Yogurt Blog

My chosen discourse community is the yogurt community, a group of individuals that mainly exists online. This discourse community’s members consist of individuals who love to eat, surround themselves with, and discuss yogurt. As mentioned, this community primarily gathers on social media platforms as a result of COVID-19. Within this discourse community, you can find banter on what the best yogurt and topping brands are, recipes using yogurt, and etc. The most prominent spaces that this discourse community exists in includes: TikTok, Instagram, and blogging platforms such as Tumblr. I, personally, believe that this is the case because these platforms allow individuals to create their own subsections of the platforms — allowing discourse communities to form due to the fact that there will be both “insiders” and “outsiders”. 

In regards to communication practices, members of this community use the above platforms to discuss a variety of topics relating to yogurt – allowing specialized terms and eventually, a specialized language to form. To my knowledge, there are no physical gatherings of yogurt lovers that exist, as everything they would discuss already occurs online. Almost all communication in this discourse community is equal, as everyone has about the same amount of influence if that is the goal. There are no “yogurt influencers”, however, there are creators who focus on other topics but occasionally make yogurt content. One of my favorite people who does this is a TikTok creator named “Elle Gibson” who shares healthy recipes online. She is mainly known for her “healthier brownie ball” recipe (which is absolutely delicious if you care to try!) but she is also quite well known for her yogurt content which she makes a fair amount of. As clear by her content, Elle values healthier eating using quality ingredients which is something that a lot of members of the yogurt community, including myself, value.

There are many values in this community, some shared by all and some shared by few, but the values shared by the whole body of people include: making delicious yogurt, always working to better one’s yogurt, and to promote inclusion and diversity within the community. Online, I have seen a few individuals use ethnic flavorings to create delicious yogurt bowls, yogurt-based dips, and other yogurt-based recipes. With these values in mind, I am interested in looking at the communication and nutritional side of yogurt, as I find those two to be the most interesting. I plan to look at online debates using both academic and informal sources that discuss the nutritional benefits of yogurt after adding in artificial flavors, dyes, and sugars.