Describe the community. What do you know about it? What do you know about the people in the community? What is the purpose of the community? How do you know that? Does the community fulfill its purpose? Why or why not?
I had originally subscribed to a mailing list that was related to dysphasia because that was an area of interest before I chose my research topic. Once I chose to do my project on stuttering, I subscribed to a mailing list that’s set up through Temple University. I have enjoyed reading the posts that are sent to my email, but I have not posted to this list myself. From what I have read, I can say that the community is made up of people who stutter, speech-language pathologists, and students interested in learning about stuttering. A lot of posts are irrelevant to the topic of stuttering, but others in the community are still willing to answer unrelated questions and provide support for other concerns. For instance, one college student conducted a survey on people who stutter and also had childhood illnesses. Another girl responded to her survey saying, “I checked out your survey, and I didn’t have any of the illnesses it asked for. I did, however, have the measles at the age of two and later went on to have episodes of epilepsy.” There were several people in the community that were supportive to this girl’s post, yet there were some who pointed out to her that this is irrelevant in a stuttering community.
The purpose of the community is to allow people who stutter, as well as others interested in people to stutter, to provide a release and support. It also gives them the opportunity to exchange information based on research or experience. I feel that it fulfill’s its purpose because people the people involved all work together by posting their feelings and providing feedback to each other. It allows the subscribers to communicate with others with the same interest and, in some cases, the same problems. The people in this community seem to have a close bond. One lady even posted that she was looking for someone to room with her at an ASHA conference.
Another post was to ask others to organize activities and to participate in International Stuttering Awareness Day. One post I thought was interesting was about how one person developed particular strategies to protect herself from the embarrassment of stuttering, such as reducing the volume of her voice so that others could not hear if she had an occasion to stutter when speaking. Another person responded to this post by saying that she doesn’t stutter when her voice is being projected such as in a loud room without a microphone. She said, “it’s not that I’m speaking slower, it’s that all the inhibitions suddenly seem to go and I could speak for hours.” I think it’s very interesting to hear how people who stutter compensate for their weaknesses in different ways. A lot of posts were to provide links to useful websites about stuttering or articles that were interesting to an individual. There were also links to documentaries about different therapy techniques to stuttering.
