Mackenzie HillDigital Community Profile

Digital DIY Community

I decided to bake something new and Googled some ideas. I immediately was

shown hundreds of links directing me to the website, Pinterest. I clicked on one of the

links, and I was immediately shown thousands of different recipes each looking better

than the last. How could I have possibly decided between salted caramel pretzel brownies

or Oreo cheesecake bites filled with gooey chocolate? I then decided to check out the rest

of the website and clicked the “Explore” page. I was faced with beautiful bedrooms

covered in fairy lights and plush carpeting, various projects such as glittery snow globes,

and ornate succulent planters and ways to recreate them. There I was faced with my

newfound addiction. How could you not love a website that gives you so much

inspiration?

As soon as you open Pinterest you may develop the overwhelming feeling to

change your entire lifestyle. Between the delicious looking recipes, aesthetically pleasing

rooms covered in plants and tapestries, and various life hacks, it can be hard to focus on

just one thing. According to the “About Us” page on Pinterest, “Pinterest is where

people discover new ideas and find inspiration to do the things they love! Pins are ideas

that help you get creative or try something new, whether you’re planning a camping trip

or collecting home improvement hacks.” Since Pinterest has so many different categories,

I will focus on researching the Home DIY section of Pinterest in order to prove that not

all discourse communities appear the same with the same narrow field of interest and

some have a wide variety of interests. Pinterest is an example of a discourse community

that has multiple fields of interest with variety. In order for something to be considered a

discourse community, it must follow Jonathan Swale’s six aspects of a digital community

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that include: a broadly agreed set of public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication

among members, participatory mechanisms to provide feedback, possession of multiple

genres, a specific lexis, members with different levels of expertise.

As soon as you sign up for Pinterest you must accept their public rules for all

members new and old. These rules keep the digital community of Pinterest the stable

community everyone knows and loves. Some of these rules include the no posting images

that glorify violence, no hate speech, and discrimination, no posting images that promote

self-harm of all kinds. Pinterest also bans spam to prevent the spread of malware. All of

these rules help to reach the goals of the Pinterest community. These banning of

inappropriate posts and spam reach the goal of a happy, stable community where every

post is relevant and appropriate for the user.

As said in Swale’s six aspects of a digital community, mechanisms of

communication are vital to members no matter how narrow or broad a site is. There are a

few ways of communication on Pinterest. They mainly vary between tagging people in

pins, directs messaging them, or leaving comments on pins and boards. Leaving

comments on pins tends to be the most common way of communication. In the

comments, people can leave

what they think of the idea.

As I scrolled through the

Home DIY section of

Pinterest I stumbled across this project for a DIY Mason jar organizer. This comment is a

good representation of a typical comment on Pinterest. It gives the user’s opinion,

feedback, and advice to the original DIY post. This comment section is more important

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than you think. If there is no comment section how could you possibly know if it is worth

it to do a project if no one else gave feedback on what it turned out like?

According to the Pinterest staff’s Frequently Asked Questions page, feedback is

very important to them. Like any other discourse community, participatory mechanisms

to provide feedback are vital. If you go to the Help Center section of Pinterest, you are

immediately faced with multiple widgets depending on the type of help you need such as

a guide with basic questions and answers, account help, and many more. You can solve

any problem from changing your password to trouble logging in. If you do not find what

you are looking for, you can email Pinterest administrators for more feedback.

As I have stated before, there are endless genres that exist in the world of

Pinterest like all other online communities. . As soon as you sign up for Pinterest, you are

immediately given the opportunity to discover the type of boards you would like to

follow. Pinterest will require

you to pick at least five of the

hundred options to explore. If

you decide to find more genres

to follow in the future, you can

easily look up any topic in your

mind and will be provided a list

of boards created by fellow

Pinterest users to follow. Even in just the Home DIY genre of Pinterest, there are even

smaller categories you could find such as bedroom décor DIY’s, gardening DIY’s, and

many more.

Mackenzie HillDigital Community Profile

A lexis is a key part of a discourse community. Knowledge of the Pinterest lexis

is crucial to utilize the website. There are a few words you will not know the meaning of

unless you are a Pinterest user. A pin is an idea or inspiration placed as a visual

bookmark. You collect pins on boards. A board is a page to organize your pins. You can

categorize your boards depending on the type of pins you attach to them. I found myself

on a well-followed Home DIY Pinterest page. They have all sorts of Home DIY boards

ranging from Vintage Home Décor to Bathroom Décor. Another term in the lexis is

“tries”. Tries are pins that

you have actually tried

yourself and include your

feedback and pictures of

the results.

All discourse

communities have levels of expertise and Pinterest is no different. A regular user such as

myself would be just considered a member, which is the lower level user. A verified

account is an account of a Pinterest professional normally with a lot of followers. For

example, the Pinterest user “Cooking Light” under the cooking genre is verified and has

339.5k followers, and the fashion user “Fashionismo” has 132.5k followers and is

verified as well. Some verified accounts are also accounts of celebrities, brands, or

media. This distinguishes the official person or brand from a fan account.

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All in all, I have proved Pinterest is a perfect example of a digital community with

various fields of interest unlike many communities with a narrow topic. It follows all the

Six Rules stated by Jonathan Swales. Pinterest is easy to get lost in and spend hours

endlessly scrolling. However, it is not a time waster since you are getting inspiration for

future projects and ideas. The next time you decide to redo your living room or find a

new cookie recipe, give Pinterest a look. Just be sure to have a few hours to spare

because chances are you’ll never want to leave.

Mackenzie HillDigital Community Profile

Reflection:

I enjoyed writing this digital profile considering I enjoy browsing the discourse

community I wrote about. I identify with my digital discourse community because I am

quite active in it. I did encounter some roadblocks along the way. I had trouble narrowing

down what genre to write about considering Pinterest is filled with so many different

kinds of genres. I overcame this difficulty by finally narrowing my main topic down to

Home DIY, which is probably the most common thread for me to browse on. I like my

profile because I hit each of Jonathan Swale’s six aspects of a digital community

thoroughly. I was able to explain how Pinterest filled these qualifications thoroughly.

However, my profile could have included more examples. I struggled with trying to find

certain examples and lexis terms. In the future I could choose to add more examples, for

too many examples are better than too little. The peer review really helped me in my

writing process of the profile. With the help of the peer review I added more revisions,

and I was sure to add more transitions and adjust my thesis. Overall, I enjoyed writing

this profile, and I displayed a proper profile of my community of Pinterest.