polarization. We advance a paradox-informed account showing how ORC interactions shape residents’ sense of place, community, and citizenship, and how these dynamics create persistent paradoxes rather than problems to be solved. These online communities are often portrayed as spaces that extend the boundaries of physical neighborhoods.

From this perspective, we contend that mechanisms traditionally celebrated in service marketing for their capacity to enhance user engagement and foster communal ties, such as emotional resonance, co-creation of meaning, and place-based loyalty (Jahn and Kunz, 2012; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016), can also generate paradoxes (Berti and Cunha, 2023). These paradoxes are the ambivalent and persistent tensions embedded in ORCs, such as the desire to belong versus the risk of creating exclusionary boundaries (Belonging vs Boundary), the valuing of local heritage versus the uncertainty of an increasingly diverse future (Heritage vs Future) and the encouragement of participation versus the preservation of social harmony (Voice vs Harmony). Far from being anomalies, these paradoxes are emblematic of the civic ambiguity that defines contemporary digital life. They call for a deeper inquiry into how ORCs simultaneously enable and complicate civic participation, and how such paradoxes might be productively navigated.

We bring ORCs into dialogue with service research, framing them as informal service ecosystems: decentralized, user-driven networks that enable civic participation through collaborative initiatives, citizen-led problem-solving, and routine enactments of digital citizenship (Haro-de-Rosario et al., 2018; Thomsen et al., 2025). This move is not merely semantic: while scholarship on ORCs has long been rooted in geography, urban sociology, and community psychology (Park et al., 1925; Wellman and Leighton, 1979; McMillan and Chavis, 1986), its recent expansion into service research signals a shift in how these communities are understood, not only as social phenomena but as arenas where engagement, value creation, and exclusion are continuously negotiated in digital form.

To situate our argument, Table 1 brings into focus the core constructs, ORC, sense of place, sense of community, sense of citizenship, and paradox, that shape the discussion ahead.

The viewpoint unfolds through the following articulation. Paradox theory is first outlined as the lens for analyzing persistent contradictions in digital civic life. The constructs of sense of place, sense of community, and sense of citizenship are then revisited to ground the experiential focus of the analysis. Building on these, three interrelated paradoxes – Belonging vs Boundary, Heritage vs Future, and Voice vs Harmony – are developed and illustrated through short vignettes with actionable navigation strategies. The discussion closes with implications for services marketing, platform design, and civic governance.

Paradox theory offers a generative perspective for understanding the contradictions that pervade contemporary organizational and social life. Rather than treating contradiction as a problem requiring resolution, it frames paradoxes as “contradictory yet interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time” (Smith and Lewis, 2011, p. 382). These contradictions resist definitive resolution through binary choices and instead require actors to respond through iterative meaning-making, contextual reframing, and adaptive adjustment in practice (Smith and Lewis, 2011; Schad et al., 2018). Originally applied to intra-organizational dynamics, paradox theory has been used to explore enduring contradictions such as those between control and autonomy in team coordination (Smith and Lewis, 2011), or stability and change in organizational design and innovation (Lewis, 2000; Smith and Tushman, 2005). These studies established paradox as a core lens for understanding how organizations respond to competing demands across time, space, and levels of analysis.

More recently, this perspective has extended beyond formal organizational settings to address broader social domains, including identity, culture, and participation (Cunha and Putnam, 2019; Lewis and Smith, 2022). Reflecting this shift, recent contributions emphasize how paradoxes are not isolated or abstract but emerge as interconnected, shaped by emotion, power, and context, and often nested across individual, relational, and institutional levels (Schad et al., 2016; Fairhurst et al., 2016; Lewis and Smith, 2022). Building on this understanding, the notion of a paradox system (Lewis and Smith, 2022) further conceptualizes these as tensions which are embedded in everyday practices and surfaced through moments of ambiguity, diversity, and normative conflict. While Smith and Lewis (2011) identified four classical paradox categories (belonging, learning, organizing and performing), their later work challenges the stability of such fixed classifications. Lewis and Smith (2022) emphasize that paradoxes are not static entities but are context-sensitive. They highlight how navigating paradox requires holding together contradictions that shift and interrelate over time, making the process inherently recursive and layered. Similarly, Cunha and Putnam (2019) argue that paradoxes are better understood as fluid, emergent and situated, particularly in complex environments. In response to such enduring and situated tensions, paradox literature has distinguished between two broad families of strategies: either/or and both/and (Smith and Lewis, 2011). Either/or strategies resolve paradox by privileging one pole over the other, often through binary decisions that simplify complexity. While such responses may offer temporary clarity, they tend to suppress contradiction and can lead to instability over time. By contrast, both/and strategies aim to keep paradoxes open and generative. They do not require actors to address both poles simultaneously or to reach a perfect equilibrium. Rather, they involve dynamic engagement shifting emphasis, reframing paradoxes, or combining logics in hybrid configurations (Smith and Lewis, 2011; Lewis and Smith, 2022).

Within this both/and approach, i.e. balancing seemingly opposing objectives, the literature identifies several operative mechanisms. Temporal separation enables actors to alternate between poles over time, for instance, emphasizing innovation before shifting to efficiency. Spatial separation allocates competing logics across distinct teams or domains without direct conflict. Integrative strategies attempt to combine paradoxes within a single practice, through processes such as reframing contradictions as complementary, constructing hybrid models, or layering divergent goals (Lewis and Smith, 2014). These responses are not only structural or cognitive but also emotional: Cunha and Putnam (2019) stress the importance of accepting contradiction, embracing discomfort, and resisting premature closure particularly when paradoxes involve issues of identity, belonging or values.

While both/and strategies have been widely endorsed, recent work has questioned their presumed superiority. Krautzberger and Tuckermann (2024) argue that privileging both/and uncritically may create new blind spots, especially in conditions of resource scarcity, institutional rigidity or moral conflict. They propose a meta-both/and approach, which reframes the relationship between either/or and both/and as itself paradoxical. Rather than treating them as opposing alternatives, this perspective invites a reflexive stance, acknowledging that the very act of navigating paradoxical demands may require switching between strategies that are themselves paradoxically related. In this view, reflective episodes, temporary suspensions of habitual reasoning become key moments for reassessing and switching between strategies. An organization oriented toward both/and may need, under pressure, to adopt an either/or response to avoid paralysis or ethical compromise and vice versa. The capacity to oscillate strategically between the two approaches requires not only cognitive flexibility, but also organizational conditions that make such shifts visible, legitimate and actionable.

These insights provide conceptual grounding for our inquiry. In what follows, we draw upon paradox theory to explore how ORCs surface and negotiate three key paradoxes: Belonging vs Boundary, Heritage vs Future, and Voice vs Harmony.

To examine the paradoxes embedded in ORCs, this viewpoint focuses on sense of place (Tuan, 1977; Relph, 1976), sense of community (McMillan and Chavis, 1986; Boyd and Nowell, 2014), and sense of citizenship (Isin and Nielsen, 2008; Lister, 2007). Together, these constructs highlight the affective, relational, and normative dimensions of participation that define residents-only groups. Other perspectives, such as social capital (Hayami, 2009), networked individualism (Wellman et al., 2003), and digital publics (Papacharissi, 2002), offer valuable insights into resources, network structures, and discursive dynamics, but engage less directly with the experiential foundations of belonging, recognition, and place attachment central to ORCs. Focusing on sense of place, sense of community, and sense of citizenship therefore distills the constructs most relevant for understanding how paradoxes are enacted within ORCs.

Sense of place refers to the emotional and symbolic bond individuals develop with specific geographic locations (Tuan, 1977; Relph, 1976) through lived experience, shared narratives, and everyday interactions (Kaltenborn, 1997; Shamai and Ilatov, 2005). Commonly linked to belonging and rootedness, it also exposes troubling sides. Individuals may feel unseen when their stories fail to align with dominant narratives, often reinforced through collective “home stories” (McAndrew, 1998; Shamai et al., 2012). Scholars have shown that sense of place is shaped by cultural norms and power structures that determine who is recognized as part of a place and who is not (Rose, 1995; Allen et al., 1998; Paasi, 2003). Those excluded because of origin, language, or culture may develop a conflicted or even negative relationship with the place (Rose, 1995). In this light, sense of place is not simply positive or shared, but marked by paradoxes and everyday inequalities (Shamai and Ilatov, 2005).

Sense of community refers to the perception of belonging to a network of mutual relationships, grounded in shared purpose and ongoing interaction. Defined as “a feeling that members have of belonging […] and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (McMillan and Chavis, 1986, p. 9), it rests on four elements: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection, which provide affective bonds and continuity in the face of uncertainty. Yet the very mechanisms that sustain community – symbols, narratives, routines – can also restrict openness and reinforce exclusion (Sarason, 1974; Fisher and Sonn, 2002). As Fisher and Sonn (2002), drawing on McMillan and Chavis (1986), note, identity is often anchored in collective symbols and historical references that distinguish insiders from outsiders. In contexts of rapid social change or perceived cultural threat, these markers may be mobilized to preserve familiar orders and resist difference. Nostalgic appeals to “how things used to be” can reassure members, but also act as subtle mechanisms of resistance, reinforcing dominant norms while marginalizing those who diverge from established narratives.

Sense of citizenship concerns how people see themselves, and are seen, as part of a civic collective. While rooted in legal definitions of civil, political, and social rights (Marshall, 1950), it has expanded to include recognition, belonging, and participation in everyday life (Lister, 2007; Isin and Nielsen, 2008). Citizenship is now understood not only as legal status, but also as the capacity to act, be acknowledged, and share responsibility within a community (Isin and Ruppert, 2015; Owen, 2020). This shift highlights its performative and contested nature: through “acts of citizenship,” individuals challenge exclusion and assert presence beyond institutional arenas (Isin and Nielsen, 2008). Psychological dimensions are equally relevant; as Sindic (2011) argues, citizenship develops when people feel part of a shared “we” through mutual recognition and obligation toward others -without which rights risk becoming hollow. In today’s mobile and digital societies, territorially bound notions of citizenship are increasingly difficult to sustain. Belonging is negotiated across overlapping communities that transcend national borders (Kostakopoulou, 2008), while digital platforms intensify these dynamics, creating new opportunities for participation but also blurring the boundaries of inclusion. In such fluid contexts, citizenship becomes more precarious.

This section helps frames ORCs as spaces where paradoxes are not incidental but constitutive features of digital neighborhood life. While often celebrated for enabling participation, recognition, and dialogue (De Meulenaere et al., 2020; Ellison and Hardey, 2014), ORCs also embody dynamics that amplify exclusion and polarization (Fuchs, 2017). Platform algorithms and communicative norms shape how belonging is expressed, which voices are amplified, and what forms of civic participation are legitimized (Papacharissi, 2002; Colleoni et al., 2014; Hazée et al., 2020). Crucially, they also bring to the surface paradoxical reversals: practices that cultivate belonging may simultaneously draw boundaries, attempts to encourage voice may privilege harmony over dissent, and efforts to preserve heritage may constrain openness to the future.

To capture these dynamics, we adopt a situated view of paradox as fluid and contextual (Lewis and Smith, 2022; Cunha and Putnam, 2019), rather than relying on fixed typologies (Smith and Lewis, 2011). Our argument is that civic life in ORCs unfolds through three interrelated paradoxes – Belonging vs Boundary, Heritage vs Future, and Voice vs Harmony – which crystallize how ambivalence is embedded in everyday digital interactions. Each paradox becomes especially visible through an experiential layer of civic life: the sense of place, the sense of community, or the sense of citizenship (Tuan, 1977; McMillan and Chavis, 1986; Isin and Nielsen, 2008; Fisher and Sonn, 2002).

The connections between paradoxes and these dimensions should be read as illustrative rather than definitive or exhaustive. Figure 1 anchors this conceptual framing, offering a visualization of the paradoxes across the layers of sense of place, sense of community, and sense of citizenship within an ORC.

Belonging vs Boundary becomes visible through the sense of place. Everyday storytelling, shared memories, and micro-acts of support foster attachment, identity, and dependence, giving residents a feeling of being “at home” (Ridings and Gefen, 2004; Wellman and Gulia, 1999). Yet these same practices also draw subtle boundaries. “Home stories” do not simply connect but mark who belongs and who does not, often reinforced by platform dynamics that privilege affinities and filter out dissenting perspectives (Colleoni et al., 2014; Pariser, 2011; Balick, 2023). What appears as cohesion can displace newcomers or silence dissenting voices. The paradox here is constitutive: practices that nurture belonging also create exclusion, leaving moderators with the delicate responsibility of balancing coherence with plurality (Shamai et al., 2012; Rose, 1995; Gebauer et al., 2013).

Heritage vs Future emerges through the sense of community. ORCs often rely on collective memory, recurring routines, and familiar formats to build reassurance and trust (Soukup, 2006; Neal et al., 2015; Wise, 2015). Nostalgic references to a shared past sustain cohesion but also risk anchoring communities too firmly in tradition. Divergent voices may not be openly rejected but are reframed or diluted, producing subtle symbolic dissonance (Rose, 1995; Paasi, 2003). What fosters coherence can simultaneously stifle renewal, limiting responsiveness to demographic change, innovation, or shifting civic concerns (Vertovec, 2007; Fuchs, 2017). The paradox lies in the double-edged role of memory and tradition: while they stabilize and reassure, they also constrain transformation, a tendency amplified by community mechanisms such as membership, influence, and mutual support, which anchor collective life in its roots and in an evocative past rather than opening it to emerging futures.

Voice vs Harmony is revealed through the sense of citizenship. Everyday gestures of participation, such as supporting local initiatives, reporting issues, joining discussions, expanding civic voice and reflecting the shift toward participatory understandings of citizenship (Isin and Ruppert, 2015; Owen, 2020). Yet this openness is fragile. Disagreement is not always rejected outright but softened, deflected, or quietly erased, not through formal exclusion but through moderation practices and tacit cues that signal which kinds of speech are acceptable. These may include silence in response, the use of passive-aggressive emojis, or the strategic labeling of comments as “off-topic.” The perceived risk of “conflict spirals” in threads often reinforces this tendency, leading communities to favor surface-level agreement over genuine pluralism (Matthes et al., 2012). The paradox here comes sharply into view: the aspiration to foster open participation coexists with subtle pressures to conform, sustained not only by spirals of silence and cultural norms of civility (Chen, 2018; Matthes et al., 2012) but also by platform features that amplify some voices while muting others. In this sense, participation cannot be separated from recognition: being heard and acknowledged as a legitimate contributor is as critical as gaining formal access. Without recognition, participation risks becoming performative rather than genuinely inclusive. It is therefore shaped less by formal access than by the ability to align with implicit expectations of tone, legitimacy, and belonging. What looks like cohesion may thus come at the cost of plurality, revealing the constitutive paradox of voice and harmony in digital neighborhood life.

Taken together, these three paradoxes show that sense of place, sense of community, and sense of citizenship in ORCs are never stable foundations but ambivalent processes. What seems to sustain civic life also generates exclusion, constraint, and silence. Figure 1 underscores that these paradoxes are constitutive of ORCs, shaping digital neighborhood life as an ongoing negotiation that can be navigated but never fully resolved.

The following vignettes offer a closer look at how paradoxes emerge in ORCs. They are not drawn from systematic data collection but from lived observation, serving as scenarios that foreground how paradoxes in OCRs are experienced and navigated in practice. Each vignette links the theoretical constructs outlined above to a specific civic paradox, Belonging vs Boundary (Box 1), Heritage vs Future (Box 2), and Voice vs Harmony (Box 3).

Building on section 2.2, we offer variations of the recommended both/and strategy for navigating these paradoxes (Smith and Lewis, 2011; Cunha and Putnam, 2019). Additionally, we translate these into specific tactics for moderators/members, offering rich context and practical guidance for paradox management.

The paradox of belonging versus boundary surfaces in ordinary community interactions, as the vignette (Box 1) below illustrates:

This episode illustrates how the very practices that generate attachment and identity also delineate the limits of inclusion. Shared memories provide continuity but render the community opaque to those unfamiliar with its narrative code. Even moderators, tasked with sustaining cohesion, face the delicate challenge of encouraging new voices without disrupting the group’s familiar emotional flow.

Table 1 shows how this paradox can be navigated in practice. Strategies need to sustain intimacy while widening the circle of recognition. As noted by Smith and Lewis (2011, 2014) and Cunha and Putnam (2019), paradox navigation takes multiple Both/And forms: some rely on temporal separation (e.g. recurring newcomer posts) and integrative reframing (e.g. blended questions), hybridization (e.g. rotating storytelling roles), still others on bridging (e.g. moderator linkages), and finally on structural enabling through post adjustments (e.g. algorithmic nudges). Drawing upon the vignette, Table 2 highlights five potential issues: affective dominance, resonance gap, member monopoly, legitimacy barrier, and algorithmic bias, all of which could be addressed by strategies that allow ORCs to sustain attachment while widening recognition.

The first issue concerns affective dominance, where nostalgic “home stories” generate strong engagement while overshadowing other contributions. This dynamic shows how the very idioms that sustain warmth can narrow the symbolic repertoire of participation. Temporal separation offers one way to address this paradox through recurring newcomer posts. By carving out specific moments for fresh voices, moderators can keep alive the familiar rhythm of storytelling while making space for new members. The effect is that recognition is extended without displacing the affective practices that insiders cherish.

A second challenge is the resonance gap, where practical requests receive no responses because they lack the group’s emotional tone. Here the paradox becomes visible in the silence surrounding contributions that fall outside the prevailing cadence of belonging. Integrative reframing helps to bridge this gap through blended questions. This not only broadens participation but also stretches the affective code to accommodate diverse forms of engagement.

A third challenge is member monopoly, where storytelling is concentrated among long-time members. This concentration reveals how symbolic power is unevenly distributed, with some voices defining the texture of belonging more than others. Hybridization unsettles this monopoly through Rotating storytelling roles. When newcomers and long-timers alternate in shaping the narrative flow, symbolic participation is redistributed, weaving multiple trajectories into the community’s memory.

Another issue concerns the legitimacy barrier, where newcomers’ contributions risk being perceived as marginal. This is not outright exclusion but a more subtle hierarchy of what counts as relevant. Bridging addresses this challenge through moderator linkages. By reframing peripheral posts in ways that connect them to local traditions, moderators reposition marginal contributions as part of the community’s symbolic repertoire. In this way, continuity is preserved while legitimacy is extended to previously sidelined voices.

The fifth issue relates to algorithmic bias, where posts with little engagement are downgraded, reinforcing invisibility. Here, digital infrastructure compounds social dynamics, making silence even more consequential. Structural enabling allows response through algorithmic nudges. By temporarily pinning newcomers’ posts, moderators counteract platform bias and give fragile voices the time they need to surface.

The paradox of heritage versus future surfaces when traditions that provide stability and reassurance also restrict openness to renewal, as the vignette (Box 2) below illustrates.

This episode shows how innovation is not openly rejected yet struggles to gain legitimacy when set against the gravitational pull of nostalgia. What mobilizes a cascade of engagement when the past is invoked generates hesitation and even silence when the future is imagined. The group nurtures a strong sense of community through symbolic continuity, recurring references, and emotionally familiar narratives that reassure members and stabilize identity. Sofia’s proposal was neither inappropriate nor disruptive, it simply fell out of sync with the affective rhythm of interaction, where memory carries more weight than novelty. This dynamic reveals how heritage strengthens cohesion while narrowing the horizon of change and poses a practical challenge, preserving the symbolic power of tradition while creating openings for alternative voices.

Table 3 shows how this paradox can be navigated in practice. Strategies must honor continuity while cultivating openness to renewal, relying at times on temporal separation such as keeping time apart, at others on integrative reframing such as combining memory and renewal, and in some cases on spatial separation such as creating separate but visible spaces. The vignette highlights three recurring issues, nostalgic dominance, symbolic inertia, and single channel resonance, all of which point to ways ORCs can preserve heritage while leaving room for innovation.

The first issue concerns nostalgic dominance, where memory posts generate cascades of engagement that overshadow future-oriented proposals. What feels like a celebration of shared roots can easily become a monopoly of the past. Temporal separation responds through keeping time apart. By piloting new initiatives at set intervals while leaving everyday exchanges anchored in tradition, communities create temporal breathing spaces where innovation can surface without threatening the rituals that insiders hold dear. Renewal thus enters the scene not as a rival to heritage but as a carefully timed companion.

A second challenge is symbolic inertia, where proposals for change are tolerated yet fail to resonate with the emotional rhythm of the group. The silence that follows Sofia’s idea exemplifies this inertia: the absence of hostility masks a deeper lack of resonance. Integrative reframing offers a path through combining memory and renewal. When novelty is deliberately woven into collective memory, such as asking which tradition might be reinvented today, innovation appears less like disruption and more like a continuation of what already binds the group. In this way, heritage becomes a frame within which new ideas can claim legitimacy.

A third issue is single-channel resonance, where feeds dominated by nostalgic content relegate innovation to the margins. Here, it is not individual reluctance but the architecture of interaction that privileges memory. Spatial separation addresses this through creating separate but visible spaces. Dedicated threads or sub-groups for future-oriented discussions allow innovation to claim legitimacy, rather than competing for attention within nostalgia-saturated feeds. Crucially, the visibility of these spaces ensures that novelty is not pushed into obscurity but remains part of the community’s symbolic repertoire.

By alternating between temporal openings, symbolic reframing, and spatial differentiation, ORCs can keep heritage as a source of reassurance while making space for voices that imagine renewal. What emerges is not a choice between memory and change but a civic rhythm in which both can coexist: rooted in an evocative past yet oriented toward emerging futures.

The paradox of voice versus harmony surfaces when civic participation is welcomed in principle but constrained in practice by the pursuit of emotional unity as the vignette (Box 3) below illustrates:

This episode illustrates how civic engagement is celebrated when it reinforces shared pride and symbolic unity but muted when it introduces nuance or complexity. Mark’s voice was not censored or rejected, it was absorbed by silence and sidelined through moderator intervention that framed his concern as discordant. Participation, in this context, is shaped less by formal access than by alignment with an implicit emotional code.

Table 4 shows how this paradox can be navigated in practice. Strategies need to safeguard emotional unity while keeping space for disagreement. Some approaches rely on integrative reframing, such as acknowledging dissent, others on spatial separation, such as ask and discuss threads, and still others on oscillating emphasis, such as staggered engagement. The vignette highlights three example issues: muted dissent, one-sided tone, and silencing, all of which could be addressed by tactics that sustain harmony without erasing plurality.

The first issue concerns muted dissent, where contributions are expressed but left unanswered in celebratory threads. Here the paradox is tangible in the silence that surrounds respectful concerns. Integrative reframing responds through acknowledging dissent. By validating such contributions with short but explicit replies, moderators keep the door open for complexity without undermining the positive tone of interaction. In this way dissent is not treated as disruption but as part of a plural civic dialogue.

A second challenge lies in the one-sided tone of discussions, where affirmation dominates and complexity is displaced. The celebratory atmosphere provides emotional resonance yet leaves little room for critique. Spatial separation addresses this imbalance through recurring ask and discuss threads. By carving out a distinct arena for questions and doubts, critique is normalized rather than marginalized. This move transforms contestation from an unwelcome interruption into a recognized dimension of civic exchange, enabling affirmation and questioning to coexist visibly.

A third issue emerges in moments of silencing, when moderators intervene to protect stability by closing or diverting conversations. While this avoids escalation, it risks suppressing dissent entirely. Oscillating emphasis addresses this dilemma through staggered engagement. Moderators may pause heated exchanges but later return with a follow-up post that summarizes the points raised and invites further input. Silence becomes provisional rather than permanent, allowing contested views to reemerge in a more structured and constructive form.

The section offers a diagnostic map rather than a checklist, indicating where paradoxes can surface and which situated moves can sustain participation without eroding intimacy. ORCs appear not as fixed containers of civic identity but as evolving service ecosystems (Breidbach et al., 2014; Vargo and Lusch, 2016), in which the three civic paradoxes are linked to the layered experiences of sense of place, sense of community, and sense of citizenship, yet their salience can spill across these domains. The navigation strategies, rather than offering universal solutions, underscore the importance of contextual sensitivity (Schad et al., 2016), emotional attunement (Cunha and Putnam, 2019), and platform design (Hazée et al., 2020) in shaping how paradoxes are surfaced and addressed. Our contribution is not a universal recipe; it is an orientation that treats paradox navigation as ongoing work distributed across people, their practices, and technologies.

Based on our viewpoint, ORCs emerge not as stable areas of cohesion but as paradoxical systems. Civic participation in ORCs is not a linear movement toward inclusion but an ongoing negotiation of paradoxes that can never be fully resolved. In this sense, our application of paradox theory challenges established accounts of community by demonstrating that digital belonging is all at the same time inclusive and exclusionary.

Our viewpoint contributes toward the development of third place theory. Traditionally, third places such as cafés, libraries, and parks are valued for their neutrality, informality, and capacity to sustain friendly social interactions. ORCs can be read as a new generation of third places that replicate many of these qualities while they also diverge in crucial ways. Unlike physical gathering spots, ORCs are shaped by algorithms, moderation rules, and platform architectures that condition what kinds of speech are amplified, ignored, or silenced. They enable accessible, low-threshold engagement, yet they also create new risks of polarization and tone-policing. By extending third place theory into the digital realm, our work highlights the need to integrate sociotechnical infrastructures into our understanding of public life.

Our viewpoint also establishes a bridge between service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2016) and paradox theory (Smith and Lewis, 2011). By conceptualizing ORCs as service ecosystems, the analysis shows how value is simultaneously co-created and co-destroyed. Mechanisms typically celebrated in service research, i.e. emotional resonance, co-creation of meaning, and place-based loyalty, are revealed as double-edged. The very processes that produce cohesion can entrench boundaries and suppress dissent. This reframing invites service research to move beyond its emphasis on value creation and recognize the paradoxical nature of service interactions in complex, digitally mediated environments. The theoretical implications therefore extend well beyond the study of neighborhoods, offering fresh avenues for theorizing third places, hybrid spaces and the evolving meaning of community.

ORCs are not self-sustaining communities that naturally gravitate toward harmony; they are fragile ecosystems that require careful governance. Therefore, moderators, platform designers, policymakers, and local organizations each have a role to play in navigating paradoxes rather than attempting to eliminate them. Efforts to resolve contradictions outright, whether by enforcing strict consensus or by opening the gates without limits, tend to destabilize community. What is needed instead are specific approaches that accept paradoxes as permanent and cultivate practices for managing them productively.

For ORC moderators, this perspective underscores the importance of professionalizing their role as frontline service staff. The subtle decisions moderators make, what posts to feature, when to intervene in disputes, how to encourage newcomers, shape the very texture of participation. Training, toolkits, and reflective practices can help moderators move beyond ad hoc reactions and adopt structured repertoires of temporal, spatial, and integrative strategies. These might include scheduled newcomer spotlights, dual conversation threads that separate memory-sharing from future-oriented proposals or prompts that encourage the blending of old and new perspectives.

For platform designers, the findings suggest concrete interventions at the level of interface and algorithm. Scheduled prompts, structural spaces for debate, and algorithmic nudges that surface marginalized voices can support inclusivity without sacrificing cohesion. In this sense, platform/service design becomes an instrument of civic governance, shifting responsibility away from individual moderators alone and embedding support into the architecture of the platform.

Policymakers and governance bodies can also treat ORCs as complementary infrastructures for local democracy. Instead of seeing them merely as risks for polarization, they can be leveraged as forums for dialogue, information exchange, and participatory decision-making. Likewise, local businesses and nonprofits can align initiatives with the rhythms of ORCs, building trust and long-term loyalty by engaging in ways that are sensitive to community norms and paradoxes.

Ultimately, the managerial message is clear: contradictions such as belonging versus boundary or heritage versus future are not problems to be solved once and for all. They are the very conditions of digital community life. The challenge for practitioners is to design governance mechanisms, training practices, and service touchpoints that keep these paradoxes open, generative, and productive over time.

Much remains to be understood about how ORCs operate as paradoxical service ecosystems. Empirical studies are particularly needed to evaluate the effectiveness of both/and navigation strategies such as temporal separation, spatial separation, and integrative reframing. These strategies, while conceptually compelling, should be tested across a variety of cultural contexts, community types, and platform designs to assess their impact.

Comparative research is important for showing how ORCs relate to traditional third places. While digital communities often serve similar purposes as physical spaces, they also differ because they depend on algorithms and moderation. Studying these overlaps and differences can help us better understand how technology is changing the way people connect and participate in civic life. Digital trace data can reveal patterns of participation and exclusion at scale, ethnographic observation can capture the lived experiences of members, and experiments can test causal effects of moderation practices or algorithmic interventions. Combining these methods will generate richer, more nuanced insights into the paradoxical dynamics of ORCs. Future work should also adopt a comparative lens across countries and platforms. Facebook, Nextdoor, nebenan.de, and Neighborly all support neighborhood interactions but differ in cultural embedding, platform logics, and community expectations. Cross-platform analysis can help distinguish paradoxes that are universal features of digital civic life from those that are context-specific. Equally important is the study of ORCs in times of disruption. Whether during pandemics, migration surges, climate emergencies, or political controversies, neighborhood groups often become frontline civic infrastructures. Understanding how paradox navigation strategies influence collective action in these moments of stress is an important future research avenue.

Finally, the study of ORCs offers a natural site for interdisciplinary collaboration. Service marketing, political science, urban studies, and digital sociology all have stakes in understanding how these communities function. By bridging these fields, future research can contribute not only to theories of service and community but also to broader debates about citizenship, belonging, and the transformation of public space in an era of digital mediation.