Nerdfighteria
Authors:   , Salib Gabrielle M. , Agosto Denise E. 
Published: November 2022

A social network is often a person's primary window on the social world. Personal and professional growth, opportunities, and exploration are all gained through our social connections. Such connections are especially important during emerging adulthood. Defined as the time span between ages 18-29, many significant social and professional changes typically occur during emerging adulthood, from career seeking and planning to seeking a life partner. The present study sought to create detailed pictures of emerging adults' use of Nerdfighteria, a popular multi-platform online community and to investigate the role that parasocial relationships play in emerging adults' interactions within the community. Online methods of connecting with others can be especially effective during this often-fluctuating life stage since the point of entry to engage online is generally low. Among the most popular social media sites, YouTube has held the place for the highest traffic on a video streaming site almost since its inception. YouTube enables content creators to express themselves and connect with a follower base, and for followers to receive advice, entertainment, and even relate personally to content creators. Because of their large following, content creators are often unable to communicate directly with followers through comment responses or direct messages, leading followers to experience and develop one-sided connections to content creators on YouTube. Such one-sided connections have historically occurred toward film and television media figures but have also occurred among YouTube followers toward content creators. These connections are referred to as "parasocial interactions," and, when extending beyond consuming content to perceiving the existence of a relationship with a creator, as a parasocial relationship. This work is focused on understanding the Nerdfighteria community through the conceptual framework of the development of parasocial interactions and relationships through online video streaming in an ecosystem of platforms used by online communities. The Nerdfighteria community evolved from an ongoing YouTube vlog channel called the Vlogbrothers, founded by brothers Hank and John Green in 2007. Beginning with YouTube, the community has flourished on 10+ social media sites including Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and more recently, TikTok, Discord, and various audio streaming platforms through their podcasts. This work is anchored in understanding the theory of parasocial relationships through platform design and the lens of emerging adulthood as a unique stage of personal life development. Ten semi-structured interviews and graphic elicitation walkthrough of community members' experiences across platforms were used to understand emerging adults' experiences in the community and to understand the dynamic of interaction across platforms on which the community engages. Major contributions to the literature include (1) Extending the themes of parasocial relationship development through the lens of emerging adulthood, (2) Understanding the dichotomies of connection versus exclusion in multi-platform online communities, (3) Uncovering patterns of participation among emerging adults through means of introduction through late emerging adulthood, and (4) Providing methodological insights for the use of graphic elicitation in remote qualitative data collection for participant agency and equity.