The Peacemakers (Clockwise from lower left: Roger Clyne, P.H. Naffah, Scott Johnson, Danny White, and Steve Larson, photo from www.azpeacemakers.com)

Community Centered Around The Peacemakes and Their Website

"Many people on here make me laugh. It helps me get through my work day much easier," "I am thankful . . . there really is a sense of community with everyone on the board," "People here have gone out of their way to be helpful to me," "the first true caring community I've ever been apart of," "loyal and supportive," "this group of people is incredible," "the spirit of the community," "warm camaraderie . . . overwhelming sense of inclusiveness and sharing," "it's been good for my soul like nothing else has," "always seems to put things back in perspective," "it's kept me going through very lonely times." These are only some of the comments I relieved after posting a questionnaire on the bulletin board for Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, a rock band that I've personally been a fan of for several years.

Before explaining the questionnaire, however, I should explain the Peacemakers. They're an independent band who distribute their music primarily through their website, not well-known at all by mainstream standards, but, as evidenced by the devotion of fans who replied to my questionnaire, they have acquired a dedicated, almost loving fan base. Their first record has sold only 13,000 copies (according to their website), but they've sold out concerts, albeit in small bars, as far away from their home base as Minneapolis and Chicago (they're from Arizona). I think the degree to which a band and their website (particularly, I think, the electronic medium of their website) have the ability to bring people together and to form friendships is remarkable, and I think the Peacemakers provide an extremely good example of this at a fairly small scale. That said, here is the thread that I posted to introduce my questionnaire:

Hello everyone,

I need the help of everyone on this bulletin board. I'm taking a class at the University of Minnesota called "Teaching Film, Television, and Media Studies." We spend a lot of time talking about different kinds of media and their roles in our society. I need your help for the final project for my class.

This is the assignment: a response study: conduct a study of viewers' and/or your own responses to film/television/media. Ask your your viewers to respond to a text in writing or in discussions, and then analyze the nature of the viewers' responses and reasons for those responses. You may also interview your viewers to determine how their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, purposes, gender, etc. influences their responses. In your final report, please describe your viewers, setting, tasks, and methods of analysis.

I would like to have the Peacemaker's bulletin board be the "text" and for all of you to be my viewers. All I need you to do is answer some questions for me. I know this might take a few minutes, but I would greatly appreciate your help. I need as many people as possible to respond to this. My project is due in about a month; I would be happy to show it to anyone who wants to see it, maybe I'll even post it. Thanks, here's the questions:

1.How old are you?

2.Male/female?

3.What state do you live in?

4.How often do you read the bulletin board? What kinds of threads do you most often read? Are they usually Peacemakers related or not?

5.How often do you post topics? respond to topics? What kinds of topics do you most often respond to?

6.How long have you been a Peacemakers and/or Refreshments fan?

7.How many times have you seen them live?

8.If you had to choose one thing, what has been your favorite part of seeing them live?

9.What kinds of feelings and emotions do you associate with listening to the Peacemakers music?

10.Are there elements of the Peacemakers music that relate to your own life?

11.Do you know people who post on the bulletin board in real life?

12.The topic I used for this thread was "Please help me!" What made you choose to open this thread and read it?

13.Is there anything you would like to add about your experience as a Peacemakers fan and bulletin board user that my questions have not covered?

If you did all this work for me I thank you very, very much. The sense of community of this bulletin board is really wonderful, and that's why I chose to use it for my project. Thanks again. And again. -Nick

In the way I phrased the framing of my questions, I definitely tried to appeal to the sense of community that participants feel pervades the bulletin board. My main reasoning for this was that I didn't think very many people would take the time to respond to such a long set of questions, so I thought flattery might help. I posted the questionnaire on April 16, 2002, at 10:15 AM. By about 5:00 PM the following day, I had received thirty-five responses, which was more than I expected from the roughly 2800 people who are registered on the bulletin board.

On this topic, one of the questions I asked was about why people chose to respond to my questions. As mentioned in the question, the thread I posted was titled "Please help me!" Almost every single person said that they just wanted to be helpful. The way the question was phrased obviously invites this kind of answer. Even though these fans do like to think of themselves as a great big helpful community, there are other reasons that people chose to spend ten minutes just to answer questions to help me. Topics like the one I posted are fairly common on the bulletin board, though usually they consist of only one question. These topics, posing questions such as "What is your favorite _____" or "Are you _____ or _____ ," are often among the topics that receive the most responses. This makes sense, because people who are posting on a bulletin know nothing about most of the other people on it, and reading and answering questions like these gives them a chance to get to know each other a little better. One of the responses to the question about why people chose to respond addresses this: "It sounded like an interesting thread to read, and so far I'm liking it because you get to learn a little about the other people on the site."

One of the other questions concerned how often people read the bulletin board. In addition to answering the question, many people mentioned where and when they read it. A significant number said that they posted from work. This also helps explain a reason that people were willing to take the time to answer these questions. If many people use the bulletin board to pass time while in the office, it is not surprising that they were willing to spend time responding to a topic that would take more than just a minute or two to answer.

Using the bulletin board from work suggests a slightly older audience than we might expect. Indeed, I found that the average age of people who responded to the question was twenty-seven. This is fairly old, considering that music, and especially the internet, are usually thought of as the domains of teenagers. The youngest of those who responded was nineteen.

The responses speak for themselves that there is indeed a community built around the band and the bulletin board, but why? As many people mentioned, the music plays a central role in their lives. Fifteen of the thirty-five respondents live in Arizona, where the band is from. They play concerts in the Phoenix area on almost a monthly basis. For these people, it would seem, the bulletin board functions as a way of meeting people in the area who also go to see the band live. Of the fifteen people from Arizona, only two answered that they did not know anyone from the bulletin board. The others said they knew people to varying degrees.

Many people who said they lived outside Arizona also claimed to know people on the bulletin board. Of the twenty respondents not from Arizona, the most people said they were from Colorado, Minnesota, and Oregon, with five, four, and three respondents respectively. There is another widely used section of the bulletin board called "Road Trips and Trail Rides." This section is used for getting in touch with people who are traveling to see the band play a concert. This is a fairly common phenomenon for fans of the Peacemakers. In these topics, fans from outside of Arizona are often given the lead role, suggesting places to stay and places to go in their own area.

Another similarity between many members of the bulletin board is the number of times they have seen the band live, either as the Peacemakers or as their former incarnation, the Refreshments. As I previously mentioned, traveling to see the band is not uncommon. Many of the people from Arizona claim to have seen them over one hundred times, but most people from other states have also seen them five times or more. Several people mention that they have traveled to many different places to see them. It would seem that this would be the most common way for members of the bulletin board, especially those in Arizona, to meet and get to know one another. Of those who responded, only one person said he had never been to one of their concerts. The same person also said that he did not yet know any other people on the bulletin board.

I asked a couple of questions that relate to reasons for liking the music. One concerned the emotional association with the music, and the other was about how the music deals with and affects each person's life. On question ten, the overwhelming answer I received was a simple "yes." Others said yes and elaborated, and some said the music sometimes related to their lives, but only two answered "no." One of the respondents said to question nine, about emotions: "I don't cry or anything when I listen to it. I just think it's fun!" The same person, asked about how it relates to his life, said, "[I] [n]ever analyzed it that much." Certainly some outside factors worked to shape a response such as this one. These answers reflect a reluctance to really accept the influence that music, even (or especially) when it's "just fun," plays in many peoples' lives. A few people mentioned specific instances in particular songs that relate to their lives in terms of content, but most people gave a general "yes, they relate to my life." A couple people brought up a larger issue: the fact that music is always touching our lives in this way. One person said "I think any person can relate any song to their life," which is something I think most people would agree with, but which they maybe just didn't think to answer. Certainly this comment goes a long way toward explaining the community formed around this website, as well as all communities formed through popular music.

Users of the bulletin board do not use it only, or even primarily, to get information about the band, however. The section of the bulletin board called "The Soap Box" is by far the most popular. According to the number next to it that lists the number of topics, there are more topics posted in the Soap Box than in the other nine sections combined. This section, according to the description on the website, is a "[f]orum for off-topic ramblings, dedicated to those who just want to be heard!." Subjects range from politics to sports to gossip. In response to the question about what kinds of topics they most often read on the bulletin board, one person said: "I spend way too much time on the non-[Peacemakers] stuff, but that's the stuff that makes the [bulletin board] fun!" In general, most people seemed to agree. Many said that they would usually look at band related items if they wanted to know something specific, but that they read all of the non-band related items.

Regarding the community built around this website, perhaps the most important question I asked was the last one: "Is there anything you would like to add about your experience as a Peacemakers fan and bulletin board user that my questions have not covered?" A few people said no, but besides these, this was the question I got the best responses to. One person answered:

I am thankful for this board. I can honestly say that when I go to a concert to see the [Peacemakers] there really is a sense of community with everyone on the board. Everyone is willing to hold your spot if you need to run to the restroom and get you a beer if you are empty!

I think this demonstrates the importance of friendships gained through the bulletin board and the role they play in the lives of people, particularly when they go to the band's concerts.

Communities in the world of media can be formed around almost anything. In the Twenty-First Century, the importance of the internet to a discussion of media is always growing. For a variety of reasons music always has and continues to bring people together. To note the place that the Peacemakers bulletin board holds as a fine example of this type of community, I'll give the final comment to one of my respondents:

[T]he warm camaraderie that lives on the [bulletin board] is great. It's a family and, despite the occasional tiffs and feuds, the overwhelming sense is of inclusiveness and sharing. You'll find people going to extravagant lengths to help out people who are almost strangers, solely from their [kinship] through the Peacemakers.

Information about the Peacemakers was all gathered from:

www.azpeacemakers.com

Peacemakers bulletin board:

http://www.azpeacemakers.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro

My topic posting is located at:

http://www.azpeacemakers.com/ubb/Forum8/HTML/004719.html

Collage below compiled from pictures from August 30 and 31 and September 1, 2001.