How Does Tumblr Function as a Digital Community?
Many of us have ingratiated social media platforms into our daily lives. It seems, other than when washing, working, or sleeping, we engage in some way with the digital communities that we are a part of. Participation in these networks is not simply a matter of being in or out; on or off (Boyd 2012). Social media has transformed the traditional public sphere into a complex system of publics which intersect, overlap, and co-exist at various levels and for different lifespans within society (Bruns & Highfield 2015).
Networking and sharing information with others are assumed parts of participation in the modern world (Boyd 2012). Thus, our engagement with social media platforms becomes less a question of whether we are part of these digital communities. Rather, of how individuals choose to brand, curate, and display themselves, and determining which best highlight and express these marketable elements by leveraging each platform’s affordances (McCosker 2017; Scolere, Pruchniewska & Duffy 2018).
Tumblr affords its users commensurably greater creative freedom than other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This is achieved through the level of customization, personalization, and richness of content it provides. With this creative freedom, comes the attraction of individuals who not only seek to express themselves, but to develop their own identity through the assumed norms and values of the Tumblr community, and by producing content which strengthens the community as a whole (Mousavi, Roper & Keeling 2017).
Perhaps Tumblr’s biggest strength lies in its hybrid characteristics of social networking, traditional blogosphere, and social media (Chang et al. 2014). Furthermore, Tumblr is particularly popular among teens and young adults interested in self-expression, while density and connectedness among these users is much higher than traditional blogs (average distance of 4.7 users between every 2) (Smith 2013; Chang et al. 2014).
In relation to social and political engagement, Tumblr provides individuals a degree of privacy in tandem with mutual connectedness to drive movements and collective responses to social concerns. For example, Tumblr has gained a reputation as a feminist-friendly space where in-depth dialogue can be cultivated in relation to issues such as intersectionality, patriarchy, and protest (Keller 2019).
This is another aspect which makes Tumblr unique amidst other social platforms. Individuals are free to display aspects of themselves and engage with a range of interests and issues which may not be revealed among close friends and family. While this seems positive for public discourse, Tumblr has also attracted criticism for promotion of self-harm, pornographic, and white supremacist material forcing the social network to impose content bans to make it more difficult to access such content (Eveleth 2013; Rosenberg 2018).
With its popularity and attributes as a digital community, comes many of the same threats which all social networks must face in this novel digital age. As, these platforms have emerged from within a broader culture and are inescapably subject to the societal and cultural influences which drive them.
Boyd, D 2012, ‘Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle’, The Social Media Reader, in M Mandiberg (ed.), NYU Press, New York; London, pp. 71-76.
Bruns, A & Highfield, T 2015, The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics, in A Bruns, G Enli, A Larsson, E Skogerbo & C Christensen (ed.), Routledge, New York, pp. 56-73.
Chang, Y, Tang, L, Inagaki, Y & Liu, Y 2014, ‘What is Tumblr: A Statistical Overview and Comparison’, ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 21-29.
Eveleth, R 2013, What Happened to ‘Self-Harm Blogs’ After Tumblr Banned Them?, viewed 24 April 2020, <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-happened-to-self-harm-blogs-after-tumblr-banned-them-15883320/>.
Keller, J 2019, ‘“Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms’, Social Media + Society, vol. 5, no. 3, p. 205630511986744.
McCosker, A 2017, ‘Data Literacies for the Postdemographic Social Media Self’, First Monday, vol. 22, no. 10.
Mousavi, S, Roper, S & Keeling, K 2017, ‘Interpreting Social Identity in Online Brand Communities: Considering Posters and Lurkers’, Psychology & Marketing, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 376-393.
Rosenberg, E 2018, Tumblr’s nudity ban removes one of the last major refuges for pornography on social media, viewed 24 April 2020, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/04/tumblrs-nudity-crackdown-means-pornography-will-be-harder-find-its-platform-than-nazi-propaganda/>.
Scolere, L, Pruchniewska, U & Duffy, B 2018, ‘Constructing the Platform-Specific Self-Brand: The Labor of Social Media Promotion’, Social Media + Society, vol. 4, no. 3, p. 205630511878476.
Smith, C 2013, Tumblr Offers Advertisers A Major Advantage: Young Users, Who Spend Tons of Time on The Site, viewed 24 April 2020, <https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tumblr-and-social-media-demographics-2013-12?r=US&IR=T>.
