With the aim to find common values, I asked participants to name all the values they shared with the Nerdfighter community. Participants responded to this question by listing both moral values and interests they find valuable.
Word Cloud of Values
Word sizes represent the frequency of value mentions in participant responses.
Knowledge. Enthusiasm. Acceptance.
As it can be seen in the word cloud, the first three more shared values are Knowledge, Enthusiasm and Acceptance. The code Knowledge was used anytime a participant mentioned the idea of valuing intelligence, free thought, science, the pursuit of knowledge, and similar ideas.
The code “Enthusiasm” was used any time a respondent made a reference to “being enthusiastic about things”. It must be pointed out that Nerdfighters define being a nerd as being someone who is “overly enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.”
“A philosophy of the Nerdfighter community is to live to try to decrease World Suck, which means to do positive things and have a positive impact on the world. No matter how big your actions are, the fact that you're taking such actions is important.”
Finally, acceptance was a value people cited as such almost every time. Those who expanded on this value explained that acceptance referred to both acceptance of oneself and acceptance of others. This particular value is very significant to this community, as acceptance of people’s peculiarities is one of the ideas that bring this community together. The Nerdfighter community is so significant to its members because it accepts and celebrates people’s differences.
“Respect for individuals, their identity, dignity, well-being, and all other things in between. Love of things which are odd and interesting, and a genuine enthusiasm for life no matter its condition.”
Other values that are significant and unique to this community are those of Decreasing World Suck and Increasing Awesome. These two values are part of the general aims of this community, and the responses showed that they are widely recognized by members as part of the essential values.
This series of posts explores the answers to the open-ended questions from the online survey of this research. Through content analysis, I extracted the most recurrent, frequent and extensive themes and topics participants discussed in their responses. The results are summarized in these posts.
See analysis by theme:
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