FO Subject Description

          The online community I intend to observe is a snark page on this old family channel called 8 passengers. The community is on Reddit, and it’s called r/8passenegerssnark. The community is for people to talk about Ruby Franke and Kevin Franke who originally owned a family channel where they will film their lives including their 6 children, they then stopped vlogging. Ruby Franke was accused of child abused and was arrested along with their family therapist Judy Hildebrandt. People post conversations where others interact and reply to their comments. The goal/ interest of the community is to talk about the case whether or not the father is guilty, if there were any patterns of abuse through the videos, the two oldest children’s opinions on the matter and on child exploitation. They have a few rules that are reasonable that are: not to contact the family of 8 passengers about the Reddit, censor the children who are still minors including face and name, no speculation about the minors, keeping civil discussion, no body shaming, no armpit diagnoses, no spam, and no unoriginal content/ unreliable sources. The page is pretty active it looks like they post daily, and the replies seem to be very active too. The outside information I can use is the news on the case to understand more on why everyone is so invested in what happened. The case is still on going so people in the online community have a lot to say on the whole topic. Maybe I will do some research about the family or what they used to film on YouTube why there was so much controversy. Maybe I will do some research on Mormonism since it looks like people also blame religion for what happened. I can do some research on connextions which is an online and in person group that Judy and Ruby had that people in the Reddit say seemed cultish.

The web address is https://www.reddit.com/r/8passengersnark/.