My Communities

In this week’s Tutorial for Networked Media we started discussing internet communities. Internet communities are something I find extremely interesting – as I am an active participant in many – as well as an active viewer of some.  I found it odd that in class I seemed to be the only one (or at least I was the only one to share) to be actively a part of online communities. I think maybe this has to do with the fact that many may not consider themselves ‘active participants’ but are mostly viewers to communities. I would be shocked if the majority of my classmates have never found themselves scrolling through comments sections of websites they view frequently.

The first ‘online community’ I would have considered myself a part of would be the Harry Potter community. I would never say I was ‘active participant of the community as I never contributed fan fiction or posted on message boards but I was certainly a viewer of all going downs within it. I frequently checked MuggleNet and listened to Mugglecast each week.

My connection to this community eventually led me to be an active participant in another. The creators of the podcast MuggleNet now host another podcast called #Millenial (the hashtag is silent) the listeners of this podcast have a facebook group that many of us contribute to by posting links to articles that relate to what was discussed on the show (generally American politics + world news) or even anecdotes to the going on’s in our daily lives.

When I moved to Australia I posted on this group to see if anyone was in Melbourne and would be interested in meeting up. Since being in Australia I have met up with fellow listeners upward of 5 times.

The Millenial Group is probably the community I am most active on and the only one where I have taken relationships online to IRL.

other communities I participate in or have participated in would be

• gaming communities when I was younger (Runescape or Club Penguin) – guilty as charged
• Plant selling and Advice facebook group
• ‘Post Aesthetic’ a meme based facebook group
• /r/Serial  – Serial podcast subreddit
• Hitrecord.org

I may be writing a few more blog posts about online communities I have ties with as well as some I just find interesting. I also thought exploring these topics would make for a good limited episode podcast series – these were some of my ideas for episodes: