Olivia Smith ENC 1101- OM49 TR— 10:16 am- Narrative Story November 1, 2016
Bright red letters that read “Celebrating 50 Years of Star Trek! Welcome to the world’s largest Star Trek Fan Club!” pop off the page as you click onto Starfleet’s main website page. Their emblem has Starfleet in gold on top of a silver wreath pattern, very flashy. The page fits the galactic theme with spaceships in the background and grey boxes with white letters for their different page tabs. Their search bar seems inviting at the top right page with enticing square boxes underneath that link you to their Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin, Pinterest, and RSS social media pages. These are intriguing considering how long this club has been running, 50 years, It is nice to see more modern links for the younger generation. The different website tabs are bright with short and concise labels like: About, Join/Renew Now, News & Events, Resources, Contacts, Forums, Database, and Login. As you scroll lower you can see important links in bold white lettering, along with pictures from Flickr, and a little summary about the club. This shows that they have 4,600 members and 240 chapters worldwide. By dragging your cursor over the About tab and clicking on the “An Introduction to STARFLEET” link in the drop down bar you can learn basic facts about the club. Starfleet aims to make themselves a vessel for fans to make friends, have fun, and give back to their community. They group local fans into Chapters and these chapters can get together for fun camaraderie and community service, which is surprising to outsiders who can only Star Trek fans as nerds typing away on their computers. Chapters can made of ten to more than a dozen members and they can either communicate through meetings or email and telephone. Each chapter is then grouped into geographical regions and these regions can then be invited to big conferences, parties, and charity events. We can then break down the chain of command: Commanding Officer and First Officer are the heads of individual chapters and they report to Regional Coordinators. These regional coordinators form the Board of Directors for Starfleet and they work for an elected 7 member Executive committee. Starfleets organization seems very well thought out and rigid. Let’s not mention each member of the chapter can be assigned a role and title. This sense of power pyramid aroused a more disturbing group of questions. Starfleet could be going through internal battles over power. Besides Starfleet being a close knit community they also offer members a chance to participate in their scholarship and a spot in groups called “Starfleet Academy” and “Starfleet Marine Corps.” Starfleet Academy is their education branch and they offer members free classes on Star Trek trivia. It is just like an internal game or school inside Starfleet and is 5,000 courses strong. Starfleet Marine Corps is a special club within Starfleet which is for veterans, active duty military, and people who just enjoy the military activities and culture. It is a paid experience for Starfleet members. Starfleet is a king among other Star Trek fan clubs. Star trek fans can appreciate the time, effort, and love this organized website has obviously gone through. Although, It is a more closed knit community since you have to pay to be a member, members have an abundance of resources and opportunities within the community. Fans can “live, long, and prosper” in Starfleet’s dedicated family.
Alexa Poscic ENC 1101 Field Notes November 3, 2016
A personal trainer, Cody Sattler, founded CSatt Fitness. Cody created a 30-day challenge that provides people with workout plans, meal plans, approved food lists, and motivational support for thirty days. This challenge is mainly online and can be done at home. It helps people stay motivated and stick to a plan anywhere they go. CSatt Fitness values continual self-improvement in health and fitness. This challenge focuses on three main things: resistance training, nutrition, and motivation/support. Resistance Training helps to burn fat, build/shape muscles, and increase strength. With nutrition helps to reduce cravings, simple rules to maximize success, improve your health, and it involves real food. Everyone gets motivation and support through online support and positive friends. The support can be through Facebook, messaging, in person, or snap chat. The owner, Cody, starred on the television shows The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise. Most of the members know about the challenge from seeing him on the show or someone referring them to the challenge. The main goal of this challenge is, “Focusing on positivity, self-improvement and community, Cody skillfully guides the “Fit Fam” through their transformations with his vast experience and motivational leadership.” There is a website to join the challenge and to get more information about the program. The website is designed very well, with a clean look and color palette it gives off a relatable feeling. The website has professional pictures and real pictures from actual members of the community. It shows real people’s transformations after the end of each 30-day challenge. However, most of the communication in done online through either Facebook or Snap Chat. Some members do meet up in person and work out together in order to stay motivated. I like how these members stay in touch and keep each other on track. People always say that they will lose the weight and never commit to losing it. All of the members have the same goals so they want everyone in the community to succeed in changing their lifestyle. One thing I did not care for was seeing a couple of the negative members complaining about their workout or not losing weight as fast as they hope. It would be hard to stay positive when members see negative comments on the Facebook page. All of the members and the owner can motivate each other to stay on track with their goals. The best part is that everyone has different short-term goals, but everyone’s long term goal of changing their life is the same. The members chose to stick with this fitness program compared to others is the support of the “fit fam” and being able to still eat healthy/great tasting food. They do not feel restricted to counting calories and being depressed about what they are eating. This particular program is made for people who want to make a lifestyle change, not lose weight unhealthy and fast.
Sam Pinson ENC 1101 Th 4:30-5:45 Field Notes Assignment November 3, 2016
October 29 3:30 PM Fraternity House Basketball Court, Sigma Chi Potential Members/ Brothers A competitive game of Basketball
Upset of the Day, Maybe the Week Notes on some “youngins” beating a formidable squad It’s 3:30 and like any other day I’m walking in and out of the house, studying, hanging out with my friends, and at this moment I’m relaxing on one of the benches outside with some of my really good friends. Like a scene from a movie the three brothers, who around the house, are pretty much known as the 3 v 3 champions. Speakers come out, music starts playing, and the sun is beating down. They start draining every warm up jump shot, three-pointer, and lay up. Three potential new members casually walk up and challenge them to a game. Of course what everyone watching outside thinks the brothers are going to win no problem. The game starts and to nobody’s surprise the brothers took an early lead, playing as one cohesive unit as if they shared some sort of neural bond. The score is a pretty pathetic 6-0. And as if by some sort of miracle my friends, the new members turned things around. They too after spending eight weeks together, had a pretty strong sense of what each other was thinking on the courts. Some time passes, some crazy shots are made, and somehow the game is tied up. Right about now is when a pretty sizable crowd of brothers and new members had gathered to watch something that was almost one of those “you had to be there type of moment”. Things are getting intense on the court and the grind starts. The brothers are giving it there all, and the potentials continue to play their own game until… The score is 12-10 and they had won the game. That sense of brotherhood as described in my double entry notes, starts to seep up from the cracks and rub off on the potential new members, and an unspoken sense of respect blankets the victors of the game.
Ziwei Huang ENC 1101-0M49 Sun 2:00pm-3:45pm Revised Field Notes Assignment November 6, 2016
With the fast technology improvement, more and more entertainments come into our lives. Twenty years ago, people view online video game as a wired thing; ten years ago, people view online video game as nonsense and waste of time; right now, people view online video game as a kind of e-sport. I am a big fan of video game, and I want people view video game as a positive and health e-sports gaming instead of something that have bad impact to people. Therefore, I want to investigate the community of League of Legends gamers.
The website of the community board of League of Legends is http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/. All the members of this community are players of League of Legend. The website is designed to let the members communicate and upgrade their common in an open community. League of Legends is a five people versus five people real-time strategy type of game. This game combines single experiences and teamwork perfectly. To win this game, both of you and your teammates must work hard. Therefore, people were being able to talk about some strategy of the game.
There are two different types of the players. Some players only play this game with their friends and for fun. So, their main goal is to laugh and they don’t care about the win or lose. Another type of the players only care about the win or lose, they will play very seriously. Therefore, some disagreements and arguments will happen between those two types of players. The thing I feel disturbed is that since people will not be legally accused, they will just say whatever they want and makes people feels bad. Since everyone has their own opinions, there is always a lot of disagreements between people. Somebody posted his/her ideas on the community board, another might disagree with it and jump out to against it. Some players just don’t make any logical connections; they just want to verbally abuse other people. Every time I see this happened, I feel very bad.
Matthew Ersek ENC 1101 0M04 November 3, 2016 TH 4:14- 5:45 Revised Field Notes LS1Tech, an online forum that allows mechanics and motor head’s together to discuss and learn about the GM motor, the LS. This online community consists of mostly enthusiasts who are trying to get the most performance out of their cars. The community delivers a few convenient forum types as well, like a for sale/ trade and troubleshooting tabs for easy access for the communities members. Members also have their own build threads of their cars or motors with step by step documentation of how the build went, as well as the parts used in the build and what worked and what didn’t. This helps other members who are trying to build their car or motor and want some guidance on what parts work and what doesn’t. There is a subset of the members who are mostly interested in taking a LS motor and swapping it into a car that does not come with that motor. This is commonly known as a LS swap, members try and fit the motor into older cars and other cars, like older GM cars and even some popular foreign cars. More about the members of the community, I found that most of the frequent members are friendly and fairly knowledgeable about the motor the site is based around. The members know the differences in the motor sizes and tend to form subtle subgroups based on what size motor they relate with (e.g., 5.3L vs. 7.0L). This would be where to go if you have specific questions about what size valve springs you should run with your sized motor, or what sized cam shaft is too rough for that size. The community also doesn't seem to follow the Chevy vs Ford feud, even though the LS motor is a Chevy (GM) product. The members seem one sided towards the LS, they show respect and appreciation for other car types and cultures. This forum is for “do it yourselfers” instead of people who would rather take their car to the shop to get the head gasket fixed. Another small thing that I found while evaluating the community was that the members don't post that someone did something wrong and that there is only one way to do something. They respect others decisions and opinions, but they do offer alternative methods to doing something that might be easier.
Maddie McMurry ENC 1101 0M49 Revised Field Notes November 1, 2016 pt 1 Notes on the Official Pottermore Platforms and the Unofficial Forum I am currently analyzing J.K. Rowling’s spectacularly done Pottermore website. Upon arriving at the site I am welcomed with clouds of swirling smoke in the background and the statement “WELCOME TO THE DIGITAL HEART OF THE WIZARDING WORLD, PACKED WITH EXCLUSIVE WRITING, NEWS, FEATURES, AND SURPRISES” is planted in the center of the page in delicate white font. Beneath this statement is a button that plays an audio message from the creator herself, J.K. Rowling. In order to move from this page I must select continue at the bottom.
After this it redirects to the main site, which again greets me with a stunning image, this time of what appears to be a flapper girl sitting at a bar with a drink in hand staring at a troll of some sort. The words “ STEP INSIDE A 1920s NEW YORK CITY SPEAKEASY” in bold white font pop out against the dark image with “the magic behind Fantastic Beasts’ coolest gin joint” scrawled below. This is just one of six main slides on the site. The other five also boast intriguing images with titles written over them. They include: “The Dark Stories of Azkaban,” “Beast of the Week” (a small stick bug looking creature), “The Ultimate Dark Arts Quiz,” “Discover your Patronus,” and “Unsafe, insanitary, and demeaning Muggle transport.” Above the titles is a bar, which is home to other links, such as: Writing by J.K. Rowling, Explore the Story, News, and Shop. The top right corner features a profile button and a little shopping basket. The site is quite magical; it is beautifully done and incredibly easy to navigate. There are visuals everywhere, which really draws me in as a Harry Potter fan it is great to see quite literally what Rowling envisioned. At the bottom of the site are links to other platforms; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Following the link to the official Pottermore Instagram I discovered a whole new side of the Pottermore fandom. The Instagram page posts daily images varying in topic catering to its 851K followers. They range from the Beast of the Week to a birthday appreciation post to Sirius Black (HP’s godfather). Regardless of the image a large number of comments appear at the bottom whether it be tagging a friend or expressing an opinion on the topic. The Instagram allows for more interaction between community members than the original website.
The Pottermore Facebook page is essentially identical content to the Instagram but with fewer comments which was surprising considering that the Facebook has a whopping 1,387,461 followers.
As for the Twitter account, it boasts the most followers- 1.67 million. This platform shares similar posts to the Facebook and Instagram, however, it engages more with its members. The Pottermore Twitter account favorites and retweets dozens of members tweets allowing for a more personal feel. Due to it being around Halloween time there were many retweets of impressive Harry Potteresque costumes including, a Snape and Harriet Potter couples costume. The Twitter page even features tweets from J.K Rowling where she responds to some posts.
Pt2 Moving on to the unofficial Pottermore Fan Forum. This is the hub for Potter fan communication. By no means is this site as visually appealing and seamless at Rowling official site, however, it does provide a plethora of opportunities for self expression and engagement. This site offers three primary sections: Forum, Quibbler, and VIP lounge. The forum houses a vast majority of the discussion that occurs on the page. Topics range from Gryffindor House Party to fan theories. There is a ton of Harry Potter lingo (lexis) that is difficult to keep up with; Google is quite useful right now. From what I have gathered the Quibbler, like in the books/movies, is a form of a newspaper spreading word of daily news in the Wizarding World. As the for the VIP lounge it costs money, I have not yet been able to explore this page first hand but from what I have gathered from others it provides a superior experience to the regular forum.
Overall, it appears that Rowling’s official pages are better organized and more informative than the unofficial fan page. The fan page was pretty disorganized and filled text- the opposite of Pottermore.com. It is a very different experience from platform to platform. After gathering this information I wonder if community members are more likely to be active of Rowling’s platforms than the Pottermore fan forum page.
Angeleke Kelaris ENC – 1101 – 0M49 TR – 4:30-5:45 Revised Field Notes Assignment November 2nd, 2016
12:00 PM, Thursday, October 27th 2016 Online Discussion Post and Website The American Nurses Association
A Look Into the Life of Nursing: Notes on The American Nurses Association
By looking through the American Nurses Association website and discussion board, I was able to collect a large amount of data and details about the community due to the fact that they have any information you need to know available. It honestly surprised me that the page was so descriptive and answered every question I could possibly think of. I thought about it and I realized that this is a large association that has been around for over 100 years, so it is expected to have a lot of information on their main page. I think what intrigued me the most was how much future growth this community has and the amount of potential they contain. When looking over the association’s extensive history, they mention how only 20 members attended their first official meeting and now they have an annual meeting with tens of thousands participating. I can only imagine what this community will look like in the next 50 years and the large amount of accomplishments they will complete by then. As for the aspects that disturbed me, I can honestly say there isn’t much to tell. The only thing I can say I was slightly annoyed by was the fact that a regular citizen was not allowed to view the discussion board page thoroughly if you did not own membership. But besides this minor detail, I was very impressed with the ANA’s organization, details, and worth. Although, the research I conducted with the two pages alone was extremely extensive and gave me loads of information, I will definitely have to research in other ways to gain more data. My first thought in doing this is trying to get ahold of one of the members that often participate in the discussion boards and forums to hear their opinions on the community. If I am not able to do this, thankfully I can easily get in contact with the association itself, since they run a headquarters in Maryland and have an easy to reach phone number. I am also going to do some other research by simply looking up the ANA and find out as much information as possible from other sources online besides their main page. I would really love to try and focus more on the discussion board and the annual conference since this will show more on how the community connects and converses. Hopefully this will be possible by getting in touch with a few of the members or coordinators.
Denise Cukierman ENC 1101-0M49 Revised Field Notes Assignment November 3, 2016 Hamsters Gone Wild: Notes on everything Hamster related by HamsterDiaries Hamster lovers everywhere rejoice, there is a blog for you. Now in days all it takes is a millisecond search to find information on anything so when I came across this hamster blog I was a little shocked. Being a hamster owner myself, I was in awe when I saw there was a place to get all my hamster related questions answered. Hamsters are a lot of work - knowing when to clean their cage, change their water, give them new toys and knowing when to clean them is tough work- so having somewhere that will provide you with all these answers is an excellent resource for hamster owners. When I started playing around and navigating on her website, I was fascinated at how organized it was. There are 5 tabs at the top so readers can easily navigate and get to where they want to be. The “About” tab tells her readers about each one of her four hamsters. The tab “Blog Awards” tells her readers all about the awards her blog has won - which add up to 7 first place titles and 12 runner up wins. The “Contact” tab has a way to contact her via her blog if you have any questions you want answered. It also has a FAQ and Tips part of the tab. Next is the “Images” tab which showcases many images of hamsters doing different things like eating, sleeping and playing with toys. Lastly is the “Video” tab which shows again, hamsters doing different tasks such as making their bed (yes, hamsters like to make their bed) playing on the wheel, and there's even a video on newborn baby hamsters. All of her blog posts have different titles and some of them are very punny. Titles like “Do My Cheeks Look BIG In This?” and “Throwback Furs-day :)” leave readers with a light hearted feeling while reading the article. The thing that disturbed me the most was all the pictures and videos she had of the newborn baby hamsters. Even though I know that all hamsters start at this stage of life it was shocking to see. After reading everything about the baby hamsters the blog following the birth of them was a blog about their death. There were pictures and videos of them once they were dead. This made my stomach turn as I get queasy very easily. She did not insert a reader's discretion note or anything to forewarn people of what lies ahead. Another thing that did not necessarily disturb me but made me extremely sad was a video she had in memory for her hamster that had passed away.
Minxin Cheng ENC 1101-oM49 Revised Field Notes Assignment November 3, 2016
I was introduced to this community by one of my friends who currently study in computer science. Stack Overflow is a great go-to place for professional programmers and developers to communicate, collaborate, and solve difficult coding problems. Browsing and reading those posted solutions can also help programmers to learn some useful knowledge or skills. With about 6.3 million registered users, Stack Overflow seems to be a very large community. Its webpage has a clean and fresh look. It is easy for everyone to manipulate since things in this site are well organized into tabs. On the top right corner there is a search bar which people can use to find any questions and answers they are looking for. Underneath it are six main tabs labeled as Questions, Jobs, Documentation, Tags, Users, Badges, and Ask Question that lead people to different contents of the site. Unlike other Q&A sites, Stack Overflow provides a better online experience to its users. All of the questions posted on this site are tagged, so people can use different tags to find questions related to the topics they interested in. In addition, users can vote on questions and answers posted by others. The best answers with the most votes are list on the top for people to view, and the incorrect answers will be on the bottom. All users in this community can earn reputation score and badges through their participation. The more questions they answer and the more votes the get, the higher they will rank in this community. This may be one of the motives that engage people to be highly active in this community and help other programmers to solve their problems. However, Stack Overflow’s goal is more than just simply answering coding questions, it want to build a library of all coding problems that may occur with the best solution for every programmers in the world. With this purpose in mind, despite of when the question is posted and how many answers it has got, many programmers are still trying to improve or edit the answers as they can. Programmers list on the top of the ranking usually have very reputation. By clicking on their icon or id people can view their programming stories. Their home page serve as a portfolio which contains all activities they did in the past at Stack Overflow. Those experts are more likely to receive requests from their follow developers and help solve questions. Everyone in this community are working hard and try their best to help each other.
Zach King ENC 1101-om49 Revised Field Notes Assignment 3 November, 2016 Call of Duty
In the community that I chose to research people come to talk about call of duty, but not just any call of duty, call of duty modern warfare. Which came out in 2007 and is being remastered this year by Raven Soft Studios. Using the site call steamcommunity.com, people are able to come here and post their opinions about the old game, or even talk about the new game that comes out later this week. This community can all be located on one central page where people can post things like their opinions, pictures, or even clips from the games that they played. With each post you are able to respond to each other sharing what your opinion may be, or to simply tell someone that the clip they had was nice. As you scroll down the page there is definitely a pattern of people talking about the new version of the game that comes out on Nov. 4th this upcoming week. Something that took me a little off guard when I first started to investigate this community would be of how many people still post about a game that came out in 2007. Looking back to posts over a month ago there was still probably 150+ posts a day. Granted a lot of these postings were people conversing about the game but it was still a shocking amount of interest for a game nearly a decade old. The literal posts themselves would come up in square boxes throughout the website, and you would click on the comment button to share any additional information with the person that posted the initial comment. By doing this you get an extremely interactive community that is able to share information and ideas with each other smoothly and quickly. This was really intriguing to me because some of the other websites that I looked at their communication did not seem to be as smooth as this. Here, a community that cares about a game 9 years old, is talking every day about what they like dislike or something cool that may have happened. One thing that is disturbing about his community and the platform that its uses is that some people like to make posts about something that isn’t remotely close to the topic of the page. One post was about politics and the upcoming election. The person was talking about how Hillary should be President etc., when this causes other people to chime in and eventually started a debate over something that has nothing to do with the central point that this community is used for. Another thing that bothered me was that someone was posting pictures of Japanese cartoon art which made no sense to me as it did not pertain to any topic or conversation in the community.
Looking through this gamer community, I had very mixed emotions on what I was finding. I was surprised, intrigued, and sometimes disturbed. It was very obvious the main point behind this community and the people who created it. They are very transparent in their motives. the number of people that actually participate in this community. Though there are not too many discussion posts that are actually on this website, but there are over a thousand likes and comments. I was also surprised that the website is very easy to get around. This is definitely not a very professional secret website due to the fact that it is so easy to access and see all the discussion post. It was also free which I found very odd. But once I started looking into the Ads that were being promoted I quickly realized that that was the websites main purpose of this community discussion board. That is how they make their money because it is the perfect target audience. each person was so helpful to each other but also was very selfish in their own motivation for giving that helpful information. Also I found it very intriguing that this website was not meant for professionals. I liked the way that anyone regardless of age could access this website and be a part of it. Even me, not ever have played a video game ever, could be a part of this community or discussion post and be welcomed. I was very disturbed by the vulgar language used. Since I picture younger children being on this website so I think that it should be more censored in the language used. Also in the fact that every person that accesses this website could see what was discussed and that type of language does not need to be used under any circumstance. I was disturbed by the amount of promo codes used and how many people could access these codes. The fact that almost every gamer chooses to “cheat the system” in this way.
Israel Camacho ENC 1101-0M49 Revised Field Notes Assignment November 2, 2016 Notes on F150 Forum Community The F150 online community is large and intimidating to look at with a large quantity of tabs and threads to see, it feels unapproachable. However, once you take the time to figure out the contents of each tab and where they take you, as well as knowing what thread you want to look at it becomes simple. I found the search function very helpful in trying to look up specific threads that interested me. Even if you aren’t looking for anything specific, just the pure amount of threads allows you to be entertained and informed. What really surprised me was how informative the group is, they are quick to give advice and help you with a problem. The community ranges from first time buyers, to lifelong Ford owners, and even Ford technicians that all come together to share in their love for F150’s. I find it very refreshing that those I have seen on the forum are very mature and respectful to each other which can be rare in online communities. They also heavily encourage modifications to trucks, whether it be simple things such as changing your stock radio to a double din replacement, or more complex things such as engine swaps. Throughout the process they share and exchange information which greatly helps not only the one who set up the thread but also those who may look to it for guidance themselves. You can also find a great deal of vendors that sell all sorts of items to the community such as custom interior piece, like dashboards or center consoles. Lastly, there is really only one peeve I have with the website and it is that the admins don’t update the calendar which makes it kind of pointless to have.
Zachariah Hsu ENC 1101 Revised Field Notes Assignment November 3, 2016 5:00P.M., Wednesday, November 2, 2016 http://onlinegaming.community Online Gaming Community Website A League of Their Own: Notes on Online Gaming Community Website Upon my observation of The Online Gaming Community, I was intrigued by the type of dedication the members of this community possessed. They all seemed very interested in console gaming and the competitive aspect of it, but didn’t have the type of unity or care for one another like many other communities hold. The website claims that their mission is simply to share appreciation for gaming. But if anything, the members were all concerned more about being better than the others, and I attribute that to the competition-style base of the entire website community. Looking at the website I can tell that competition is the focus, with game standings and tournament registration being displayed all over the place. I was surprised by how tight-knit this whole community was. Competitive gaming and tournaments like the ones this community offer are very popular around the world, it was a shock to me to find that this was not a huge community with countless competing members, but rather a tight group of gamers that just really enjoy competing with these same others. Looking at the standings and member names displayed on the website, I observe that these people are very used to one another and maybe even prefer it that way. I have to say I was disturbed a bit by the aspect of a new member joining such a community where everybody is already so well established. In this community, tournaments are held weekly and all members of the tournaments vote on the rules of the game they are playing prior. The image of a new member coming in and not knowing what to expect with processes like this are a bit concerning, and it is easy to tell that the new member would be a bit uncomfortable in the beginning to say the least. But with that being said, I don’t believe that problem would persist after just a little time to adjust. Overall, I was impressed by the unique structure and dynamics of this community, the way in which they are all connected to each other through competition, and how they stick to the community mission of just flat out enjoying the nature of video games.
Maddy Flower ENC 1101 TR—4:30-5:45 Revised Field Notes Assignment 11/1/2016
One of the most dedicated community groups that I have come across in my search is a fan base that call themselves “Swifties”. This community is dedicated to the world known singer Taylor Swift. Swift has received more than 200 awards from nearly 600 nominations. Some of the most important include seven Grammy Awards, twenty-two Billboard Music Awards, and sixteen American Music Awards. When reviewing my notes for this assignment, I gathered more information about how dedicated this fan base really is to Taylor and it was very surprising. They are contantly sending gifts, letters, buy her albums as soon as they are released, vote for her on award shows and much more. While doing this assignment, I am analyzing my data my checking out different websites hosted by Swifties, their Twitter/Instagram accounts and even watching videos about the fan base. I think contacting some of the first fans, as well as individuals running the Swiftie Central Website, would give me a better look into this community. It would also be a good idea to interview some of the fans and see how long they have been a part of the community, as well as their contributions. Swiftie Central is just a group of Swifties who give news on Taylor, host award shows, videos/pictures are displayed, updated news about Taylor and projects for Taylor. This fan base has been around for ten years, ever since Taylor came out with her first album in 2006 called Fearless. Taylor swift has over 80 million followers on twitter, which shows how big her fan base truly is. This information intrigued me because that is an enormous group of people that follow behind her career and through all the ups and downs with a celebrity, Swifties are there supporting her every step of the way. I find it so amazing that one person can bring so much positivity to someone’s life and connect so many people together. One disturbing aspect that I learned about the Swiftie community was that they were saying very rude and disgusting comments towards another artist, known as Diplo, when he was discussing the feud that had happened between Swift and one of her best friends. He told a magazine article that a few fans “threatened to murder him”. Although this is a very bizarre statement to make to another artist over such a petty comment, I don’t believe that all of the community is like that.
Olivia Smith
ReplyDeleteENC 1101- OM49
TR— 10:16 am-
Narrative Story
November 1, 2016
Bright red letters that read “Celebrating 50 Years of Star Trek! Welcome to the world’s largest Star Trek Fan Club!” pop off the page as you click onto Starfleet’s main website page. Their emblem has Starfleet in gold on top of a silver wreath pattern, very flashy. The page fits the galactic theme with spaceships in the background and grey boxes with white letters for their different page tabs. Their search bar seems inviting at the top right page with enticing square boxes underneath that link you to their Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin, Pinterest, and RSS social media pages. These are intriguing considering how long this club has been running, 50 years, It is nice to see more modern links for the younger generation. The different website tabs are bright with short and concise labels like: About, Join/Renew Now, News & Events, Resources, Contacts, Forums, Database, and Login. As you scroll lower you can see important links in bold white lettering, along with pictures from Flickr, and a little summary about the club. This shows that they have 4,600 members and 240 chapters worldwide.
By dragging your cursor over the About tab and clicking on the “An Introduction to STARFLEET” link in the drop down bar you can learn basic facts about the club. Starfleet aims to make themselves a vessel for fans to make friends, have fun, and give back to their community. They group local fans into Chapters and these chapters can get together for fun camaraderie and community service, which is surprising to outsiders who can only Star Trek fans as nerds typing away on their computers. Chapters can made of ten to more than a dozen members and they can either communicate through meetings or email and telephone. Each chapter is then grouped into geographical regions and these regions can then be invited to big conferences, parties, and charity events. We can then break down the chain of command: Commanding Officer and First Officer are the heads of individual chapters and they report to Regional Coordinators. These regional coordinators form the Board of Directors for Starfleet and they work for an elected 7 member Executive committee. Starfleets organization seems very well thought out and rigid. Let’s not mention each member of the chapter can be assigned a role and title. This sense of power pyramid aroused a more disturbing group of questions. Starfleet could be going through internal battles over power.
Besides Starfleet being a close knit community they also offer members a chance to participate in their scholarship and a spot in groups called “Starfleet Academy” and “Starfleet Marine Corps.” Starfleet Academy is their education branch and they offer members free classes on Star Trek trivia. It is just like an internal game or school inside Starfleet and is 5,000 courses strong. Starfleet Marine Corps is a special club within Starfleet which is for veterans, active duty military, and people who just enjoy the military activities and culture. It is a paid experience for Starfleet members.
Starfleet is a king among other Star Trek fan clubs. Star trek fans can appreciate the time, effort, and love this organized website has obviously gone through. Although, It is a more closed knit community since you have to pay to be a member, members have an abundance of resources and opportunities within the community. Fans can “live, long, and prosper” in Starfleet’s dedicated family.
Alexa Poscic
ReplyDeleteENC 1101
Field Notes
November 3, 2016
A personal trainer, Cody Sattler, founded CSatt Fitness. Cody created a 30-day challenge that provides people with workout plans, meal plans, approved food lists, and motivational support for thirty days. This challenge is mainly online and can be done at home. It helps people stay motivated and stick to a plan anywhere they go. CSatt Fitness values continual self-improvement in health and fitness. This challenge focuses on three main things: resistance training, nutrition, and motivation/support. Resistance Training helps to burn fat, build/shape muscles, and increase strength. With nutrition helps to reduce cravings, simple rules to maximize success, improve your health, and it involves real food. Everyone gets motivation and support through online support and positive friends. The support can be through Facebook, messaging, in person, or snap chat. The owner, Cody, starred on the television shows The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise. Most of the members know about the challenge from seeing him on the show or someone referring them to the challenge. The main goal of this challenge is, “Focusing on positivity, self-improvement and community, Cody skillfully guides the “Fit Fam” through their transformations with his vast experience and motivational leadership.” There is a website to join the challenge and to get more information about the program. The website is designed very well, with a clean look and color palette it gives off a relatable feeling. The website has professional pictures and real pictures from actual members of the community. It shows real people’s transformations after the end of each 30-day challenge. However, most of the communication in done online through either Facebook or Snap Chat. Some members do meet up in person and work out together in order to stay motivated. I like how these members stay in touch and keep each other on track. People always say that they will lose the weight and never commit to losing it. All of the members have the same goals so they want everyone in the community to succeed in changing their lifestyle. One thing I did not care for was seeing a couple of the negative members complaining about their workout or not losing weight as fast as they hope. It would be hard to stay positive when members see negative comments on the Facebook page. All of the members and the owner can motivate each other to stay on track with their goals. The best part is that everyone has different short-term goals, but everyone’s long term goal of changing their life is the same. The members chose to stick with this fitness program compared to others is the support of the “fit fam” and being able to still eat healthy/great tasting food. They do not feel restricted to counting calories and being depressed about what they are eating. This particular program is made for people who want to make a lifestyle change, not lose weight unhealthy and fast.
Sam Pinson
ReplyDeleteENC 1101
Th 4:30-5:45
Field Notes Assignment
November 3, 2016
October 29 3:30 PM
Fraternity House Basketball Court, Sigma Chi
Potential Members/ Brothers
A competitive game of Basketball
Upset of the Day, Maybe the Week
Notes on some “youngins” beating a formidable squad
It’s 3:30 and like any other day I’m walking in and out of the house, studying, hanging out with my friends, and at this moment I’m relaxing on one of the benches outside with some of my really good friends. Like a scene from a movie the three brothers, who around the house, are pretty much known as the 3 v 3 champions. Speakers come out, music starts playing, and the sun is beating down. They start draining every warm up jump shot, three-pointer, and lay up. Three potential new members casually walk up and challenge them to a game. Of course what everyone watching outside thinks the brothers are going to win no problem. The game starts and to nobody’s surprise the brothers took an early lead, playing as one cohesive unit as if they shared some sort of neural bond. The score is a pretty pathetic 6-0. And as if by some sort of miracle my friends, the new members turned things around. They too after spending eight weeks together, had a pretty strong sense of what each other was thinking on the courts. Some time passes, some crazy shots are made, and somehow the game is tied up. Right about now is when a pretty sizable crowd of brothers and new members had gathered to watch something that was almost one of those “you had to be there type of moment”. Things are getting intense on the court and the grind starts. The brothers are giving it there all, and the potentials continue to play their own game until… The score is 12-10 and they had won the game. That sense of brotherhood as described in my double entry notes, starts to seep up from the cracks and rub off on the potential new members, and an unspoken sense of respect blankets the victors of the game.
Ziwei Huang
ReplyDeleteENC 1101-0M49
Sun 2:00pm-3:45pm
Revised Field Notes Assignment
November 6, 2016
With the fast technology improvement, more and more entertainments come into our lives. Twenty years ago, people view online video game as a wired thing; ten years ago, people view online video game as nonsense and waste of time; right now, people view online video game as a kind of e-sport. I am a big fan of video game, and I want people view video game as a positive and health e-sports gaming instead of something that have bad impact to people. Therefore, I want to investigate the community of League of Legends gamers.
The website of the community board of League of Legends is http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/. All the members of this community are players of League of Legend. The website is designed to let the members communicate and upgrade their common in an open community. League of Legends is a five people versus five people real-time strategy type of game. This game combines single experiences and teamwork perfectly. To win this game, both of you and your teammates must work hard. Therefore, people were being able to talk about some strategy of the game.
There are two different types of the players. Some players only play this game with their friends and for fun. So, their main goal is to laugh and they don’t care about the win or lose. Another type of the players only care about the win or lose, they will play very seriously. Therefore, some disagreements and arguments will happen between those two types of players. The thing I feel disturbed is that since people will not be legally accused, they will just say whatever they want and makes people feels bad. Since everyone has their own opinions, there is always a lot of disagreements between people. Somebody posted his/her ideas on the community board, another might disagree with it and jump out to against it. Some players just don’t make any logical connections; they just want to verbally abuse other people. Every time I see this happened, I feel very bad.
Matthew Ersek
ReplyDeleteENC 1101 0M04
November 3, 2016
TH 4:14- 5:45
Revised Field Notes
LS1Tech, an online forum that allows mechanics and motor head’s together to discuss and learn about the GM motor, the LS. This online community consists of mostly enthusiasts who are trying to get the most performance out of their cars. The community delivers a few convenient forum types as well, like a for sale/ trade and troubleshooting tabs for easy access for the communities members. Members also have their own build threads of their cars or motors with step by step documentation of how the build went, as well as the parts used in the build and what worked and what didn’t. This helps other members who are trying to build their car or motor and want some guidance on what parts work and what doesn’t. There is a subset of the members who are mostly interested in taking a LS motor and swapping it into a car that does not come with that motor. This is commonly known as a LS swap, members try and fit the motor into older cars and other cars, like older GM cars and even some popular foreign cars.
More about the members of the community, I found that most of the frequent members are friendly and fairly knowledgeable about the motor the site is based around. The members know the differences in the motor sizes and tend to form subtle subgroups based on what size motor they relate with (e.g., 5.3L vs. 7.0L). This would be where to go if you have specific questions about what size valve springs you should run with your sized motor, or what sized cam shaft is too rough for that size. The community also doesn't seem to follow the Chevy vs Ford feud, even though the LS motor is a Chevy (GM) product. The members seem one sided towards the LS, they show respect and appreciation for other car types and cultures. This forum is for “do it yourselfers” instead of people who would rather take their car to the shop to get the head gasket fixed. Another small thing that I found while evaluating the community was that the members don't post that someone did something wrong and that there is only one way to do something. They respect others decisions and opinions, but they do offer alternative methods to doing something that might be easier.
Maddie McMurry
ReplyDeleteENC 1101 0M49
Revised Field Notes
November 1, 2016
pt 1
Notes on the Official Pottermore Platforms and the Unofficial Forum
I am currently analyzing J.K. Rowling’s spectacularly done Pottermore website. Upon arriving at the site I am welcomed with clouds of swirling smoke in the background and the statement “WELCOME TO THE DIGITAL HEART OF THE WIZARDING WORLD, PACKED WITH EXCLUSIVE WRITING, NEWS, FEATURES, AND SURPRISES” is planted in the center of the page in delicate white font. Beneath this statement is a button that plays an audio message from the creator herself, J.K. Rowling. In order to move from this page I must select continue at the bottom.
After this it redirects to the main site, which again greets me with a stunning image, this time of what appears to be a flapper girl sitting at a bar with a drink in hand staring at a troll of some sort. The words “ STEP INSIDE A 1920s NEW YORK CITY SPEAKEASY” in bold white font pop out against the dark image with “the magic behind Fantastic Beasts’ coolest gin joint” scrawled below. This is just one of six main slides on the site. The other five also boast intriguing images with titles written over them. They include: “The Dark Stories of Azkaban,” “Beast of the Week” (a small stick bug looking creature), “The Ultimate Dark Arts Quiz,” “Discover your Patronus,” and “Unsafe, insanitary, and demeaning Muggle transport.” Above the titles is a bar, which is home to other links, such as: Writing by J.K. Rowling, Explore the Story, News, and Shop. The top right corner features a profile button and a little shopping basket. The site is quite magical; it is beautifully done and incredibly easy to navigate. There are visuals everywhere, which really draws me in as a Harry Potter fan it is great to see quite literally what Rowling envisioned. At the bottom of the site are links to other platforms; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Following the link to the official Pottermore Instagram I discovered a whole new side of the Pottermore fandom. The Instagram page posts daily images varying in topic catering to its 851K followers. They range from the Beast of the Week to a birthday appreciation post to Sirius Black (HP’s godfather). Regardless of the image a large number of comments appear at the bottom whether it be tagging a friend or expressing an opinion on the topic. The Instagram allows for more interaction between community members than the original website.
The Pottermore Facebook page is essentially identical content to the Instagram but with fewer comments which was surprising considering that the Facebook has a whopping 1,387,461 followers.
As for the Twitter account, it boasts the most followers- 1.67 million. This platform shares similar posts to the Facebook and Instagram, however, it engages more with its members. The Pottermore Twitter account favorites and retweets dozens of members tweets allowing for a more personal feel. Due to it being around Halloween time there were many retweets of impressive Harry Potteresque costumes including, a Snape and Harriet Potter couples costume. The Twitter page even features tweets from J.K Rowling where she responds to some posts.
Pt2
ReplyDeleteMoving on to the unofficial Pottermore Fan Forum. This is the hub for Potter fan communication. By no means is this site as visually appealing and seamless at Rowling official site, however, it does provide a plethora of opportunities for self expression and engagement. This site offers three primary sections: Forum, Quibbler, and VIP lounge. The forum houses a vast majority of the discussion that occurs on the page. Topics range from Gryffindor House Party to fan theories. There is a ton of Harry Potter lingo (lexis) that is difficult to keep up with; Google is quite useful right now. From what I have gathered the Quibbler, like in the books/movies, is a form of a newspaper spreading word of daily news in the Wizarding World. As the for the VIP lounge it costs money, I have not yet been able to explore this page first hand but from what I have gathered from others it provides a superior experience to the regular forum.
Overall, it appears that Rowling’s official pages are better organized and more informative than the unofficial fan page. The fan page was pretty disorganized and filled text- the opposite of Pottermore.com. It is a very different experience from platform to platform. After gathering this information I wonder if community members are more likely to be active of Rowling’s platforms than the Pottermore fan forum page.
Angeleke Kelaris
ReplyDeleteENC – 1101 – 0M49
TR – 4:30-5:45
Revised Field Notes Assignment
November 2nd, 2016
12:00 PM, Thursday, October 27th 2016
Online Discussion Post and Website
The American Nurses Association
A Look Into the Life of Nursing:
Notes on The American Nurses Association
By looking through the American Nurses Association website and discussion board, I was able to collect a large amount of data and details about the community due to the fact that they have any information you need to know available. It honestly surprised me that the page was so descriptive and answered every question I could possibly think of. I thought about it and I realized that this is a large association that has been around for over 100 years, so it is expected to have a lot of information on their main page. I think what intrigued me the most was how much future growth this community has and the amount of potential they contain. When looking over the association’s extensive history, they mention how only 20 members attended their first official meeting and now they have an annual meeting with tens of thousands participating. I can only imagine what this community will look like in the next 50 years and the large amount of accomplishments they will complete by then. As for the aspects that disturbed me, I can honestly say there isn’t much to tell. The only thing I can say I was slightly annoyed by was the fact that a regular citizen was not allowed to view the discussion board page thoroughly if you did not own membership. But besides this minor detail, I was very impressed with the ANA’s organization, details, and worth.
Although, the research I conducted with the two pages alone was extremely extensive and gave me loads of information, I will definitely have to research in other ways to gain more data. My first thought in doing this is trying to get ahold of one of the members that often participate in the discussion boards and forums to hear their opinions on the community. If I am not able to do this, thankfully I can easily get in contact with the association itself, since they run a headquarters in Maryland and have an easy to reach phone number. I am also going to do some other research by simply looking up the ANA and find out as much information as possible from other sources online besides their main page. I would really love to try and focus more on the discussion board and the annual conference since this will show more on how the community connects and converses. Hopefully this will be possible by getting in touch with a few of the members or coordinators.
Posted by: Angeleke Kelaris
Denise Cukierman
ReplyDeleteENC 1101-0M49
Revised Field Notes Assignment
November 3, 2016
Hamsters Gone Wild:
Notes on everything Hamster related by HamsterDiaries
Hamster lovers everywhere rejoice, there is a blog for you. Now in days all it takes is a millisecond search to find information on anything so when I came across this hamster blog I was a little shocked. Being a hamster owner myself, I was in awe when I saw there was a place to get all my hamster related questions answered. Hamsters are a lot of work - knowing when to clean their cage, change their water, give them new toys and knowing when to clean them is tough work- so having somewhere that will provide you with all these answers is an excellent resource for hamster owners.
When I started playing around and navigating on her website, I was fascinated at how organized it was. There are 5 tabs at the top so readers can easily navigate and get to where they want to be. The “About” tab tells her readers about each one of her four hamsters. The tab “Blog Awards” tells her readers all about the awards her blog has won - which add up to 7 first place titles and 12 runner up wins. The “Contact” tab has a way to contact her via her blog if you have any questions you want answered. It also has a FAQ and Tips part of the tab. Next is the “Images” tab which showcases many images of hamsters doing different things like eating, sleeping and playing with toys. Lastly is the “Video” tab which shows again, hamsters doing different tasks such as making their bed (yes, hamsters like to make their bed) playing on the wheel, and there's even a video on newborn baby hamsters. All of her blog posts have different titles and some of them are very punny. Titles like “Do My Cheeks Look BIG In This?” and “Throwback Furs-day :)” leave readers with a light hearted feeling while reading the article.
The thing that disturbed me the most was all the pictures and videos she had of the newborn baby hamsters. Even though I know that all hamsters start at this stage of life it was shocking to see. After reading everything about the baby hamsters the blog following the birth of them was a blog about their death. There were pictures and videos of them once they were dead. This made my stomach turn as I get queasy very easily. She did not insert a reader's discretion note or anything to forewarn people of what lies ahead. Another thing that did not necessarily disturb me but made me extremely sad was a video she had in memory for her hamster that had passed away.
Minxin Cheng
ReplyDeleteENC 1101-oM49
Revised Field Notes Assignment
November 3, 2016
I was introduced to this community by one of my friends who currently study in computer science. Stack Overflow is a great go-to place for professional programmers and developers to communicate, collaborate, and solve difficult coding problems. Browsing and reading those posted solutions can also help programmers to learn some useful knowledge or skills. With about 6.3 million registered users, Stack Overflow seems to be a very large community. Its webpage has a clean and fresh look. It is easy for everyone to manipulate since things in this site are well organized into tabs. On the top right corner there is a search bar which people can use to find any questions and answers they are looking for. Underneath it are six main tabs labeled as Questions, Jobs, Documentation, Tags, Users, Badges, and Ask Question that lead people to different contents of the site. Unlike other Q&A sites, Stack Overflow provides a better online experience to its users. All of the questions posted on this site are tagged, so people can use different tags to find questions related to the topics they interested in. In addition, users can vote on questions and answers posted by others. The best answers with the most votes are list on the top for people to view, and the incorrect answers will be on the bottom. All users in this community can earn reputation score and badges through their participation. The more questions they answer and the more votes the get, the higher they will rank in this community. This may be one of the motives that engage people to be highly active in this community and help other programmers to solve their problems. However, Stack Overflow’s goal is more than just simply answering coding questions, it want to build a library of all coding problems that may occur with the best solution for every programmers in the world. With this purpose in mind, despite of when the question is posted and how many answers it has got, many programmers are still trying to improve or edit the answers as they can. Programmers list on the top of the ranking usually have very reputation. By clicking on their icon or id people can view their programming stories. Their home page serve as a portfolio which contains all activities they did in the past at Stack Overflow. Those experts are more likely to receive requests from their follow developers and help solve questions. Everyone in this community are working hard and try their best to help each other.
Zach King
ReplyDeleteENC 1101-om49
Revised Field Notes Assignment
3 November, 2016
Call of Duty
In the community that I chose to research people come to talk about call of duty, but not just any call of duty, call of duty modern warfare. Which came out in 2007 and is being remastered this year by Raven Soft Studios. Using the site call steamcommunity.com, people are able to come here and post their opinions about the old game, or even talk about the new game that comes out later this week.
This community can all be located on one central page where people can post things like their opinions, pictures, or even clips from the games that they played. With each post you are able to respond to each other sharing what your opinion may be, or to simply tell someone that the clip they had was nice. As you scroll down the page there is definitely a pattern of people talking about the new version of the game that comes out on Nov. 4th this upcoming week.
Something that took me a little off guard when I first started to investigate this community would be of how many people still post about a game that came out in 2007. Looking back to posts over a month ago there was still probably 150+ posts a day. Granted a lot of these postings were people conversing about the game but it was still a shocking amount of interest for a game nearly a decade old.
The literal posts themselves would come up in square boxes throughout the website, and you would click on the comment button to share any additional information with the person that posted the initial comment. By doing this you get an extremely interactive community that is able to share information and ideas with each other smoothly and quickly. This was really intriguing to me because some of the other websites that I looked at their communication did not seem to be as smooth as this. Here, a community that cares about a game 9 years old, is talking every day about what they like dislike or something cool that may have happened.
One thing that is disturbing about his community and the platform that its uses is that some people like to make posts about something that isn’t remotely close to the topic of the page. One post was about politics and the upcoming election. The person was talking about how Hillary should be President etc., when this causes other people to chime in and eventually started a debate over something that has nothing to do with the central point that this community is used for. Another thing that bothered me was that someone was posting pictures of Japanese cartoon art which made no sense to me as it did not pertain to any topic or conversation in the community.
Looking through this gamer community, I had very mixed emotions on what I was finding. I was surprised, intrigued, and sometimes disturbed. It was very obvious the main point behind this community and the people who created it. They are very transparent in their motives. the number of people that actually participate in this community. Though there are not too many discussion posts that are actually on this website, but there are over a thousand likes and comments. I was also surprised that the website is very easy to get around. This is definitely not a very professional secret website due to the fact that it is so easy to access and see all the discussion post. It was also free which I found very odd. But once I started looking into the Ads that were being promoted I quickly realized that that was the websites main purpose of this community discussion board. That is how they make their money because it is the perfect target audience. each person was so helpful to each other but also was very selfish in their own motivation for giving that helpful information. Also I found it very intriguing that this website was not meant for professionals. I liked the way that anyone regardless of age could access this website and be a part of it. Even me, not ever have played a video game ever, could be a part of this community or discussion post and be welcomed. I was very disturbed by the vulgar language used. Since I picture younger children being on this website so I think that it should be more censored in the language used. Also in the fact that every person that accesses this website could see what was discussed and that type of language does not need to be used under any circumstance. I was disturbed by the amount of promo codes used and how many people could access these codes. The fact that almost every gamer chooses to “cheat the system” in this way.
ReplyDeleteIsrael Camacho
ReplyDeleteENC 1101-0M49
Revised Field Notes Assignment
November 2, 2016
Notes on F150 Forum Community
The F150 online community is large and intimidating to look at with a large quantity of tabs and threads to see, it feels unapproachable. However, once you take the time to figure out the contents of each tab and where they take you, as well as knowing what thread you want to look at it becomes simple. I found the search function very helpful in trying to look up specific threads that interested me. Even if you aren’t looking for anything specific, just the pure amount of threads allows you to be entertained and informed. What really surprised me was how informative the group is, they are quick to give advice and help you with a problem. The community ranges from first time buyers, to lifelong Ford owners, and even Ford technicians that all come together to share in their love for F150’s. I find it very refreshing that those I have seen on the forum are very mature and respectful to each other which can be rare in online communities. They also heavily encourage modifications to trucks, whether it be simple things such as changing your stock radio to a double din replacement, or more complex things such as engine swaps. Throughout the process they share and exchange information which greatly helps not only the one who set up the thread but also those who may look to it for guidance themselves. You can also find a great deal of vendors that sell all sorts of items to the community such as custom interior piece, like dashboards or center consoles. Lastly, there is really only one peeve I have with the website and it is that the admins don’t update the calendar which makes it kind of pointless to have.
Zachariah Hsu
ReplyDeleteENC 1101
Revised Field Notes Assignment November 3, 2016
5:00P.M., Wednesday, November 2, 2016
http://onlinegaming.community
Online Gaming Community Website
A League of Their Own:
Notes on Online Gaming Community Website
Upon my observation of The Online Gaming Community, I was intrigued by the type of dedication the members of this community possessed. They all seemed very interested in console gaming and the competitive aspect of it, but didn’t have the type of unity or care for one another like many other communities hold. The website claims that their mission is simply to share appreciation for gaming. But if anything, the members were all concerned more about being better than the others, and I attribute that to the competition-style base of the entire website community. Looking at the website I can tell that competition is the focus, with game standings and tournament registration being displayed all over the place. I was surprised by how tight-knit this whole community was. Competitive gaming and tournaments like the ones this community offer are very popular around the world, it was a shock to me to find that this was not a huge community with countless competing members, but rather a tight group of gamers that just really enjoy competing with these same others. Looking at the standings and member names displayed on the website, I observe that these people are very used to one another and maybe even prefer it that way. I have to say I was disturbed a bit by the aspect of a new member joining such a community where everybody is already so well established. In this community, tournaments are held weekly and all members of the tournaments vote on the rules of the game they are playing prior. The image of a new member coming in and not knowing what to expect with processes like this are a bit concerning, and it is easy to tell that the new member would be a bit uncomfortable in the beginning to say the least. But with that being said, I don’t believe that problem would persist after just a little time to adjust. Overall, I was impressed by the unique structure and dynamics of this community, the way in which they are all connected to each other through competition, and how they stick to the community mission of just flat out enjoying the nature of video games.
Maddy Flower
ReplyDeleteENC 1101
TR—4:30-5:45
Revised Field Notes Assignment
11/1/2016
One of the most dedicated community groups that I have come across in my search is a fan base that call themselves “Swifties”. This community is dedicated to the world known singer Taylor Swift. Swift has received more than 200 awards from nearly 600 nominations. Some of the most important include seven Grammy Awards, twenty-two Billboard Music Awards, and sixteen American Music Awards. When reviewing my notes for this assignment, I gathered more information about how dedicated this fan base really is to Taylor and it was very surprising. They are contantly sending gifts, letters, buy her albums as soon as they are released, vote for her on award shows and much more. While doing this assignment, I am analyzing my data my checking out different websites hosted by Swifties, their Twitter/Instagram accounts and even watching videos about the fan base. I think contacting some of the first fans, as well as individuals running the Swiftie Central Website, would give me a better look into this community. It would also be a good idea to interview some of the fans and see how long they have been a part of the community, as well as their contributions. Swiftie Central is just a group of Swifties who give news on Taylor, host award shows, videos/pictures are displayed, updated news about Taylor and projects for Taylor.
This fan base has been around for ten years, ever since Taylor came out with her first album in 2006 called Fearless. Taylor swift has over 80 million followers on twitter, which shows how big her fan base truly is. This information intrigued me because that is an enormous group of people that follow behind her career and through all the ups and downs with a celebrity, Swifties are there supporting her every step of the way. I find it so amazing that one person can bring so much positivity to someone’s life and connect so many people together. One disturbing aspect that I learned about the Swiftie community was that they were saying very rude and disgusting comments towards another artist, known as Diplo, when he was discussing the feud that had happened between Swift and one of her best friends. He told a magazine article that a few fans “threatened to murder him”. Although this is a very bizarre statement to make to another artist over such a petty comment, I don’t believe that all of the community is like that.