Research Paper: The Shakespeare Online Community

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”

Henry V, 4.3

This section of my website is where I'll post certain research projects I'm working on for my Masters in Library and Information Science degree. While these are assignments I have created for classes; they are not published academic works. No part of these papers may be copied without my permission. If you want to chat about this information or have questions regarding my courses, feel free to contact me at deidrebrill@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter @dreadpiratemama.

I took a class called Information Communities, and we had to research and study how a given community sought out and shared information with one another. We could choose any kind of group we wanted, and naturally I started taking a look at my weirdo, adorable Shakespeare Twitter fam. As I compared research to my online buddies, I started to realize that social media is where the three traditional realms of Shakespeare nerds (academics, performers, and just fans) intersected. For this paper I wasn’t allowed to actually interview or survey anyone — conducting those levels of interactive research would have taken way more than the semester. So I chose to examine Bard online community through two examples of it — #ShakespeareSunday on Twitter and the listeners of the oft-mentioned No Holds Bard podcast. Should you wish to examine new depths of my geekery, it’s here for you.