This chapter provides an overview of digital communication’s transformative impact on human interaction. It begins with Web 2.0, enabling users to upload and engage with content, fostering a participatory culture that creates and shapes knowledge and authority. This phenomenon has significantly changed how we communicate, interact, and seek information. For instance, people often turn to Google for answers to various queries, from recipes to medical conditions. Researchers studying digital health social networks (DHSNs) agree that the Internet has transformed the experience of illness. Web 2.0 has introduced new sources of expertise, where user-generated content challenges traditional, static, and institutional expertise. These new sources often shape our initial and sometimes sole impression of issues, influencing our perception of reality and engagement with knowledge. In this digital landscape, participants compete for attention, legitimacy, and influence with peers and institutional entities.

Additionally, online platforms have provided minority groups with representation, visibility, and public debate opportunities, promoting awareness and inclusion. This digital revolution has undoubtedly reshaped fundamental aspects of human communication and the nature of information sources.

The chapter ’Virtual Furever Homes’ shows the background of digital spaces and community building by using examples from cat-related digital spaces. The evolution of participatory culture and the development of technology have influenced the way we form online networks and communicate with each other. The chapter explains the concepts of virtual communities, communities of practice, light communities, and affinity spaces. As digital spaces form around narratives, it uses the shared story of the mediated narrative approach to categorise the types of cat accounts that make up the cat-related digital spaces.

Media and communication influence, shape, and change our societies. Therefore, this first chapter aims to explain the implications of digital communication for our societies and the relationship between media, technology, and society. The chapter introduces the concept of society from a sociological perspective and explains how societies change because of the effects technological developments have on them, and vice versa. It illustrates this interplay with the example of digital divides.

In order to explain the significance and changes of public communication in a digital society, the chapters zooms in on the media landscape and explicates the difference between new media and old (or traditional) media. It pays particular attention to the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, as his work remains a cornerstone when studying the relationship between media, technology, and society. The chapter then outlines the discipline of media linguistics and explains how media linguistics can help to make digital media and digital communication more tangible. It focuses on three key terms crucial for understanding public digital communication: multimodality, media convergence, and mediatization.