This week we looked at online communities and the roles that we play with our online presence.  This lecture seemed to take me back to early on in the course where I was trying to establish myself as an online blogger/writer.  Now, we have been brought back to basics to explore how we interact in the World Wide Web and what impact our interaction is having.

In the online lecture, we had a look at Catharsis and flow.  Catharsis being the structure of  a narrative with a “strong main character, a rounded story with a conclusion and the engagement of the audience through emotional identification or catharsis (Bolter, 2012:211).  Flow is a bit more vague, where it “involves forgetting of identity.” (Bolter, 2012:211).  So we looked at how websites integrate these narrative structures to create a well-rounded, communicative site:

For example, ‘4Chan’ is structured seemingly random without a feed of communication or discussion– this is an example of flow.  This is quite contrasting to Instagram where it is designed around a main character with audience members commenting and engaging in posts.  It is easy to follow and stay on topic which is characteristic of catharsis.

We adventured into story telling, in particular political storytelling, where we had a brief look at the current U.S political campaigns which include the infamous Donald Trump…

Looking at Donald Trump’s mass following I tend to wonder what America’s education system looks like… but we have had a discussion in class about the simple nature of Trump’s campaign and how easily digestible it is in comparison to Bernie Sanders’.  When things seem too hard to understand, people will always take the easy option even if that means following a bigot such as Trump.  Maybe this is a reason for his huge following.  Or maybe he just knows how to really engage the audience.  Either way, he’s gaining a huge amount of press.  Even if the publicity is bad through memes, satire, caricature and many more, it’s clear that Trump has learnt how to fully engage in the online world to gain momentum.

Personally, I think Trump is a horrible human being… but maybe we should be taking a page from his book in terms of how to gain a following online and instigate active online communication.

Bolter, Jay David. “Social Media and the Future of Political Narrative.” Travels in Intermediality. Lebanon, US: Dartmouth, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 February 2016. 206-226