The passion and pleasure of information sharing in pottery practice

Abstract

The paper reports selective findings from a broader study about information behaviour in the context of the pottery hobby as a form of serious leisure. Among all the information activities in this context, the paper focuses on the affective and emotional aspects of information sharing. The Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP) is the theoretical framework of the study. The required data were collected via a purposeful and criteria-based sampling method. A sample of user-generated content (UGC) on YouTube was collected to form the dataset. The collected data were analysed through inductive content analysis to identify patterns of embedded concepts and themes in the dataset. Seven categories were identified. These categories summarise the major emotional reactions that viewers expressed and shared in their comments: (1) amazement, (2) excitement, (3) gratitude, (4) joyfulness, (5) admiration, (6) serenity, (7) inspiration. The overall ambience of the videos and commenters’ reactions were positive and joyful. The paper concludes that information sharing on a popular hobby via a publicly available platform, like YouTube, can evoke a range of positive emotions and establish social bonds. These social ties are the building blocks to form communities of interest and communities of practice to produce and share information on the chosen activity.