Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Communitas In Youtube Comments : The March 2012 Henryville Tornadoes., Richard William Slawsky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper serves as a critical case in analyzing the emergence of communitas in online discussions. Although communitas, or the unstructured community that often emerges in the wake of major societal upheavals, has often been documented in a common geographic setting, little research has been done into the emergence of communitas in online or computer-mediated settings. Determining whether or not communitas emerges in the comment streams attached to YouTube videos related to the tornadoes that struck Henryville, Ind., on March 2, 2012, will serve as an indicator that communitas will emerge in other online channels as well. This project consisted …