Paper Short Abstract:

This presentation discusses the challenges and findings of netnography conducted in a Facebook group of a Hungarian metal-rock music festival, Fekete Zaj. The research focused on how identity is expressed and community is created in the online sphere after the temporary offline event.

Paper Abstract:

This presentation follows the process of netnography in an online Facebook group of festival participants in Hungary. In addition to offline research at the Fekete Zaj rock-metal music festival in August 2022, the researcher immersed herself in the everyday online activities of the group members of the online festival community between May 2022 and May 2024. The online research focused on the question of whether an event community and the identity of participants created and manifested at a temporary offline event can (re)emerge on a social media platform.

Being part of the online platform was helpful in conducting offline research, engaging with participants and organisers, keeping in touch and sharing research findings with members, and observing the types of activities group members engaged in before and after the event. The research faced the following challenges: positioning the researcher within the group, sharing the research findings with the members to get feedback, asking for permission to use personal online content and sorting the relevant data. However, despite the challenges, the netnography resulted in a rich immersion journal that sheds light on the presence of online community building and self-identity expression. The content analysis showed that the offline event community also appears on the online platform, creating community and self-identity, but the meanings of these elements are shifted in the online community.