Publics and Protest on the Tumblr Dashboard by Michael Turner BA
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Structures of Participation and Contestation: Publics and Protest on the Tumblr Dashboard by Michael Turner B.A. in Anthropology, May 2013, American University A Thesis Submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts January 31, 2016 Thesis directed by Roy Richard Grinker Professor of Anthropology, International Affairs, and Human Sciences Abstract Structures of Participation and Contestation: Publics and Protest on the Tumblr Dashboard This project investigates the way that larger power structures and highly specific site architectures affect voices of contestation through a situated ethnographic study of the #BlackLivesMatter movement on Tumblr. Rather than a comprehensive study, this project looks at how protesters may utilize high media and social network literacy to strategically make their voices heard by seemingly isolated and uninvolved users. Rather than ignorant to the structures around them, the specifics of these choices or e-tactics demonstrate a degree of awareness by protesters of larger cultural forces that may limit or constrain their ability to be heard. Through this lens, this thesis compares the role of Tumblr and other social sites as arenas for democratic dialogue and the insertion of previously marginalized peoples and narratives. The use of blogs by #BlackLivesMatter protesters and other counter-hegemonic movements as a realm for civic journalism and “counter media-errorism” is also analyzed. Ultimately, this project shows a clear need for further ethnographic study on the particulars of Internet and information and communication technology structures and how activists pursue social change within these structures. Keywords: activism, weblogs, social media, civic journalism, public sphere, Internet ii Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iii List of Figures iv Section One: Introduction Thesis Concept 1 Background and Methodology 2 Section Two: Ethnographic Analysis Basic Site Structure 6 The Reblogging Public 12 Protest on Tumblr 24 Section Three: Scholarly Context The Form of Internet Research 44 Public Sphere as Democracy 47 Questions of Access 51 Digital Play on Social Sites 56 Activist Blogging 62 Exclusions in Activist Blogging 66 Section Four: Conclusion 69 Bibliography 72 Cited Data in Order of Reference 77 iii List of Figures Figure Page 1. Example of a dashboard post and reblog chain prior to September 2015. 8 Image captured on March 31, 2014. 2. Blog post and comic illustrating the lack of creator control on Tumblr. 22 Image captured on November 22, 2015. 3. 12/3/2014 New York City protest blog post with livestream and phone no. 28 Image captured on November 23, 2015. iv SECTION ONE: INTRODUCTION Thesis Concept The Internet is a daunting research challenge for many academics. It not only demands entirely new forms of data collection but also forces researchers to question how different its structure actually is from “real world” interactions. Have online mediums allowed for new forms of interaction? Is the Internet a genuinely democratic platform, or are conventional structures of power still at work? Is it inherently antagonistic and confrontational, or are there opportunities for debate and collaboration? Do publics and the social sphere at large function in new ways, or is the virtual merely a stage for already existing operations? Ever since the coining of “Web 2.0” as a way of describing the user-generated web, scholars have wrestled with these questions, and their methods vary just as wildly as their conclusions. As the online world becomes a larger part of everyday life for many people, these questions become all the more important to confront. My primary interest has always been online subculture. Whether the Internet was a prerequisite for a subculture’s formation or simply a means to be publicly recognized and band together, it has unquestionably become a tool upon which many groups now rely. In fact, online mediums have become especially important for groups in opposition to or refuted by dominant media and culture. In both of my prior studies, one with fans of anthropomorphism self-labeled as “furries” and one with a largely male fan-base initially 1 formed around the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic mostly self- labeling as “bronies”, individuals pointed to online social networks as providing justification and virtual locations where they could feel safe voicing their identity. However, my focus on the subcultures caused me to overlook the structures of communication. What was new or unique about the particular structures utilized and developed? Where did they succeed where prior mediums had failed these groups? This project is my attempt to rectify my oversight while engaging in larger dialogues of online social structure, power, and communication. Background and Methodology There are a wide variety of social networks, and each social network has its own structure, code, branding, and user-base. A brief moment online should be enough to convince most scholars that it is impossible to generalize one network’s specifics as standing for the whole of online. This is not always the case, but I am confident in asserting that a scholarly understanding of online structures must begin with small illustrations of network diversity and commonalities. This project’s scope and method is most informed by the works of Joe Karaganis, E. Gabriella Coleman, and Susan E. Cook. Their calls for works to study the structure of digital media (Karaganis, 2007), discuss the worlding that takes place on these structures (Coleman, 2010), and set ethnographically focused work on a broader theoretical backdrop (Cook, 2004) are ones I hope to follow. Given this, I decided the best place to start would be by finding a network I knew to have 2 distinct non-normative communities and voices of protest. While studying the brony community in late 2012 and early 2013, I was directed to a site called Tumblr by multiple informants. I was told that some of the more vocal and engaged bronies could be found there running fan-art blogs, role-play ask blogs, and fandom discussion blogs. What I was not told was how different Tumblr could be. I was overwhelmed by the multitude of voices, conversations that drifted in and out of sight, and loose networks of association I could only find through constant diligence. Even while studying the bronies, I quickly found furry blogs, social justice blogs, photography blogs, comedy blogs, promotional blogs for Vines, YouTubers, streamers, and personal blogs flooding my screen. Personal identities were discussed and critiqued, television shows and movies were lambasted and praised, and jokes were cracked. It was distracting, disorienting, and impossible to simply take a snapshot of. In other words, Tumblr seemed to actively resist easy study. This is why I was all the more motivated to include it in my research. By the time I began researching Tumblr itself in early 2014, I was well aware of the large negative reputation Tumblr had gained on other sites. Tumblr is marked, ridiculed, and popular media and news networks rarely acknowledge it. The site itself and its community was regularly panned for promoting misinformation and hosting pornography and other “not safe for work” or “NSFW” content. As a derogatory way of describing what they saw as an excessive cultural policing for political correctness and affirmative action, I saw many YouTube and Facebook commenters call Tumblr users “social justice 3 warriors” or “SJWs”. Some Tumblr blogs were made to ridicule and satirize these associations and labels even within communities that had already large presences on the site. This is why on August 11, 2014, despite only having followed bronies on the site as part of my previous research, I wasn’t entirely floored to see a flood of content on my Tumblr feed notifying me of the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer two days prior and the quickly growing flood of unrest and protest. Why did Tumblr gain this reputation? What was it about the structure that, despite only initially following twenty My Little Pony fan blogs, connected me with blogs from so many different communities and topics? How did that flood of Ferguson protest reach me when I followed no protest or SJW-labeled blogs before that point? And why was it that Tumblr quickly joined Vine and Twitter as major sites for the spread of Ferguson protest and the resulting #BlackLivesMatter and #StayWoke hashtags? The experience I had of that sudden exposure motivated me even further to take a careful look at Tumblr’s structure. From October 20, 2014 to October 1, 2015, I collected posts pertaining to these protests as they appeared on my blog. By looking at the posts that reached my Tumblr dashboard, analyzing them, and tracing their paths through the system, I aim to explain where Tumblr’s structure provides new options for voices of protest and where it limits these voices. This, of course, is by no means a comprehensive analysis of Tumblr. Data collection on Tumblr is impossible to acquire without bias; the Tumblr dashboard is formed from the individual microblogs you follow that are a part of the site, and the Tumblr search function is reliant on non-mandatory self-tagging on the part of each content poster and 4 reblogger. As such, the network and dashboard’s roles in shaping data collection must be confronted ethnographically. The posts that reached me are the result of a series of choices along a long chain of interactions, often more widely-popular posts. This study is not a complete picture of Tumblr’s user-base, communities of protest, or even the #BlackLivesMatter protest community. Instead, this is a temporally-specific study of structure and individual curation from the perspective of a Tumblr user.