The Undying Undead: an analysis of the Dracula Daily community for a theory on online community formation and interaction

Abstract

Dracula Daily is a substack created to let participants read Dracula’s epistolary fragments in chronological order over the course of six months, which went viral in 2022 and currently has over 250,000 subscribers and a lively online community. This thesis uses Dracula Daily as a case study to research online community formation and interaction in a search for sustainable online communities, using a close reading of a number of Tumblr posts and survey results from over 3,500 respondents. Findings indicate that online engagement with Dracula through Dracula Daily shows that an online community exists around Dracula Daily, formed through people’s previous interest in reading Dracula, and seeing Dracula Daily’s format and community as a convenient and fun way to finally do it. The community is sustained through content and meme creation that is informed by the affect generated both by the text and the posts tagged #dracula daily. Online interactions are not always personal in nature, but often revolve around (new) interpretations about the text’s characters, which are brough closer to the consumers through the special positionality, imagination sparked by narrative gaps, and scrutiny afforded by Dracula Daily’s niche type of slow seriality.