Tumblr Users Research Articles

Selfies as Practices of Care-Taking (and Giving)

Research on selfies finds that negative feedback in comments and the currency of likes reinforce and police dominant feminine or masculine beauty ideals, including binary gender ideals. For example, Döring et al. (2016) analysed 500 Instagram selfies to explore if they conform to gender stereotypes as identified in Erving Goffman’s 1976 Gender Advertisements. The study revealed that gender stereotypical behaviours found in adverts are repeated in selfies, and that some of the behaviours feature in selfies more frequently than in magazine adverts. The prevalence of dominant beauty ideals in selfies is demonstrated in #bodypositivity and #curvyfit posts that tend to depict slender female and muscular male bodies (Webb et al, 2017). However, selfies are an important mode of self-presentation. Research on queer and fat activist selfies has highlighted their role in enhancing visibility, raising awareness of oppression and challenging stereotypes. In research with trans and gender-fluid Tumblr users, Vivienne (2017) found positive comments on selfies helped promote body acceptance and that users viewed trans and gender-fluid selfies as defying industries that promote binary beauty ideals and capitalise on consumer’s insecurities. In my book Consuming the Body: Capitalism, Social Media and Commodification I argue that fat activist selfies challenge dominant modes of self-presentation and looking. This paper will draw on my research into selfie taking practices, and also a participatory research project around queering the gender binary (Bois of Isolation co-produced with Dr AC Davidson) to identify methods of producing creative selfies that evade commoditisation and discipline (#EmpoweringPresence, new project), and consider selfie taking and sharing as practices of care.

TUMBLR META-FANDOM: REFLECTIONS AND REPAIR

Drawing from qualitative interviews with nine active Tumblr users conducted in the Fall/Winter of 2021-2022 and qualitative multimodal analysis of high-circulation “popular” Tumblr posts, this research assesses and analyzes transformations in user attitudes towards Tumblr three years on from Verizon’s porn ban, and immediately prior to and following additional attempts to restrict adult content enacted by Automattic. This research considers iterations of Tumblr’s meta-fandom, or fan practices centered around Tumblr’s cultures and communities themselves, rather than a more traditional media property (Tiidenberg, Hendry, & Abidin, 2021), as locations where nostalgia and repair are contested. Meta-fandom practices are analyzed through the lenses of reflective nostalgia (Boym, 2001) and repair (Jackson, 2014) as a way of contending with both the recounting of a place and time on Tumblr that the users themselves know never really existed and the desire to acknowledge that Tumblr always has been “broken” but users continue to thrive, even in the wake of declining overall usage.

Tumblr Facts: Antecedents of Self-Disclosure across Different Social Networking Sites.

Previous research investigating antecedents of online self-disclosure pointed out two perspectives: social compensation and enhancement hypotheses, showing controversial findings. Furthermore, most contributions have focused on social networking sites (SNSs) considered mainstream, like Facebook and Instagram, and such results are often considered universally valid for all SNSs. Tumblr is a less-studied SNS with peculiar features—such as anonymity, higher control over the presentation of personal aspects, supportive communities—that could particularly lead individuals to self-disclose. As prior contributions highlighted that the features and affordances could define how a medium will be used, this paper aims to investigate the antecedents of online self-disclosure on Tumblr and other mainstream SNSs. We run a survey on 559 Tumblr users (aged 13–70; M = 28.86; SD = 12.34). T-test showed that Tumblr users have a higher willingness to self-disclose on Tumblr compared to another SNSs (t = 22.44, p < 0.001). A path analysis model confirmed the predictive role of some psychological variables on self-disclosure on Tumblr but not on mainstream SNSs. In particular, self-disclosure on Tumblr was predicted by self-esteem, negative emotionality, and preference for online social interactions, which was in turn predicted by social anxiety. These findings partially supported both social compensation and enhancement hypotheses, indicating that the phenomenon is more complex than expected.

Because Tumblr-Internet-Speak: Four Assumptions of Discourse Analysis Within New Rules of the English Language

The literature has described linguistic deviations from the conventional use of English in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) as distinguishing aspects of language used on the Internet. (Page, Barton, Unger, Zappavigna, 2014) The purpose of this paper is to analyse the unique language patterns seen on Tumblr, a popular microblogging platform, and how these patterns fit into four assumptions of discourse analysis as described by Rodney H. Jones (2009). Using a textual analysis method on a corpus of 60 texts extracted from Tumblr, this paper shows how four assumptions of discourse analysis can be found in Tumblr posts. The four assumptions of discourse analysis are that language is ambiguous, it is always in the world, it is used to show belonging to social groups, and it is never used alone. The ambiguity of language is taken advantage of, and Tumblr users use this ambiguity as a way of creating new vocabulary. New terms on Tumblr are coined and used by different social groups to show their association or aversion to said groups. Furthermore, textual analysis shows how Tumblr users mostly use language such as contractions, abbreviated forms, and acronyms in their blogs, which indicates that the said language is always in the world - the context in which, when, and for what a language is used determines what it signifies. Lastly, the analysis shows that the language is never used all by itself: non-standard use of punctuation adds tone to the text, and it functions as a ranting tone that impersonates rhetorical speech.

Tumblr’s Xkit Guy, social media modding, and code as resistance

The platformalization of the internet means that fan communities must make homes in spaces that they do not own. Tumblr has lately been the chosen home for many online fandoms because of its affordances for anonymity and lack of censorship. However, the profit motives of Tumblr's owners, especially after Yahoo purchased the site in 2013, are frequently at odds with the affordances that nourish fan communities. Fans on Tumblr are aware of their precarious position, where a few keystrokes by a developer could endanger an affordance that their communities depend on. An examination of the relationship between Tumblr users and Tumblr staff provides a case study of how fan communities push back against platform owners. The Tumblr Xkit Extension, a fan-made browser extension maintained by the volunteer labor of the Xkit Guy, is used to illustrate that the Tumblr community acts as a fandom of a social media site. This lets us understand the Xkit Browser extension as a resistant fan work written in the medium of code. Like video game modding, social media modding is a transformative work that permits fans to oppose the platform's code as law—but one that could also constitute a form of exploited labor.

Who Counts as Trans? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Trans Tumblr Posts

Internet and social media sites have long served as a rich form of community-building and knowledge exchange within transgender communities. In particular, Tumblr has become a popular site among trans youth in recent years. Paralleling changes in medical and mainstream societal understandings of what it means to be transgender, trans Tumblr users have engaged in dialogue and debate about the definitions and limits of trans identity. While research has established the potential for positive identity-formation among LGBTQ+ youth on Tumblr, it is also important to consider how online trans communities may re-inscribe hegemonic narratives in addition to disrupting dominant discourses and ideologies. Using a critical discourse analysis of Tumblr posts, this research analyses how trans Tumblr users define “who counts as trans,” including how users define gender dysphoria and its relationship to trans identities. Our findings provide critical insight into how trans communities define the boundaries of their identities in a struggle for visibility, resources, and respect.

Stage Whispering: Tumblr Hashtags Beyond Categorization

Scholarly attention to hashtagging on social media sites has focused on their catagorization affordances. Grounded in the literature on online identity, this article examines how Tumblr users tactically use hashtagging architecture for publicity and privacy in self-expression. The analysis is based on Tumblr posts and their corresponding hashtags, combined with text-based, synchronous interviews with users. We find that participants use hashtags as a form of intimate expression, offering “secret whisper” spaces. Participants acknowledged a distinction between these spaces of intimacy and the more conventional space of the post. Extending on Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, we argue that this intimacy practice is a form of stage whispering, which is neither front- nor backstage, but implies and assumes intimacy while on the stage, as an actor might imply and assume intimacy stage whispering to her audience.

Self-Disclosure on Students as Tumblr Blogging Users: A Descriptive Study in Indonesia

This study aims to see a depiction of self-disclosure of Tumblr users. Self-disclosure is an interaction between individuals who want to present information about themselves intentionally to others to achieve a close relationship in which the individual give a lot of information about the past that is relevant to the future. Tumblr is a simple-designed blog which the blog service is free similar to Blogger and Wordpress in which the users are not only able to write posts but also photos, attention-grabbing quotes, videos, audios and share links. The data are collected from a questionnaire through a link website media (google doc) which includes self-disclosure scale adapted and modified from Konradus (2012) as well as some supporting identity data. Respondents in this study are Tumblr users with student specifications taken using purposive sampling technique (N=200). The data collected are then analyzed descriptively by using SPSS version 16.00. Based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that in general the self-disclosure of Tumblr users tends to be moderate or normal with a mean value of 76.02. From the data that have been collected, the use of Tumblr in Indonesia is projected as a medium for expressing feelings, thoughts and ideas using literary language such as expressing feelings, thoughts and ideas by writing poetry, short stories or prose. In contrast to the use of Tumblr abroad such as in America which is more widely used as a marketing medium (Patel, 2014).

Behind the Hashtag: Online Disclosure of Mental Illness and Community Response on Tumblr.

The present study examined personal disclosures about mental illness and the responses of online community members on the social media platform, Tumblr. We sampled public blog posts of 14,626 Tumblr users disclosing ten different mental health diagnoses using hashtags (e.g., #depression, #anxiety, and #anorexia). We examined the content of users' disclosures, predictors of disclosure frequency, and predictors of online community response. The content of most disclosures was related to users' emotions and cognitions about their mental health and their feelings of interpersonal loss and change over time. Content varied with users' disclosure frequency and with self-identified mental health diagnoses. Predictors of disclosure frequency included the "self effects" of writing about oneself or one's opinions, such as self-concept formation, and "reception effects" of receiving responses to one's writing. User disclosures generally increased with frequency of community response (reception effects), and the degree of this effect differed depending on the disclosed diagnosis (self effects). The responses of online community members also varied significantly across disclosed diagnoses. The implications of our findings for community research and action are discussed.

Russian Internet Research Agency Disinformation Activities on Tumblr: Identity, Privacy, and Ambivalence

On 24 March 2018, Tumblr terminated 84 user accounts identified as being “linked to Internet Research Agency or IRA (a group closely tied to the Russian government) posing as members of the Tumblr community.” In response, Tumblr deleted the blogs and accounts of these 84 users but allowed reblogs of their posts to continue to circulate openly on the platform. Through a case study of posts originating with one IRA account, Lagonegirl, and qualitative interviews with 13 Tumblr users, this article considers the platform conventions and social norms that were utilized by the Lagonegirl account to facilitate its distribution of disinformation. Posing as a Black woman concerned with social justice but also sharing humorous posts that resonated with Millennials, Lagonegirl’s performance shows overlap with existing work on “Left Troll” IRA Twitter accounts while demonstrating platform specificity in the construction of posts.

Racialization and gender in Tumblr: Beyoncé as a raciolinguistic semiotic resource

Abstract Combining raciolinguistics and social semiotics, I explore a snapshot of socio-politically and historically contextualized multimodal digital activity in social networking site Tumblr involving American entertainer Beyoncé. I examine a set of 41 Tumblr posts, gathered in 2016 during Beyoncé’s heightened social and political salience, in which users expressed counterhegemonic stances. I first demonstrate how Tumblr users employ images and references of Beyoncé in ways that resist visual and linguistic hegemonic discourses and realize and index issues of race and gender. I show how Tumblr users resemiotize and reentextualize Beyoncé in decolonizing stances, including those that challenge White gazes, prioritize non-White subjectivity, and destabilize Whiteness. I conclude that Beyoncé’s use as a semiotic resource adds to her indexicalities as she is deployed in various stances. I assert that a raciolinguistic perspective elucidates intersectionally racialized and gendered ideological changes to Beyoncé’s multimodal indexical field and that attention to digital semiotics increases the multimodal and intersectional perspectives of raciolinguistic analyses.

"Giving a little 'ayyy, I feel ya' to someone's personal post"

Social media platforms offer people a variety of ways to interact, ranging from public broadcast posts, to comments on posts, to private messages, to paralinguistic interactions such as "liking" posts. In 2015, the commenting function "replies" was temporarily removed from Tumblr, providing a unique opportunity to study the deprivation of a standard social media feature. We administered a survey to investigate Tumblr users' perceptions and use of replies. Respondents reported that they used replies to simultaneously support others' performance and their own. Respondents compared replies to other digital interaction channels such as paralinguistic interactions, the sharing feature "reblogs", and "direct messages" (DMs), citing social considerations and norms around each. We used Goffman's performance theory to draw insights on the perceived semi-public / semi-private space of replies, which enabled users to perform supportive actions that did not belong in their main blogging identity frontstage but that were not backstage either. We discuss the limitation of performance theory to describe a presentation to a limited but unknown audience, and we describe how replies enabled new frontstages such as the delicate ramp up to the performance of intimacy in DMs. We discuss implications for performing support and identity on social media with audiences that are perceived as limited but are unknown.

The Footy Girls of Tumblr: How Women Found Their Niche in the Online Football Fandom

This study examines how female football (soccer) fans use the social media platform Tumblr to interact and talk about their fandom, what purposes Tumblr serves for them, and why they prefer it to other social media platforms. As women are often marginalised in offline and online sports discourse, Tumblr’s football fandom was chosen to investigate how women experience their fandom on a platform with a mostly female and young user population. The results of 14 in-depth qualitative interviews with heavily invested female Tumblr users show that the fandom’s communication culture allows fans to interact in a variety of creative ways that involve the use of a specialist vocabulary. This Tumblr fandom is overwhelmingly female, which makes the interviewees feel that they can talk freely about football. Thus, Tumblr has the potential to serve as a safe space for female fans. Yet, its highly opinionated discussions and rivalries mirror those in the traditional football fandom. This study contributes to the literature that explores how women express their sports fandom online and demonstrates how they have found a niche in which to discuss their favourite sport on their own terms.

Recruitment of Participants and Delivery of Online Mental Health Resources for Depressed Individuals Using Tumblr: Pilot Randomized Control Trial.

BackgroundAdolescents and young adults frequently post depression symptom references on social media; previous studies show positive associations between depression posts and self-reported depression symptoms. Depression is common among young people and this population often experiences many barriers to mental health care. Thus, social media may be a new resource to identify, recruit, and intervene with young people at risk for depression.ObjectiveThe purpose of this pilot study was to test a social media intervention on Tumblr. We used social media to identify and recruit participants and to deliver the intervention of online depression resources.MethodsThis randomized pilot intervention identified Tumblr users age 15-23 who posted about depression using the search term “#depress”. Eligible participants were recruited via Tumblr messages; consented participants completed depression surveys and were then randomized to an intervention of online mental health resources delivered via a Tumblr message, while control participants did not receive resources. Postintervention online surveys assessed resource access and usefulness and control groups were asked whether they would have liked to receive resources. Analyses included t tests.ResultsA total of 25 participants met eligibility criteria. The mean age of the participants was 17.5 (SD 1.9) and 65% were female with average score on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 of 17.5 (SD 5.9). Among the 11 intervention participants, 36% (4/11) reported accessing intervention resources and 64% (7/11) felt the intervention was acceptable. Among the 14 control participants, only 29% (4/14) of reported that receiving resources online would be acceptable (P=.02). Participants suggested anonymity and ease of use as important characteristics in an online depression resource.ConclusionsThe intervention was appropriately targeted to young people at risk for depression, and recruitment via Tumblr was feasible. Most participants in the intervention group felt the social media approach was acceptable, and about a third utilized the online resources. Participants who had not experienced the intervention were less likely to find it acceptable. Future studies should explore this approach in larger samples. Social media may be an appropriate platform for online depression interventions for young people.

Intentionally Public, Intentionally Private: Gender Non-Binary Youth on Tumblr and the Queering of Community Literacy Research

In this essay, I uncover the ways in which the non-binary gender community challenges what we know about privacy and reciprocity within community engaged work. Using my experience as a program coordinator for an LGBTQ youth center, I illustrate the myriad of privacy needs of non-binary gender teens and young adults who expect to be simultaneously both public and private in their online writing on Tumblr. I argue that for the non-binary gender community on Tumblr, direct contact from the researcher not only may invade their intimate space but also cause physical or emotional harm as many non-binary Tumblr users are underage and participating on Tumblr in secret. Instead, I demonstrate how the study of non-binary gender literacy practices can be done without engaging with or quoting directly from publicly published content, instead favoring an emergent thematic methodology. Additionally, I make a case for a queer methodology which instead seeks to recruit participants in the real world and be invited into their digital community once trust and reciprocity is established should interviews be important for further study.

Conviviality through creativity: Appealing to the reblog in Tumblr Chat posts

Research examining linguistic creativity on the internet has tended to describe various forms of creativity found in online “chats”: that is, in technologically-mediated “conversations” taking place synchronously among multiple users interacting in the same virtual space. In this study however, we focus on a different type of “Chat”: a newer social media discourse genre, and one that is a built-in feature of popular microblogging platform, Tumblr. These “Chats” are brief, imagined dialogues, posted by a single user. Focusing on a representative selection of 90 popular (i.e., highly reblogged) Chat posts, we illustrate two common strategies used by authors of creative Tumblr Chats: intertextual references to a wide range of cultural phenomena, and those referring to “relatable” first-person situations (i.e., “Me” posts). Our qualitative, interpretive discourse analysis draws on central concepts from Bakhtin, and shows how authors of Chats rely on creative practices, such as polyvocality and double-voicing, in order to produce posts that other Tumblr users are likely to find humorous, and/or relatable.

An Analysis of Depression, Self-Harm, and Suicidal Ideation Content on Tumblr.

Social networking about depression can be indicative of self-reported depression and/or can normalize risk behaviors such as self-harm and suicidal ideation. To gain a better understanding of the depression, self-harm, and suicidal content that is being shared on Tumblr. From April 16 to May 10, 2014, 17 popular depression-related Tumblr accounts were monitored for new posts and engagement with other Tumblr users. A total of 3,360 posts were randomly selected from all historical posts from these accounts and coded based on themes ascertained by the research team. The 17 Tumblr accounts posted a median number of 185 posts (range = 0-2,954). Content was engaged with (i.e., re-blogged or liked) a median number of 1,677,362 times (range = 0-122,186,504). Of the 3,360 randomly selected posts, 2,739 (82%) were related to depression, suicide, or self-harm. Common themes were self-loathing (412, 15%), loneliness/feeling unloved (405, 15%), self-harm (407, 15%), and suicide (372, 14%). This study takes an important first step at better understanding the displayed depression-related references on Tumblr. The findings signal a need for suicide prevention efforts to intervene on Tumblr and use this platform in a strategic way, given the depression and suicidal content that was readily observed on Tumblr.

Is feminism trending? Pedagogical approaches to countering (Sl)activism

ABSTRACTAs they say in social media, feminism is ‘trending’; feminist conversations, grassroots movements, and activism mark a fourth wave of feminist practice and theory defined by digital spaces. This article considers the effectiveness of using social media as both a course assignment and as a conduit for civic engagement. I analyse survey results of college students who used the blogging platform Tumblr in their Introduction to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses. Data collected from the participant sample indicate that Tumblr users are connected to viewpoints different from their own and are instilled with a sense of activism they wish to incorporate in their offline lives. In conclusion, social media is a promising tool for social justice, feminist, and/or leadership-focused praxis.

Making a name for yourself: tagging as transgender ontological practice on Tumblr

ABSTRACT This article considers, first, the tag-based architecture as a communicative medium and, second, how transgender-identified Tumblr users navigate and exploit the particular limitations of tag-based architectures. In particular, I analyze how trans-identified Tumblr users navigate and exploit these architectures’ affordances to manage feelings of ontological security in Tumblr's sharing-centered and tag-managed environment. Trans users express specific self and group identifications, as well as audience and social commentary, through their tagging practices. These tags form the basis of a trans-specific folksonomy, or emergent user-defined tag collections, on Tumblr. However, this folksonomy relies heavily on an existing subcultural vocabulary, limiting users’ self-expression to recognizable terminology with unstable definitions. Terms and their usage become an ideological battleground when users attempt to establish normative tag definitions through public policing and shaming of others’ usage. These conflicts indicate how semantic categorization limits expression of the scope of human self-presentation and gender performance.

Media Landscape on Tumblr

Growing concern for the future news consumption of young people and millennials has left journalism scholars and educators with the interesting challenge of engaging youth in news. Rendered “newsless” by one Pew Research report, this study examines news organizations’ publication practices in the largely under-researched and youth-oriented social network Tumblr. Results suggest that while news organizations have become increasingly involved in social media networks, many have created a digital presence on Tumblr and failed to maintain their accounts. Of the few that do consistently post, content appears to be tailored to adhere to the culture of the Tumblr platform, and posts are diversified in terms of format and topic. Surprisingly, though the majority of Tumblr users are considered to be young people and young adults, audience activity totals indicate that user interests may stretch beyond entertainment, widening assumptions that youth are primarily interested in entertainment, sports, and trivial news.