Networked Communities Analysis

            For this term the networked community that I chose to join was the #KetoRecipes community on Twitter. My reasoning behind wanting to join this group was mainly the fact that I have been seeing a lot of successful type people decide to get on this diet and actually stay on it. My diet has always been something that I have held close to myself and has been important to me. I have always been aware that what you put into your body is what you get out of it, especially when relating to sports and athletics. But now that I am not playing baseball anymore, I feel like the carbs in my life are not all that necessary. Since The carbs I think has put a couple extra pounds on me, I decided to try this high fat and high protein, extremely low carb diet out to see what it is all about. What better way to stick with a diet then get involved with a community that has other Keto members in it, right? Wrong. I thought that this group would help keep me active in my dieting, maybe even have people motivate me when I feel like I am going to give into eats some excess carbs. However, the lack of response did not keep my interest peaked with this diet at all actually. So, throughout this paper I will be discussing the Networked Community that I took part in itself, my personal intervention/participation with that specific Networked Community, as well as the different aspects of the actual platform itself.

            To begin, I will discuss the networked community itself. The values and assumptions that this group holds I feel are those that are mainly overall health and wellbeing oriented. I feel that

each person in this group cares and is attentive about their overall health and personal longevity. With this being said I also feel that an assumption that is held within this group is that each person in the networked community is doing their best to be as healthy as possible. Why else would they be so active in dieting, as well as sharing diet tips/recipes with others. The rhetorical appeals that seem to persuade this audience are those that post a picture with their #KetoRecipes meal. I believe the reason that the rhetoric behind the picture posting worked was because folks are then able to see what the food looks like, and if it is appealing to them or not. I feel that some rhetorical appeals that failed in persuading the audience for a response were posts that did not have any media attached with them. Whether this being this way because of the no picture or just because it caught less people’s eyes, I am not sure. In this community there were mostly positive and uplifting conversations. In fact, I did not see any negative posts towards any accounts at all, no people disagreeing about anything. The overall purpose of the community’s existence is to allow people using to Keto diet to help each other out. Some people lack the knowledge of some recipes, with this kind of hashtag, it allows people to find new recipes with the click of a button. The goals of this networked community are for people to deepen their knowledge of Keto recipes by allowing people to be able to view as many different recipes as they want to in the hopes of keeping Keto users interested and determined with different and new flavors on their food.

            Some of the larger patterns of discussion in this #KetoRecipes networked community was that of various users discussing things like switching a few ingredients around or possibly changing ingredients completely. They had a lot to do with just wondering what would happen to the overall flavor and consistency of different recipes had whatever they were talking about been changed. There were not many conversations on this networked community that went all too much into great length, mainly they were just responses that had like a possibility question attached to it. Now, when thinking about if there are pre-existing rules (spoken or unspoken) in this community about how discussions should take place, there are not any written rules. However, everyone that is participating in this community is aware that the other people that are in it are on a weight loss journey or simply just a healthier lifestyle type of journey. With that being said, there are unwritten rules in this community to not be degrading towards others in anyway because the members of this community are all on the same goal driven path as the other folks on there.

            Moving along from speaking about the #KetoRecipes specifically, I will discuss my personal intervention and participation. Across the four posts that I made in my networked community the kinds of responses that my posts received in the form of comments, likes, and retweets was almost none of those things honestly. I was surprised with the lack of response that I got the entire time I was using this networked community. I figured there would be many people looking at this hashtag and wanting to discuss various things. You know? I mean apparently not, but whatever. As a matter of fact, I did not get a single response soon enough ever for me to talk about it in our class’ discussion posts. However, I tweeted at one account specifically and they ended up tweeting back to me a couple of days after our classroom discussion had closed. So, I can say that the only patterns that emerged from my postings were those of silence, at least until the very last post that I made in the networked community.

            The ways in which I designed my posts I feel kept me from getting the desired responses that I was looking for. I think that I went into the networked community with a lack of knowing how to maximize the views that my posts received.

Since my posts did not garner much response the consensus that I have came to for why this was, is because I did not use photos or gifs like other accounts did in order to grab the attention of viewer’s eyes as they were scrolling by, at least this is what I feel like happened. What I need to do in the future to adapt and gain more responses from people is to actually use photos from Keto recipes that I have actually used myself. I feel like had I done this before I may have garnished more responses in my tweets and posts, maybe even some possible feedback of ways I can perfect my Keto cooking. What I learned about my networked community through my weekly posts, as a matter of fact are some pretty darn good Keto recipes. I have tried a couple of them out actually and they are really tasty, I am definitely going to keep using them well into the near future. Another thing though that I learned was that I needed to attract my audience to get a response, with a picture or something. If I simply post a question on Twitter with the #KetoRecipes it is most likely going to be a longshot for me to get a response of it because nothing about the tweet attracts the human eye towards that tweet.

            Moving along, I will begin to talk about the actual platform that I used for this #KetoRecipes networked community. Some people in my class decided to use Facebook, Instagram, or reddit for their own networked communities. For mine however, I chose to use Twitter as the platform for my community. The ways in which my platform, Twitter uses metadata or other digital conventions to shape conversations is Twitter gives you the option of allowing you to give up information about your interests. Let’s say that if you tell Twitter that you are interested in the UFC or the NFL. You will receive notifications about what is going on in either of those two leagues, big news or a player tweets something important, Twitter will notify you of this. In turn, doing this can spark conversations between people who share a similar interest in particular topics. Now, when thinking about how this platform may influence the way that a conversation unfolds. I feel that Twitter might be attempting to spark conversations between users. Not even just try to influence conversations, I feel that this platform almost starts conversations between users.

            To conclude this Networked Communities Analysis, I have discussed with you the Networked Community that I took part in itself, my personal intervention/participation with that specific Networked Community, as well as the different aspects of the actual platform, Twitter itself. One is able to see from my screenshots that I kind of improved with each Tweet that was sent to this #KetoRecipes Community. I went from getting no responses, to a like, to two likes, finally to a response from the actual Twitter account that I tweeted at itself.

Works Cited

Guzman, Jon. “Jon Guzman (@beavsby90).” Twitter, Twitter, 29 Oct. 2019, https://twitter.com/beavsby90.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.