Affordances refer to an intrinsic property of an object that makes certain types of behaviour possible. It accounts for the ways that designed objects convey their actionable properties to users (Baym & McVeigh-Shultz 2015). For example, within social media an affordance includes the 140-character limit when posting on Twitter. When using this platforms, users must condense and limit their posts rather than writing a more detailed one. It is a property within an interface that allows certain behaviours to be followed.
With My Kitchen Rules (MKR), affordances of different social networks that the show is a part of affects the spreadability and visibility of the show, as well as allowing for promotion, the involvement of fans and other parties.
To accommodate for the immense popularity of the show, MKR has a very strong online community as it participates with a variety of social networks and abides by the affordances they allow for. For example, on Facebook the show’s account posts information about the show and responds to comments that the fans make on the the posts. Fans can also ‘share’ posts made by the MKR page. On Twitter, as mentioned above, posts by the show’s account are 140-characters or less and often involve the hashtag. Thus making short, attention grabbing statements that are usually updates on the show. On Instagram, it is only photos and occasionally videos that are posted with small descriptions, as that is the affordance the platform allows.
The persistence and spreadability factor of the show’s online activities extremely high, as each platform posts daily during the competition. This is can be attributed to the affordances of each platform. By sharing a post about the show on Facebook, it becomes visible to a whole new set of people who are possibly not following the who’s Facebook page. Retweeting on Twitter has the same effect, however this can be accomplished in much shorter time and subsequently the information about the show is spread a lot faster. These actions contribute greatly to the promotion of the show, as the spreadability rises, so does the search-ability and acknowledgement of the show’s activities. Also, a lot of cross-overs between different social networks is apparent. For example, photos that were posted to Instagram are frequently posted onto Facebook and Twitter as well. Consequently, people who use Facebook and Twitter and don’t use Instagram will possibly be attracted to the show’s Instagram account.
It can also be seen that these affordances facilitate involvement from the fans. Fans on Facebook and Instagram can comment on posts with the MKR page often responding. Fans on Twitter can write hashtags that are being used by the show’s page into their own tweets, thus making them more visible to other fans of the show.
McVeigh-Schultz, J. & Baym, N.K. 2015, ‘Thinking of you: vernacular affordance in the context of the micro social relationship app, Couple’, Social Media + Society, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 1-13.
THE COMMUNICATIVE ECOLOGY OF MY KITCHEN RULES 