Pages 129-165 of Design to Thrive,
by Tharon Howard describe the importance of belonging in the context of a
social networking site. Basically, belonging is a sense of an individual’s social
presence in a community. In other words, it’s an awareness of the shared bonds
a member has with others in a group. The chapter begins by explaining the
significance of initiation rituals in the establishment of a community that
incorporates belonging. Initiation rituals are experiences that give individuals
a “right” to enter a particular group. For example, college students often have
to perform certain tasks in order join a sorority or fraternity. These tasks
bond members of those sororities and fraternities for years and years.
Towards the end of the chapter, Howard discusses techniques that can be
used to promote a sense of belonging in online communities. Such techniques
include: creating and distributing a story of origin, creating an initiation
ritual, encouraging your leaders to share mythologies, encouraging members to
share stories about themselves, creating leveling up ceremonies, establishing routines,
establishing symbols, and using a membership application.
One technique that particular struck me was “Encourage Members to Share
Myths and Stories about Themselves.” When I read about this technique, I
immediately thought about Twitter. Twitter’s hashtag component works to create
a sense of belonging amongst users. When users use hashtags, they become
grouped with other users who have also used that same hashtag. In some cases,
hashtags become “trending topics.” These “trending topics” encourage users to
tell stories about themselves using various hashtags. For example, there was a
recent hashtag that said, “#ItDrivesMeCrazyWhen.” Twitter users were encouraged
to use the hashtag to describe various things that drive them crazy. This
caused the sharing of different stories by Twitter users. It also gave users a
sense of belonging to the Twitter community.
That's really interesting what you said about the use of hashtags. Through the use of hashtags, anyone can essentially create a group and anyone can participate in that group by using the same hashtags. I can see how this works to create belonging. Retweets, I think, are another way belonging is created by allowing uses to feel like their tweets are valued by the rest of the Twitter community.
ReplyDeleteI thought you had a great connection between belonging and hashtags. I know that hashtags create community and belonging on Twitter, but I never actually thought of it in the context of this class. By using a hashtag you are linked to your followers and also some random people that are apart of Twitter that are talking about the same thing as you. Though, a hashtag is something so small and doesn't seem like it does much, it connects you to a huge amount people. Twitter is such an interesting community of people, but I never thought of it as a community until the R.I.B.S. method.
ReplyDelete