Monday, April 14, 2014

Is AnimeFreak.tv a Comunity?

After looking over AnimeFreak.tv, I have come to the conclusion that it is in fact not a Community.  I find that most of the things that make a community are absent from the this site.  The three that stuck out the most for me would have to be Governance, Privilege, and Participation is the biggest one of the three.  To start off, the site seems to be controlled by either one person or a small group of people that find the anime materials to post daily.  There is no user control or input on what these people pick to post, so there is no Governance.  There is also no Privilege to using this site because there is no benefit to using the site other than catching up on some TV, which is not a social act inherently.  There is no upside to using this site over another anime streaming site, thus there is no Privilege.  Perhaps the biggest reason that this site doesn't qualify as a community is the lack of the ability to Participate.  There is no comment structure, no user registration, no interactions between users what so ever.  If a community needs any of the major characteristics of a community, it needs Participation.

1 comment:

  1. Of course, an even broader issue is the legality of the site. It seems hard for me to imagine that a site as open in broadcasting this material as this site appears to be could be "illegal," but it sure seems like a lot of these videos could be sold for download or on DVDs where the IP owner might be losing money. I am still curious, but that really has nothing to do with whether or not animefreak.tv is a legitimate virtual community or not. Your three points are very well-taken.

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