Collective writing and authorship
(Or: Why tumblr is a nightmare for academic citation, but actually pretty great)
Academic writing puts a heavy emphasis on authorship and ownership of ideas. It enforces citation structures that prioritize hierarchies within multi-authored works, publishing bodies, and strict adherence to guidelines - often at the cost of actual clarity.
The first time I tried to cite a tumblr post for a paper, it took me nearly an hour to find a template for how to structure the citation, because APA does not value non-academic sources, especially ones as informal as social media blog posts.
Tumblr’s format complicates authorship and collective writing. Most people access posts through a second, third, or 20th party, rather than from the original poster, via reblogging. Many posts, particularly ones intended to be informational, have contributions from multiple blogs. Sometimes, the bulk of the content is only tangentially related to the original post or comes from responses in the notes. People will often put commentary or expand on ideas in the tags – if someone who follows them sees those tags and thinks they are particularly relevant or add to the post, they may copy-paste or screenshot them and add them with a link to the person who’s tags they were. This is affectionately referred to as ‘passing peer review’ and often is accompanied by a comment along the lines of “this was too good to leave in the tags” (1, 2). This kind of interactive contribution is characteristic of tumblr and is commonly accepted practice across communities.
Collective writing is a cornerstone of tumblr. Posts are conversations, collections of information and perspectives. I think this is one of the key consistencies amongst disabled writers and thinkers, whether it’s online or academia – we are drawn to collective work(3). Our lives often require us to seek support and assistance from each other and our communities to meet our needs – if we survive collectively, why would we create in isolation?
Tumblr also offers anonymity – this may seem counter to building community, but it isn’t. Disability is often messy and complicated, and many aspects of our lives are not acceptable by ‘public’ standards. Anonymity allows some of us a place to express openly without fear of judgement or consequence – particularly for those in situations where expressing their frustration or thoughts could be actively dangerous and lose them the care they rely on for survival. This also complicates crediting work, as often the only way to attribute work is to a username (which is also the URL for the blog) that can be changed at any time, with almost no way to ensure someone looking for post can connect the old and new name. This is both a challenge and a feature even on tumblr, as it allows people to regain some degree of anonymity after going ‘viral’ or just change with their interests, but is a pain when trying to keep track of people you follow.
All of these factors making citing tumblr in an academic format challenging at best, and a nightmare at worst. Yet it’s generally clear to people within the ‘tumblr ecosystem’ who is responsible for any particular contribution, which illustrates the limitations of the strict structures of academic citation.
By nature, tumblr doesn’t have a particular format for citing or sourcing material. Media literacy and the importance of sharing and checking sources varies dramatically by community and user – as is to be expected for a social media site with a varied userbase. Generally speaking though, people sharing information on tumblr prioritize clarity and convenience when including sources, because while there is a significant number of academics using the site, most users have not been taught how to interpret an APA, Chicago, or MLA citation, and they are wildly inaccessible to many people with disabilities. Instead, people include links – sometimes alone, with brief summaries, or just titles and names of authors (4). Other times people use simplified footnote citations (as I have), which keeps the body of the text clear and is familiar enough that most people can understand them. The information included is only what someone might need to find a source – the priority is on making the content easily accessible to the audience.
1: https://www.tumblr.com/theinnermeyoullneverknow/757506025382445056/im-sorry-laughconfetti-this-is-too-good-to-hide?source=share
2: https://www.tumblr.com/2-the-moon-and-2-saturn/729982055601045504/my-favorite-thing-in-the-genre-of-tumblr?source=share
3: Learning Disability Justice through Critical Participatory Action Research (Laura J. Wernickin in Crip Authorship, 2023) https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/89491
4: https://www.tumblr.com/reasonsforhope/770202625015693312/indigenous-resistance-has-cut-us-and-canadas?source=share
