1. Is this a good place to study? (Given the overall cultural themes we are tackling)
2. Can the people we see interacting here be described as a 'culture-sharing group'?
3. What might be the main themes emerging from the investigation of this group and how does one go about identifying them?

The group:
The 501st Legion Flickr group.
501st Legion comprises people who create costumes, dress up in them and attend Star Wars themed events. The group principally revolves around characters from The Empire - villains from the Star Wars movies.

When joining the Flickr group, users must agree to the following rules:

If you agree to these rules, you can join the group

Photos submitted must contain a costumed or otherwise identifiable member of the 501st Legion or photos of props and/or kit that the Legionnnaire is working on. Please, no photos of Rebels or Jedi alone, nor photos of Star Wars exhibits, celebrities or screencaps. This photogroup is only for the Legionnaires and their activities.

The rules would suggest the group forms a community. Clari (unpublished) uses Hanman's (1997) definition of the term community:

1. A group of people
2. who share social interaction
3. and some common ties between themselves and other members of the group
4. and share an area for at least some of the time

Under these criteria, do the members of Flickr group form a community?

It would appear so. The group exists for Star Wars costumers to share photographs of costume events. They do interact socially within the Flickr group, commenting on each other's photos, but not to a great extent. They also share a common tie - they are costumers interested, perhaps among other costumes, in making and wearing Star Wars costumes. In doing so they share common technical expertise in constructing costumes to rigid guidelines (although some off the peg items are available) and they appear to share a common language. In this case English. They also share an area, the Flickr group, for at least some of the time. Members of the Flickr group may also be members of different garrisons (national or sub-national groupings) of The 501st Legion, the costume group that attends events in Star Wars outfits.

The group would appear to form a 'total community' or Gemeinschaft (Tonnies, 1995, in Bell, 2001, p94), described as "fully integrated vertically and horizontally, as stable and long-lasting, as compromised of a dense web of social interaction supported by commonality and mutuality, manifest in shared rituals and symbols...". Here the reference to rituals and symbols stands out. The 501st Legion have very strict guidelines about the costumes their members wear and what a correct outfit may consist of. There are also strict guidelines as to what may not be worn and how different costumes differ. For instance, Sand Troopers are a kind of Storm Trooper, but where a Storm Troopers chest plate is linked over the shoulder to the back plate they will have a ribbed starp, a Sand Trooper will not. See here for the level of detail given in the guidelines. The group may also be termed as an 'imagined community', as defined by Anderson (1983), also in Bell (ibid., p95): "... the work of making... a community depends on the use of symbolic resources and devices...we need 'things' to coalesce a shared sense of identity around." Drawing on Endsor (2001, cited by Bell (ibid., p95), Bell contracts this to say "These kinds of communities only exist...because their members believe in them, and maintain them through shared cultural practices."


This may be true of The 501st Legion, but it seems not to be when talking about the Flickr group. They may fulfil the theoretical requirements of a community, but, when asked, group members think otherwise (albeit based on only two responses to a brief series of questions emailed to the Flickr group members). The group's administrator, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (W,F&DT) asking if the Flickr group had, in his opinion, a good sense of community he replied that it doesn't, but "[t]he [real life] Legion, well, like nothing you'd ever imagine :)." This may represent an anomaly of sorts whereby real life groups also choose to represent their activities in online media. The online media is merely an extension of the real-life and isn't a 'life' lived out solely online. W,F&DT's appraisal of the Flickr group as community was echoed by another member, who said "we tend to conduct most of our activites through our own forums." Both also stated that the Flickr group was merely a repository for adding photos.

Although demonstrating the hallmarks of a community, The 501st Legion Flickr group is a sub-community of The 501st Legion. The names are confusingly the same, but here the former relates to the Flickr group and the latter relates to the Internet homepage of the group.

W,F&DT goes on to say the Flickr group "is just a repository of pictures The Legion may draw on for their use." This demonstrates an almost Empire-like way of thinking - if it's yours, we may take it for our own purposes at any time. However, this is real life, not a manifestation of a space situated franchise originally devised by George Lucas, and use of pictures in this way may form a violation of copyright. It is not clear if efforts have been made by some members to apply licensing to their images. Neither is it clear if members would mind their uploaded images being appropriated in this way.

The key realisation for me was the revelation that members (albeit only two of them) don't really think of the Flickr group as a community. An interesting area for possible further research would be the question "despite theoretically fulfilling the criteria of a community, can a group really be considered to be a community if the members do not agree that they are?"