Nearly the End of an Era

I’m not sure that I am fully a part of any single knowledge community. I have interests and ties to many different things that picking only one of them to dissect and discuss took quite a bit of thinking. Then I remembered what week it is: this Friday is the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. In honor of the occasion, I am going to bare my inner Harry Potter nerd and show just how far the Harry Potter Knowledge Community reaches (or at least some of it, because I’m sure I could write a pretty long paper about it).

 Looking at Jenkins explanation that knowledge communities are formed “through voluntary, temporary, and tactical affiliations, reaffirmed through common intellectual enterprises and emotional investments.” (27), I think it’s safe to say that Harry Potter can certainly be viewed as a knowledge community. The very first Harry Potter book was released back when most of us were in elementary school, so in a way we’ve kind of grown up with Harry Potter—all seven of the book releases, the films coming to life and then the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. Now that the final book has been turned into a two part film, we are almost at the end of the road Harry Potter wise. It’s kind of like the end of an era and just like when anything comes to an end, there is a little sadness with it as well. The Harry Potter Knowledge Community as a whole hasn’t had any book releases to look forward to in almost four years and come July we won’t have any more movie releases to look forward to. 

 I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that nearly all of our generation (Digital Native’s, if you will) are in some way shape or form a apart of the Harry Potter Knowledge Community. Whether or not you enjoy the Harry Potter book and movie series, you have some sort of affiliation to it; you know some information about it—which also supports Jenkins idea of a knowledge community.

 From here, the Harry Potter Knowledge Community can be broken down into die hard fans. These are the people who pre-ordered the books and picked them up from the bookstores at midnight and also attend the midnight premiers of the movie. They can also probably answer just about every Harry Potter related question you could think of. I’d consider myself a part of the “die hard fan” group. I guess you guys know where I’ll be on Thursday at midnight.  

Then there are the fans who wish to be a part of the Harry Potter experience. These are the people who write their Harry Potter themed stories on FanFiction, the people who listen to the music group Harry and the Potters and people who watch the Harry Potter Puppet Pals on YouTube. The list goes on. 

The point is, the Harry Potter Knowledge Community is one of the biggest knowledge communities and perhaps one of the most diverse knowledge communities that are out there.