Download Understanding Cosplay: How Technology and Social Media Influence a Global Art Community and more Essays (high school) English in PDF only on Docsity! Lynch 1 How Cosplay is Influenced by Growing Technologies Context and Intended Audience Cosplayers have formed a global community in recent years, as the emergence of new technologies and growing influences of social media platforms have prompted popularity of this group. | did not Know much about this subculture at all. Before doing research on this group, when | heard about cosplay, | thought they were a weird group of people who liked dressing up as characters for no reason. | definitely made assumptions about this group without being educated about the reasoning behind how this group came to be. | remember seeing a couple kids dressed up in costumes at my school occasionally, but | never really understood what the group was. | am writing for outsiders like myself who have general or stereotypical Knowledge of the subculture, cosplayers. Covid-19 had a huge impact on cosplayers in 2020. Competitions and conventions that cosplayers had planned on were cancelled, which was disappointing to the community, because individuals in the group spent countless days crafting amazing costumes to display at these events. | did not understand that crafting these costumes was a hobby of this community. | personally like to be crafty and start projects when | have free time, so it was interesting to me to find out that cosplay is a type of art that this group participates in. To this group, it is more than dressing up as characters they like from comics, movies or video games. It is about crafting an amazing costume to display to others and learn from others displays in order to improve on your own crafting skills. Too many Lynch 2 people do not understand this group, and | think more should take the time to understand them. People who are interested in doing crafty things like me might be interested to learn that this group does just that in a major form. Exigence and Research Inquiry The emergence of new social media platforms has caused a dramatic increase in people's interest in cosplay. | want to know how the growth of technology and social media platforms have influenced people's interest in cosplay. Through my research, | want to learn more about what makes these creators so invested in their field and how they learn from one another in creating these amazing costumes. | am curious as to why they took an interest in this form of a hobby in their life. Lastly, | am curious as to why people misinterpret their cause. The exigence is people do not understand the reason why cosplayers dress up as these characters in the first place and therefore many of the cosplayers are often physically and verbally abused by those who are uneducated about the group. Asking outsiders about what their knowledge on this subculture is, will help me to understand misinterpretations people generally have with this group. Meaningfulness of Research Methods As an interviewer, it felt more personal to ask for responses directly, whereas for the survey, | got to sit back and wait for responses to come in. The interview answers | received went more into depth about the interviewees experiences in dealing with the impact Covid-19 online work had on family dynamics. The survey gave me a sense of how my friends felt about online learning, but it did not tell me their personal stories. In
