Roles

There are many different roles within the My Kitchen Rules (MKR) community. Each role is outlined below and has a different purpose and impact on the others.

Conversationalist: MKR’s Facebook page encourages conversations – both positive and negative. The conversationalist’s make the show more interesting, engaging and entertaining as they comment on the show.

Fan: Fans of the show are segmented by states which are automatically created via the team structure. The Fans continue to create this sense of community and cheer for their team, keeping them and other Fans motivated.

Flame Warrior: As with any TV show, there are many negative comments on social media. The Flame Warrior keeps peace by hiding negative messages and replying. This aims to improve the perception of the show.

Troll: Twitter played an important role in the MKR community, especially in terms of identifying the troll. The troll is a person who sows discord by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community. This can be seen by MKR’s Zana; “You can already spot the b***h”: Twitter users slam My Kitchen Rules’ Zana as she claims the $250,000 prize “isn’t much money for us because our jobs pay a lot”. Phillips also portrays this; “consequently, trolls exercise what can only be described as pure privilege-they refuse to treat others as they insist on being treated. Instead, they do what they want, when they want, to whomever they want, with almost perfect impunity” (Phillips, W. 2015).

The other roles in MKR are the villain; the hero; the couple that splits; the pair with a sob story; and also the pair that doesn’t really do much at all. These roles help the community watching to relate to the show and thus interact on social media. Social media plays a massive part for both the trolls and lovers of the show. These interactions can cause a lot of tension and positivity both throughout and after the show.

Phillips, W. 2015, ‘Defining terms: the origins and evolution of subcultural trolling’, in This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Trolling and Mainstream Culture, Cambridge Mass., MIT Press, pp. 15–26