Strange Blog 2

Jake Strange

ENGL 254

January 18, 2015

Blog 2

The advent of social media platforms within the last decade has forever changed the communal capabilities of the Internet. Now, through services such as Facebook and Twitter, it is easier than ever for people to collaborate and explore ideas with others from all around the world. As is evidenced by the three articles from which this blog post derives from, social media can be used myriad ways. When social media is used to its full capacity, it can be used as an education tool, a creative space open to all or as a metaphorical soapbox, from where one can call on others to act.

Authors Kima Jones and Erin Zammett Ruddy and radio host Audie Cornish all offer unique perspectives on how and why to use social media purposefully. Jones uses Twitter as a collaborative space and tool to connect with fellow poets and writers that may have never encountered her work otherwise, lauding simple features such as the retweet; Zammett Ruddy offers a critical analysis of the idea of spinning one’s life by only sharing misleadingly perfect photos and memories; Cornish has a compelling conversation with the originator of the activist hashtag #WhyIStayed. Those are but three examples in a horizon of many others; can you think of any instances you have personally witnessed where social media has been utilized to foster community?

In Joseph Harris’ The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing, the idea of discourse community is discussed in great detail. As Harris puts it, the idea draws from both philosophies of “interpretive communities” and “speech communities.” The former, according to Stanley Fish, “refers not so much to specific physical groupings of people as to a kind of loose dispersed network of individuals who share certain habits of mind” (14). After reading these three pieces, I drew a line between this partial definition of discourse communities and Audie Cornish’s discussion with Bev Goodman, concerning the #WhyIStayed hashtag and its educating and unifying purpose that brought fellow victims of domestic abuse together over digital platforms.

Later in Harris’ essay, he references how John Swales “has defined ‘discourse community’ so that the common space shared by its members is replaced by a discursive ‘forum,’ and their one-to-one interaction is reduced to a system ‘providing information and feedback’” (15). This supplemental definition coincides nicely with how Kima Jones utilized Twitter to engage fellow writers and encourage collaborative work.

When examining my own social media use in relation to belonging to a larger community, one example comes to mind that resonates with Stanley Fish's interpretation of the discourse community. I belong to a certain Facebook group that is 30,000 strong titled "Guitar Addiction" (creative, I know). This is a community page where musicians can easily request feedback, opinions and constructive criticism from others. It is my belief that the driving force behind this group, the one that shaped it into an online community, is a shared love for music and "nerding out" over all things guitar.