Medium Assignments

1. Process Work 2

In my research assignment, I want to focus on the Warhammer 40k community. To do so, I will mostly be looking at Reddit groups like r/warhammer40k alongside more army-specific groups like r/necrontry and r/TheAstraMilitarum. Along with online sources, I will use local groups at hobby stores I play at to get a more personal angle. I want to do this because I am deeply a part of these communities and think that they have a wide variety of thoughts and ideas on something I care about. If you have never heard of it, Warhammer 40k is a tabletop war game that pits two armies of typically plastic minatures against each other. The property has a large collection of books, video games, and other forms of media that expand on the setting and lore, all of which and more are discussed in groups like those I want to research. When it comes to how I will conduct this research, it will mostly involve observing how people interact in these groups and what topics are most commonly discussed, and how that discussion plays out.  For the in-person part, I will do what I already do best, talk to those around me. Well, doing this, I plan on paying key focus on what types of rhetoric are most commonly used in large groups, like those found in many Warhammer communities.

2. Process Work 3

For my research site, I have chosen to use the framework of activity theory as shown by Donna Kain and Elizabeth Wardle. In Kain and Wardle's article on the subject, they explain activity theory as a tool to aid us in finding understanding the many factors that change influence how the tool of writing is in used in a specific context. By using activity theory as my framework i want to show this factors for the Warhammer community.

As previously stated, the community i wish to give a closer look at is the Warhammer 40k community which I believe is a great candidate for the use of activity theory. the 40k community has a large number of factors that lead to the communities overall goal, which is enjoying the world of the 41st millennium. by using activity theory i whsh to illuminate these factors in a way that with help me, you, and anyone else understand the fandom that is 40k. "You can use the basic tenets of activity theory and the activity theory triangle to help you better understand not only how texts function but also why texts used within a particular system of activity contain certain content and specific conventions, such as formatting, style, and organization."(pg.6.) Along with understanding the factors that drive the group I have a goal of better understanding which factors play the biggest role, I wish that by using the activity triangle i can do just so.

3. The article “Global Brand Communities across Borders: The Warhammer Case” is about the “brand community” that surrounds the Warhammer 40k brand. The article defines a brand community as a “concept that believes that the meaning of the brand transcends national boundaries.” (Cova, Pace, and Park 313). The text’s goal is to bring light to the homogeneity and heterogeneity that exist within the brand’s meaning across the countries used, in this case, the USA and France. The text begins by explaining the history and core concepts behind the ideas of “brand community,” “sub-cultures of consumption,” and “consumer tribes.” From there, it moves to displaying the concepts in action. One example it gives is the Star Trak community. From there, the journey moves to showcasing the methodologies used and the results of their use in the world of the Warhammer brand community.

I can use this article to help give me prospectives on the community in areas I cannot research. Along with this the article gives me a perspective on my selected community in the past, so I can contrast it with how it is today. Finally, the section on methodologies gives me an example of methodologies that I can use to conduct my own research at my local game stores.

Sources for annotation: Cova, Bernard, et al. “Global Brand Communities across Borders: The Warhammer Case.” International Marketing Review, vol. 24, no. 3, 5 June 2007, pp. 313–329, https://doi.org/10.1108/02651330710755311Links to an external site.. 

4. In her article on the cosplay community, Claure uses the concepts of intertextuality and community of practice to analyze the data she has collected. She does this by going in depth on how the shared practice of the community is; in these cases, cosplay is the driving factor that brings them together. She used intertextuality by showing that cosplay is naturally intertextual because those in the community are pulling from already existing sources. The pieces of evidence used are both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources include videos and social media posts. She also uses secondary sources such as articles from Hansen and Rosenburg & Letamend to show how her findings are similar to those by other people. In conclusion, she finishes by calling for more research and for people to get invalid in the community to better understand it. 

The main claim in my article will be that the Warhammer 40k is a diverse and welcoming community brought together by the activities in the hobby”. In my article I will show how the tabletop aspect of the Warhammer IP and the community around it is brought together and ways they communicate and come together online. Additionally, I will show what motivates the community to do what they look like and the factors that keep the community running. To support this claim, I will combine my primary and secondary sources to show how the tabletop game and its community works and why it is brought together through the shared love of the 40k universe. The claim that “Warhammer 40k is a diverse and welcoming community brought together by the activities in the hobby” will answer my research question by using Activity Theory to analysis what those activities are and how they relate to the hobby. Three main points I would like to make in this article are that. Painting is a critical part of the hobby, physically playing the tabletop game is not the only way to enjoy the minis and game itself, and creativity is key to the hobby's existences. 

Reflection on my Work:

Both in and out of the classroom, I had assignments that required me to write a quick paragraph of two. well working on these tasks, I didn’t think much about what I was doing. To me, they were just quick little things to prepare me for the bigger, more important tasks. If I could do this class over, just like with the writing group work, I would change how I look at these assignments. Tasks such as my fourth sample pieces in this section helped me better understand the learning goals I was given by forcing me to analyze things related to them, in this case, someone’s research project. By doing projects like this, I both gained an understanding of the topic at hand and also worked on my information literacy skills at the same time. I hope that the examples I gave above helped show you what I learned and the process I went through to create the larger works in the Major Assignments section.