negotiate romantic and peer relationships and academic competition, as well as pursuing specialized interests. By contrast, in online affinity networks their status centers on knowledge, expertise, and contribution to the interest area.2 Involvement is intentional. It is a voluntary “chosen” affiliation, and not part of a formal professional, school, or governmental affiliation. While some online affinity networks may have formal markers of membership and leadership, contributions and involvement are driven by personal interest and choice. Participants move more fluidly in and out of engagement than in more formal organizations that directly determine young people’s academic and economic success.
3 Content sharing and communication take place on openly networked online platforms. At least some dimension of every online affinity network is discoverable on the “open” internet, without the gatekeeping of a financial transaction or formal institutional membership. Further, online affinity networks make use of digitally networked infrastructures that allow for broader visibility and access than place-based forms of communication.
Relationships in online affinity networks are by definition specialized in that they are centered on a particular identity or interest. They differ from the more multilayered relationships that young people navigate at home, in school, and in local activities. They are likely to encounter their families and school friends in multiple settings that can vary from social hanging out to more specialized kinds of pursuits such as athletics. By contrast, online affinity networks are structured around particular niche pursuits, whether that is modding in StarCraft or knitting items related to Harry Potter. Further, the way people achieve status and recognition in online affinity networks is highly targeted to engagement in a specific area of interest, rather than to other factors such as “real-world” popularity and attractiveness or the ability to garner attention online in a generic way. In other words, online affinity networks are unique in being optimized around a particular affinity and related pursuits. The groups we have studied are particularly distinctive in valuing niche forms of expertise. Harry Potter fans gain status through the knowledge of the extensive lore and trivia around the series, and StarCraft players win recognition by working their way up the competitive rankings of a challenging game. The workings of status and reputation systems in online affinity networks are the focus of the next chapter.
The other important dimension of these relationships is that they are intentional—young people make conscious choices to connect and maintain connection, unlike relationships they are born into or relationships that are sustained as part of a job or at school, or for instrumental reasons. With this intentional quality comes a sense of authenticity as well as ephemerality in that it is easy to disconnect when an interest wanes or other responsibilities crowd out discretionary time. Online affinity networks do not have the layered and resilient characteristics of relationships embedded in schools and other community institutions, but in exchange, they are also free from the status hierarchies that characterize these social networks for teens. Young people describe how they go online to play games and connect with fandoms without having to worry about issues of status, popularity, and the heterosexual marketplace that are omnipresent in their face-to-face networks. For those who might feel stigmatized by displaying their creative, fannish, or nerdy interests to their friends at school, online affinity networks represent an opportunity to geek out with people who share their passions and support their learning (see, for example, figure 2.1). Status and reputation in online affinity networks can be just as exclusionary and unforgiving as in the high school cafeteria, but they are centered on a chosen set of affiliations and are easier to escape.
Figure 2.1. A meme circulated on Tumblr (absentimental.tumblr.com).
With the intentional and targeted nature of online affinity networks comes certain risks. Although we focus on groups with positive social values, other groups can reinforce problematic perspectives and pursuits. What we see as positive “geeking out” can pivot to a negative form of extremism, with peers reinforcing niche views without the checks and balances that come from family, local community, and those with different interests and affinities. We recognize these risks, and we focus on the features of prosocial and learning-oriented online affinity networks in an effort to highlight and advocate for positive community values online. We believe that this approach complements other studies that have looked at more controversial forms of “geeking out” online (Boero and Pascoe 2012; G. Coleman 2014; Massanari 2017; Yeshua-Katz and Martins 2013).
In addition to supporting specialized and intentional affiliation, another common feature of online affinity networks is that they rely on openly networked infrastructures for communication and content sharing. This characteristic of online affinity networks is what differentiates them from more traditional place-based affinity networks, which generally have much higher barriers to access. Young people of all skill levels are publishing, circulating, and commenting on each other’s performances and creations in a “networked public” (Varnelis 2012). When dancers post their videos on YouTube, fanfiction writers publish on the online platform Wattpad, or gamers screencast their competitive play, the creative production of online affinity networks becomes visible and searchable to broad audiences. While young people are also engaging in private communication and face-to-face encounters with peers they meet through their online affinity networks, the circulation of content and communication on open and public networks is a distinguishing characteristic of online affinity networks.
Openly sharing through peer-to-peer networks is fundamental to the platforms that support online affinity networks. Spaff serves as the community manager of Sackboy Planet, a player-created online design community (the case study appears at the end of chapter 3). He described the value of level sharing for LittleBigPlanet 2 players and the collective: “You can create your own levels, your own games, and then people can play them, but they can’t play them if you can’t share them. So the community really is filled with people who are spending hours and hours and hours building their own levels, their own games, then they publish them onto the Internet.… We have just over 6 million levels and games up there now … other people can find those levels and play them, rate them, be inspired by them, create their own things.” LittleBigPlanet 2 players can access a wide range of levels from which they may be inspired to poach, remix, sample, or build on. In turn, creators are also able to receive feedback through sharing, improving their own craft.
For young people first dipping into an area of interest, online affinity networks give them an opportunity to search, lurk, and become familiar with a scene without risk or exposure. As they get more involved in the online affinity network, they might comment or share some of their own work online and get their first taste of connecting with an audience and getting feedback. In turn, their continued sharing in an open network becomes a beacon for new seekers. Openly networked infrastructures supported these dynamics for Katie, a 15-year-old white teen from Australia. Discovering fanfiction online through the Wattpad app was her first step to becoming an author (see the 1D on Wattpad case study at the end of this chapter). By reading the work of other teen One Direction fans, she found “people who have been writing their own stories and they were people just like me.” Madeleine, a 15-year-old white teen from Canada, was nervous about sharing her work on Wattpad, fearing people would “judge me and post hate comments.” Instead, through sharing her work, Madeleine was able to make “a bunch of friends and people asked me to co-write with them.” Her identity as an author was affirmed, and she felt confident in then sharing her works with a school friend. Madeleine also found inspiration when reading the works that others had created, finding new ideas but also learning from the ways that other authors created stories.
Online affinity networks tend to follow the “Pareto principle,” in which 20 percent of participants contribute 80 percent of the network’s outcomes, with the top 1 percent contributing the most (Gee 2017). Our research has focused on the active participants, with a bias toward the 1 percent, among whom we are most likely to find connected learners.
