Post 10: Discourse Community Example

An example of a discourse community I belong to is an online magazine, Her Campus. There is a national branch of the magazine as well as branches of the magazine at various colleges.

1. The goal of the magazine is to gain readers and advertisers. Another less obvious goal is to allow college students and opportunity to gain writing experience so they can build their resume and network with other journalism majors from around the country.

2. We communicate through emails, weekly meetings, social media and, if the message is urgent, through texting and phone calls. We communicate with the national branch through weekly email newsletters and through surveys.

3. We provide feedback through editing articles and voicing our opinions at meetings. During each meeting, we decide who will write what stories for the upcoming weeks. We then brainstorm different topics and decide what we like and dislike as a group. We review the stories to make sure that each person in the organization has at least one story and the necessary sections of the magazine are complete for the following week. We also provide feedback on what we did to raise awareness of the magazine and if we did any PR and/or social media interaction. We also discuss what other branches are doing and what things we like/dislike about other branches’ stories during the past week.

4. An example of a genre is the way in which specific articles are written. A blog post, which is an opinion piece, is not written the same way a serious feature story is written.  

5. Specific lexis of the magazine are various journalism and PR terms such as press release, feature, blog, ad revenue, solicitation, etc. Also, social media terms regarding Twitter and Facebook could be considered lexis.

6. The threshold level of the OU branch ranges from editors-in-chief to new member. You can move throughout the ranks based on your participation in the organization. Also, we hold yearly elections for the positions of editors-in-chief, section editors, business manager and PR manager. You run for these positions by turning in a resume and brief explanation on why you would be the best for a certain position. You are then elected to each position by the editors-in-chief. For the national branch, the founder is the highest threshold. It is impossible to reach this level.