ARMY’s Magic Shop: Understanding the Collaborative Construction of Playful Places in Online Communities

Abstract

Play is an essential part of the human experience and can be found throughout the lifespan. While play has long been of interest to the HCI community, research has often focused on the technologies supporting game play, the potential outcomes of play (e.g., skill-building, health improvements), or play among children. This paper explores what play looks like in online communities that are not specifically game-based and consist primarily of adults. From online ethnographic work of the ARMY (i.e., Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), fandom of the South Korean musical group BTS, we explore how BTS and ARMY collaboratively construct a playful social environment using various social media platforms. A contribution of this work is to expand our conceptualization of how adults create playful places that are not specifically game-based and highlights the role of socio-technical systems in their community building.