conceptualised company

tumblr's imagined communities

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The Tumblr Platform

- Tumblr

There are currently 145.5 million blogs, and 66.3 billion posts on Tumblr. The microblogging platform, since its creation in 2007, has skyrocketed in popularity as a unique medium of sharing, expressing, and interacting with other users. Tumblr attracts a variety of people because it can be used diversely, and allows complete customization. According to its own policy:

“Tumblr celebrates creativity. We want you to express yourself freely and use Tumblr to reflect who you are, and what you love, think, witness, and believe.”  - Tumblr

The customization of ‘themes’ available to Tumblr users becomes an outlet of creativity and individuality that many other social networks or microblogging platforms wouldn’t. This allows a greater expression of personal preferences, and the opportunity for other users to identify with shared interests. Tumblr, like Twitter, allows users to include hashtags in their posts, making them search-able by other Tumblr users, and generating a massive platform of connection for users from all over the world.

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“I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.... Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined...."

Anderson 2006, p. 6

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Benedict Anderson's 'imagined communities'

Benedict Anderson’s original concept of an imagined community, produced in 1983, is one in which members would most likely never meet each other face-to-face, but still have common interests and a shared identity. Anderson applies this idea to nations, stating that nations are imagined political communities, within which holds smaller political communities, or sub-communities (for example, the Australian Labor and Liberal communities). However, Anderson also applies the notion of imagined communities to the media, in that a particular form of media explicitly targets a specific audience with shared ideas.

When assessing the ideas of imagined communities in a more modern, internet driven context, it is important to questions whether media centered communities are still imagined, OR, in today’s interactive online environment, are they simply just non-physical?

Originally, Anderson’s concept of imagined communities in relation to media was set in a context where media consisted of unidirectional broadcasting towards a passive audience. Audiences of television, radio and print media became an imagined community as they collectively shared interest in, and consumed the same media content. Today, we experience media in an interactive manner through online communities. These platforms, specifically social media and microblogging tools such as Tumblr, reduce the barriers between imagined and non-physical communities. Interaction with other users enables the shaping of a shared consciousness within the community. No longer does this community exist only in an imagined space, it is now much more tangible. 

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A 'nation' of microbloggers:

Tumblr and transcending physical borders.

When it became widely distributed in the early 19th century, the electrical telegraph was considered a revolutionary form of communication. This technology’s mass dissemination of messages lead to what Standage called an elevation of “the conception of human brotherhood” (1998, p. 163).  By establishing a platform which allowed people from a wider locality communicate, this allowed people to broaden their understanding of the world and people around them. From personal letters to public news announcements, information became much easier to be shared not only nationally, but also globally. This concept can be closely linked to the imagined communities (Anderson, 1991) created within Tumblr in the 21st Century, today. This is evident in that people could relate to others, and form relationships and converse through distributed messages without being physically situated close together. Similarly, Tumblr produces opportunities for residents of online participation to form bonds and relationships with people who have similar values and interests, despite the physical borders between them.

The following image (source) depicts a map of telegraph cable routes that enabled a global span of communication at the launch of the 20th Century.

  Today, communication through the Internet is available to a much greater extent. Over the last month, Tumblr received a network traffic sum of 242,044,096 globally.  Imagine the vast number of opportunities created on this platform for people to discuss and share common interests. Below is a map depicting the use of Tumblr across the globe (source).

It is vital to realise the implications of Tumblr, and its ability to transcend physical borders based on the formation of relationships. These bonds assist in the development of our perception of the world we participate in, or more specifically, the Tumblr community we interact with, as a global village.

“As far as perception goes, he understood this influence mainly in terms of the concept of extension: we extend our consciousness, we live in what he later called ‘a global village’.” – Coeckelbergh, 2011, shaped by the research of Marshall McLuhan in 1964 (see video).

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On Tumblr, people who are members of the same ‘fandom’ or who like the same things can share and interact with one another. Content creators can easily interact with people who enjoy their content, and those who enjoy the same content can easily discuss it with each other through using text posts, the tagging system, messaging, questions and post conversations. Just because members of these communities aren’t meeting face-to-face, does that make them any less ‘real’? Interaction with every member of the online communities within Tumblr is close to impossible, which means these communities are still imagined to an extent, but generally speaking, they are gradually being perceived as very real. This is because of the relationships and strong sense of belonging and identity shaped through Tumblr communities who embrace shared interests, despite being non-physical communities. Perhaps, it is through this interaction that these communities become ‘real’ – through transcending not only physical borders, but also Anderson’s understanding of media as a passive form.

Tumblr is an essential platform for the development of user identity, and belonging. Despite the non-physical or imagined nature of Tumblr communities, the relationships formed between users are definitely ‘real’, and can be felt by those involved from miles away.