Online Community Analysis Paper

The community I chose to research was Chowhound, which is an online community for foodies. The foodie community subjects range from Bars and Restaurants (715,297 posts) to Not About Food (6,376 posts) and several more. The online community can post comments to any of the subjects they choose, adding in their advice, differences and chosen recipes. This site allows for this community to treat it somewhat like a social media site. People will even have some little disagreements within their conversations which sometimes are full-length posts back and forth. However, some people post recipes and ask questions on how to make certain meals for certain people such as kids or for a large party. They will post advice, questions where many people …show more content…
An example of a post was “Sunday Supper”, which is pretty self-explanatory, but it discusses which meals would be best for a Sunday dinner for guests. A different word choice in one of the posts was the “Ina Garten Strategy” which is something made ahead, some last-minute, and sometimes something store-bought. One most common phrase was COTM (cookbook of the month). This phrase/acronym is used quite often in the Home Cooking post and the General Discussion post. However, all of the phrases and words were just a few things the community had in common with one …show more content…
On some posts there can be up to 200 or more responses to one single question or suggestion. It is notable that for the most part it is a positive community with a lot useful ideas and tips. Yet, there are some disputes that are subtle, for example, which restaurant is number one in Los Angeles or New York City? However, based on my research I did not observe any clear "do's and don’ts" for being a foodie in this community. As for being an important do, as long as drinks and food were in relation to the comment or post then there were not major