Construction and community: Investigating interaction in a Minecraft affinity space

This paper considers the ways that gamers make use of an affinity space while negotiating backgrounded concepts of community through their interactions in a focal, forum thread focused on Minecraft. The focal thread was considered through both social network analysis and qualitative analysis. The structural analysis finds that the focal thread fits very well with traditional conceptions of affinity space participation. However qualitative analysis shows that there is often an assumed community identity lying beneath the interactions of players in the space. The presence of a backgrounded notion of community is used as a call for research to better understand the way that nondominant cultural, gender and ethnic identities may come into conflict with larger gamer culture in affinity space interactions.