Field Observation Notes

Field Observation Notes

Lizmarie Delacruz  

Department of English, The City College of New York   

Writing for the Social Sciences (ENGL 2100)   

 Professor Crystal Rodwell

May 7, 2025

Platform: on discord

  • 86,380 members
  • They have events to talk about football, world problems, and even the grammys although its Taylor discord community
  • Everything seems more organized and it didn’t feel like i was hit with random content as i scrolled 
  • Seem very friendly and from the moment i joined i had clear instructions on guidelines for the server 
  • Each group has a main person directing the conversation
  • Because spamming is prone in communities like this one the mods have added a spam channel (this keeps chats organized and allows people to spam if they want to)
  • They also have a taylor subreddit linked here from the discord server you can’t really access to but it just shows the taylor bot ( after further research I believe that this is only a channel mods can see so this is why it looks blank on my end. )
  • They had what I had assumed were calling channels but they are actually channels that have the names of different albums and so when you click on one it loops that album and you’re able to listen to it with many people but not talk. There’s a bug with one of the channels where the album fears you can actually show your screen and talk over the music. Technically I do believe that due to the respect built here individuals don’t really do that so it is not a rule mods have to enforce a lot.
  • They have a cafe channel which i found is the channel where people can speak to each other one on one similar to zoom.

Honorable mentions: Lex or laavvenderhaaze talks a lot in the theory channel server helo keep it active in the main chat while bb2190 is the main person in the merch channel.

Questions: 

  • How easy is it to spread missing information within this large server 
    • Do moderators take it down or is it not there problem
  • How do things like trolls (individuals who talk within the community just to poke fun of it) affect how people interact, especially in communities where regulars are more prominent? 

Overall view : Was more diverse in content compared to reddit and actually felt like a community that was focused on conversation and knowing one another.

Pictures:

Platform: Reddit

  • Very nice and creative 
  • Talk about songs and lyrics and what they mean a lot (they try to get different perspectives)
  • A little obsessed comparing taylor swift to Jesus and having artwork where she’s reenacting Jesus famous biblical pose while most get its a joke of some kind some comments don’t sound like they are joking all that much
  • A lot of tech savvy people use the platform to educate individuals on which songs were streamed the most
  • Alot of crochet which shows the communities creativity
  • Taylor book recommendations are also prominent 
  • Reddit shows a lot of ranking based content where opinions on what’s best or worst is shown rather than showing content other then just taylor swift
  • Showing off coloring books or taylor’s best photos

Honorable mentions: Fifth_degree talks a lot within reddit but i don’t see it impacting the community necessarily as there are so many new people joining the community.

Questions: 

  • Because the mass amount of people within the community and because the content is always changing do people find it hard to connect?
  • Do algorithms play a huge role in how people connect and if so does it divide the reddit community members?

Overall view seems like a fun community but something that stands out to me is that even though i scrolled and scrolled it was just on taylor swift while other communities i know always has a few people who just show off artwork or things unrelated to the community really

Some pictures: