Participatory Communication and Community Engagement in an Anonymous Digital Job-Seeker Community: The @worksfess Case on X

Digital job-seeker communities increasingly function as spaces for employment information, peer support, and interaction, yet the mechanisms through which participatory communication becomes relational community engagement remain insufficiently explained, particularly in anonymous and administrator-mediated settings. This study examines how participatory communication is enacted within @worksfess on X and how administrators and followers experience these practices as community engagement. A bounded qualitative case-study design was used. Data were generated from semi-structured interviews with four purposively selected participants—two account administrators and two active followers—and non-participant observation of five publicly accessible @worksfess posts and their interaction threads between May and August 2026. Data were analyzed through the Miles-Huberman-Saldaña interactive process and interpreted using Rahim’s dimensions of heteroglossia, dialogue, polyphony, and carnival alongside sense-of-community dimensions. The findings show that engagement is supported by reciprocal information exchange, diverse employment experiences, member-to-member advice, and an informal communication style that can lower interactional barriers. Administrators structure participation through content selection and posting, while followers extend discussions through replies, experiential advice, clarification, and mutual support. Visible interaction, however, is uneven and cannot be treated as evidence of community-wide or causal effects. The study extends participatory communication to an anonymous digital job-seeking context and shows how platform-mediated dialogue, plural voices, and shared experience can support a situated sense of community.