Peer Review #3: Knitting After Hours

Knitting After Hours is a fantastic blog by Lily that is centered around the creator’s interests such as cooking and knitting. The About Me page eloquently captures the tone and subject matter of the titular blog. However, one aspect I would like to pay great attention to is the personal anecdotes Lily articulates. These personal details are a great touch that effectively conveys the personality behind the Knitting After Hours blog to the audience. This contributes massively to the overall marketability of this blog to its intended audience. Additionally, this personal approach lends credence to the assertions of Tom Critchlow regarding digital gardening. For example, as cited in our Tanya Basu course reading: “with blogging, you’re talking to a large audience,” he says. “With digital gardening, you’re talking to yourself. You focus on what you want to cultivate over time” (Basu, 2020). Knitting After Hours captures the sense of a digital garden that Lily is fostering for both them and their larger audience. This is exemplified on the About Me page when Lily outlines how cooking and knitting helps them stay focused when conducting their academic responsibilities. It can be inferred that Lily wants to strive to achieve a better schoolwork ethic since it is mentioned on their About Me page that they “put off” assignments and readings. Thus, cooking and knitting are great outlets to promote a better work ethic. This instance showcases how these interests help instill balance in their life. Therefore, Knitting After Hours serves as a digital garden that Lily can use to help cultivate better improvements in their life. This can be seen as inspiring to the Knitting After Hours’ intended audience group which would be beneficial to a potential marketing push for the blog.

As outlined in our Bryce J Renninger course reading: social networking sites are extremely important since they provide the affordances for “certain kinds of communication” that various counterpublics can engage in (2015, p. 1526). Before moving forward, it is important to distinguish that the knitting community on social media platforms may not be considered a counterpublic group. More research would have to be done on my end as to whether not it can classify as such. Within the framework of this peer review, I do not believe it necessary to deem it so. With, Renninger’s statement, an argument can be made that it can also be applied to the knitting community since they are a group of people with a unique interest, who can engage in networked communications on social networking sites. Therefore, the biggest factor that contributes to Knitting After Hours’ marketability to their intended audience group is the implementation of Lily’s social media platforms under the same title as the titular blog. In the modern digital age, contemporary social media platforms are highly impactful when striving to raise awareness, advertise/publicize, and market forms of content. Therefore, it is amazing to see that Lily has taken the initiative to diversify their communication outlets by establishing an Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube presence with a cohesive handle. This consistent approach across their blog and social media accounts illustrates the marketability of Knitting After Hours as a brand.

Hopefully over the course of my peer review, I was able to effectively articulate the strengths of Knitting After Hours’ approach to cultivating a digital garden and Lily’s effective utilization of social media that coalesce into a fantastic website that can be marketed to their intended audience group.

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Basu, T. (2020). Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/03/1007716/digital-gardens-let-you-cultivate-your-own-little-bit-of-the-internet/

Renninger, B. J. (2015). “Where I can be myself … where I can speak my mind”: Networked counterpublics in a polymedia environment. New Media & Society, 17(9), 1513–1529. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814530095