Stakeholder/Genre Analysis

Stakeholder Analysis

            Throughout my research so far, and the previous assignments that we have done in this course, I have a good idea about what my final project is going to be about. I’ve decided to do my research on the EDM discourse community. There are a lot of different groups of people or stakeholders that contribute to this community. The couple of groups that I have chosen that I think contribute the most are Ravers and Producers.

            Ravers are the people who actually attend the EDM festivals or raves. This group is the stakeholder group that I am focusing on, as these are the people that make up most of the discourse community. This group spans across the whole world, as there are EDM festivals that occur in many different countries. There are a lot of stereotypes that go along with ravers. One that is commonly said is that they are all teenagers who like to party and consume drugs. Even though this can be true in some cases, there is usually older people who attend them as well, and not everyone that attends participates in illegal activity. These people contribute the most to my research as they can answer my questions about why raving is important to people and what actually goes on during a rave.

            The other stakeholder group that I wanted to research are EDM producers. These are the people who are creating the music that everyone enjoys at festivals. Without these people there would be no show, so with this said, they play a very important role in the EDM industry. From this group I can gather crucial pieces of information that would help answer my question, “Should EDM be considered trashy music?”. In addition to that, I also want answered from them how they create the music, and how much work goes into making a song.

Genre Analysis

For every group of people, there are different ways to address them correctly. For the discourse community that I have chosen, EDM/Ravers, there are certain ways that they communicate with each other and how they find information. The main thing to consider when thinking about this discourse community, is that the majority of the people are teenagers and young adults. In todays society, almost every teenager spends the majority of their time on the internet, and has social media accounts on which they communicate to others. This communication does not have to be talking, it could be posting pictures, articles with information, or even posting music.

This group usually reads information from DJs/producers and other fellow ravers through the internet, on sites such as Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. They are constantly gathering information from sources online, which is the main basis of their knowledge. Ravers can also pull up articles about the EDM industry that are linked on platforms such as their Facebook feeds, and other websites that are explored by youths everyday. One platform that a lot of ravers and youths use is a popular blogging and discussion website known as Reddit. This platform allows people to post arguments or questions that they have, and anyone is welcomed to comment back and answer their question, or provide their opinion. When reading arguments on a Reddit page about EDM, ravers can easily communicate with other ravers about what they think about the topic, by easily commenting back their opinion.

It takes a lot to change the mind of a teenager, as most of them are opinionated, and fixated on their own belief. With this in mind I hope to bring hard evidence to this group, so they are convinced by my research. I chose to create a Reddit blog page to post my argument, so I can add information to what ravers read everyday. I believe that this platform will help me be able to reach out to a lot of people who enjoy EDM as well as people who do not.

As I have looked through this genre I have realized how beneficial this platform would be to display my research. The blogs main page displays a list of every posting that is on the page and it even has different categorizes on what the post is about. It also displays a score of the amount of likes, which adds points to the posting, and the amount of dislikes, which subtracts points from your overall net score. If your posting has the greatest overall score, then it is displayed at the top of the list of postings, that way everyone who visits that blog will see it first. People are able to filter the categorizes to look through the postings that they care about, whether that be about songs, arguments within the community, or even information about festivals. There is a category on discussions, that would work for me to post my argument on. Each post is usually accompanied by a link that acts as a works cited, and allows the reader to do research on their own and form their own opinion.

From looking at previous discussions that were posted within this community, I have an understanding of what this platform offers and how it is used within the community. I figured that I cannot base my whole analysis on a Reddit page, so I have interviewed a friend who has gone to a countless amount of raves, and she agreed that a post on an online platform such as Reddit, would be the ideal genre to use to reach out to my desired audience. For the text that I create, I will keep the language casual, so it will not deter the readers from continuing to read my post, since my audience is generally younger. I also decided to not be too opinionated in my text so it will not turn anyone away, and to just to present facts that I have learned throughout my findings. Thus, I have found out a practical way to present my data and what I should write in my text so I can reach my audience.