BookTubers as a Networked Knowledge Community

Background

In order to discuss the conceptual framework between Networked Knowledge Communities (NKCs) and a Networked Knowledge Society (NKS), analysts must establish both the dynamic differences between communities and society and the relationship that communities have within a larger social arrangement. Marohang Limbu, in his article “Teaching Writing in the Cloud: Networked Writing Communities in the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classrooms” links community to associations that students already make within and without the classroom—links that can be cemented and acted upon through the use of cloud computing and commercial data aggregators like Facebook. In this article, Limbu establishes two important functions of communities, who both establish roles for members and define those members in relationship with one another (p. 15). Though the definition of community remains somewhat vague in Limbu’s article, the more extensive discussions of community in writing studies, especially discourse community theory, can shed some light on what might count as community over communications networks.