The origins of this community are rooted on a one-year video project by vloggers John and Hank Green entitled Brotherhood 2.0, which took place from January 1 to December 31 in 2007. The goal behind the project was for the brothers to cultivate their relationship by communicating through four-minute vlogs, which they would alternately upload to their YouTube channel and to their website every weekday for one year. This format created an ongoing exchange between the brothers, in which they conversed about various topics—from personal anecdotes and opinions, to educational videos about science and politics. Given the open and social structure of YouTube at the time, the project got noticed by an audience that started forming and growing very early on. The audience became particularly engaged with the content of the videos the Green brothers were producing, and started actively interacting with them—first through comments on the videos and through video responses on YouTube, and later through other platforms that would allow for more interactions.
In this way, a sense of community was born based on a shared enthusiasm for gaining and sharing knowledge; values based on philanthropy, equality, tolerance and empathy; shared interest in various popular and internet culture topics; and the overall common enthusiasm in communicating through online channels.
A community with a purpose
Once the Green brothers noticed that a community was emerging from their audience, they realized they could nurture a knowledge sharing community that could get organized for various types of projects aimed at worthy causes. With this in mind, the Green brothers organized several community projects over the year of Brotherhood 2.0 including two specific projects aimed at charity: the Project for Awesome and the Kiva Lending Team. These two projects were chosen to be the focus of the research presented in this blog, as they have continued with increasing and inspiring success ever since.
Vlogbrothers
As these two projects turned to be successes, and as the community that followed them grew larger and more cohesive, the Green brothers decided to continue posting vlogs after Brotherhood 2.0 ended, and they had continued to do so regularly since then. The videos on the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel are the backbone of the community, because they serve both as meeting points and as ice-breakers for members. They are meeting points in the sense that when people gather around one platform to watch a video and proceed to interact with others in that platform, they are gathering in a networked public space (boyd, 2011). And they are ice-breakers because the topics that the Green brothers bring up are the ones that inspire community members to interact with each other by giving them something to talk about. In this way, the Green brothers have continued to inspire the community to grow and become active in projects that can help make a difference in the world.
It was for these characteristics that I wanted to explore this community; because it awed me with its durability and growth over the past seven years, its strong sense of cohesion, the strong shared culture, and its ability to become organized. Click here to see how this community fits within online communities typology»
*Who the eff is Hank? became a running in-joke of the community that referred to comments of new viewers: John would start each video with "Good Morning Hank," but as the Vlogbrothers channels spread around, new viewers would encounter standalone videos and not be aware of the dynamics of the channel.
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