One of the communities that I am a part of is fan site for Kanye West. The site consists of a news queue of the latest news involving Kanye and exclusive video and audio from our favorite artist. There is also a discussion board where all of Kanye’s fans can post there feeling on the topics of the day (even the non-Kanye related ones). When one looks at the site in terms of the SNA attributes it is clear that it is a community. The message board is the main feature that displays this. When someone starts a discussion thread, members respond in a specific way to the beginning topic. In this way, a relation is started between members. This discourse between members in the presence of other members is the type of individual to individual involvement that defines the community in the SNA.
The members of the Kanye fan site share common ground. Everyone on the site who posts on the message board knows the distinction between popular rap and hip hop. Whenever anyone posts on the message board praising an artist who does not make hip hop, he/she is publicly denounced by other members on the board. The members’ knowledge of music creates a unique culture for the community. In this specific community, pop cultural icons are rejected for the icons that the members together choose to praise.
There is also a process of reciprocity in the site. Many of the threads on the message board entail one person starting a topic that agrees with the values of the site, which is then reaffirmed by various members of the site. In this way, members uphold and reinforce beliefs that are held by the group as a collective.
3 comments:
Hi Mike-
You must be a very big fan of Kanye! I really liked how you analyzed the SNA attributes of your community. I agree with the fact that members of your community have common ground as it is a Kanye West fan website and thus all of them must have the proper knowledge of hip hop and popular rap or else they will be ridiculed, or attacked by a leviathan. However, you didn’t make any mention of whether the actors, or members of the site, have weak or strong ties. Based on the information you provided, I would say that those who actively participate in discussions have strong ties to the community because of their frequent contact. Those that post or respond to a thread incorrectly would probably be considered weak ties because after being ridiculed, I am guessing they would decrease their amount of contact in the community to a bare minimum. But, these weak ties are more likely to lead to others more jobs and money because of the variety, range, and composition of their resources.
Hi Mike. Reading your blog was very interesting. What kind of ties do the actors in your Kanye West fan site have? Since one actor does not come into actual contact with any of the other actors on the fan site, do the actors have any ties at all? If the actors do have ties, are they weak or strong? I would think that the actors do have ties, but mostly weak ones. Maybe some super fans have strong ties? Also, your community depends almost completely on CMC, and without the Internet, your community would most likely not exist.
Wat up mike...First off, what do you think of the new album, and what are people saying online? personally, I'm a huge fan. There's obviously a lot of common ground on the website since it's a fan website. Even though you didn't make any reference to the kinds of ties the actors have, i think within the community they have weak ties, since it's only an online community and there's not necessarily anything else there other than the fan connection. While i agree that this particular community has a lot of CMC, i would have to disagree with Mallory saying this community would not exist online. Everyone on the website is a Kanye fan, whether or not they know each other. I would argue that the community stil exists outside the website, since the Kanye fans exist outide the website. Offline, there's a group of people who like Kanye, and whether or not they interact due to location or whatever, they are still a community and a group of Kanye fans.
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