238 Int. J. Web Based Communities, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2016 Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Understanding online communities on social networks via the notion of imagined communities: the case of TripΑdvisor Androniki Kavoura* Department of Marketing, Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Athens, Greece Email: nkavoura@teiath.gr *Corresponding author Maria Teresa Tiago Borges University of the Azores, San Miguel, Azores, Portugal Email: teresa.tiago@gmail.com Abstract: This paper employs Anderson’s imagined communities and their contributing elements that connect people – even if they have never met – to apply it to TripAdvisor, arguing that TripAdvisor has characteristics of an imagined community, a concept initially employed in defining nations but may well apply in the creation and maintenance of online communities. We aimed to examine in this exploratory study whether the characteristics of an imagined community such as the use of special language, the association of ideas, cohesion and membership, interaction and the presence of experts create an online community for TripAdvisor. Content analysis of tourist comments posted in TripAdvisor regarding top ten restaurants in Azores and Hawaii was performed over 2013. The coding was done by two coders and the unit of analysis was the tourists’ posts. Final data composition derived from 686 customers that performed 813 reviews. TripAdvisor has all the characteristics of an imagined community. This is the first time that the concept of the imagined communities is applied in tourism studies and online communities, making a theoretical and practical contribution to the concept of imagined communities in the context of online travel communication through people’s reviews. Keywords: e-wom; online imagined communities; TripAdvisor; online reviews; social networking sites; SNS; island destinations; online communication. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kavoura, A. and Borges, M.T.T. (2016) ‘Understanding online communities on social networks via the notion of imagined communities: the case of TripΑdvisor’, Int. J. Web Based Communities, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp.238–261. Biographical notes: Androniki Kavoura is an Associate Professor, Department of Marketing, Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Greece. Her published work is associated with the role of communication in the marketing and advertising of services with the use of social media and other electronic means. She has published papers in internationals journals such as Euromed