Structures of Participation and Contestation: Publics and Protest on the 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 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 by #BlackLivesMatter protesters and other counter-hegemonic movements as a realm for civic 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, , 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 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. 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 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 and as major sites for the spread of Ferguson protest and the resulting #BlackLivesMatter and #StayWoke ? 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. At best, this will be an insight into some of the larger tendencies, unspoken rules, and network structures at play on the site and an illustration of how different sites can provide different tools, create different communities, and offer different options to the non-normative or otherwise marked individual.

5 SECTION TWO: ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

Basic Site Structure

Tumblr was founded in 2006 as a host site (Davis, 2008). Unlike regular blogs, which often were formatted for longer, more sizable content and narrative, microblogging prioritizes short, quick, and more “stream of consciousness” content

(Kottke, 2005). Tumblr gives its users space to create a number of Tumblr blogs that users can decorate and recode within certain specifications and thematic templates. More tech- savvy users can even use HTML to edit or create their own Tumblr blog layouts. Users also have access to a personalized “dashboard”, a front page where all posts from Tumblr blogs they follow are listed from newest to oldest. This allows Tumblr users to keep up- to-date on a large number of blogs without checking each one individual. Those who are interested in only a few Tumblr blogs or more used to older blog site formats can follow through RSS, a that regularly issues updates regarding newly published content through a follower’s web browser. Content can be created from the dashboard and posted immediately, although many more “serious” blogs can queue posts ahead of time. Many of these posts are based around pictures, animated gif files, videos, or audio files. Some users, when their post is not dependent on visual or auditory content, will attach a loosely related image anyway to be more noticeable and attractive to those browsing their blog or seeing their posts on a personal dashboard.

6 Most blog sites prior to Tumblr delegated responses to “comment sections”, a small text box below each piece or article’s main page where readers could respond on each article. These comments were post-specific, however, and often relied on small groups of dedicated blog followers or high amounts of article-specific traffic for discussion to occur. Tumblr’s comments are even more highly limited and share space with other post- specific notifications. Users who commented or responded to a post directly could only have their message read by those who go beyond the dashboard to the individual post’s page and find the comment among a wealth of other information and notifications.

Therefore, traditional commenting was often ignored as an option or unnoticed by users when used. It may be due to this lack of widespread usage that Tumblr removed direct post comments in November of 2015. Instead of comments or direct replies, Tumblr users favor other methods.

One of these methods of interaction is “asking”. Blogs that enable the option can have users submit general questions or comments directly to the blog’s owner who can then publicly respond in a post, privately respond, or delete the message. However, it is difficult and often distasteful to have a public dialog or conversation through asks, and these asks are not linked or specific to any particular post. Blogs can also enable other users to ask questions anonymously. This leads to a number of concerns regarding harassment and accountability, though, and further separates asks from the other two methods available: likes and reblogs. Likes are mostly private methods of bolstering a post’s notes or notifications. While users can see who has liked a particular post, they can only find likes in the overpopulated notifications section on each post. Large posts can

7 have notifications in the thousands or more, and there is no way of searching for a

specific user’s likes. Each user, however, can find their own liked posts in a section on

their dashboard.

Many users

consider reblogging

the most iconic

feature of Tumblr.

Rather than merely

sharing links to

content or quoting

content, reblogging

allows a user to take a

post, make edits, and

comment on the post.

This action leaves a

link to both the source Fig. 1: Note that “deckster” is not the original source; a deletion of the original poster’s quotation occurred during some point of the reblog the user reblogged chain’s formation. Some posts in the chain may be deleted or edited, so checking each link in the chain is sometimes required. The bottom bar and the original lists the number of notes (likes, reblogs, and comments) the post has received, a button for sharing on other sites, the reblog button, and the like buttons (which appears red on posts you have liked). content post. Unless a user specifically removed quotations from previous users, each user’s additions are

marked with a line that encompasses the post as reblogged by that user. (Fig. 1)1

1 There is no way to link a post as it appears on the dashboard; each user’s dashboard is unique to their account. Any links provided will direct to the post as it appears on the source blog.

8 After a site-wide format update in September of 2015, these comments now are divided in small horizontal. extensions of the original post. Users are notified any time someone likes or reblogs their post, even if the post was one they had reblogged themselves.

Reblogs are the primary means of spreading content. However, more importantly to research, it represents a negotiation of discourse and language both by social networks and individual agency. As a post is reblogged, new communities, circles, connectors, and individuals are exposed to the content and its growing dialogue. In addition, as it spreads in multiple directions with multiple forms, it is possible for users to choose particular lines of discourse which they determine to be the most appealing, relevant, and substantial. Undesirable or redundant reblogged additions can be deleted or edited out, often shortening posts to be more appealing for closer inspection on their followers’ dashboards. This can be seen in older posts where multiple quotation lines end at the same point, but in newer posts this is only made explicit when posts in the middle of a reblog chain are different than they appear on the original user’s blog (tovesorceress89 in the above example).

The visibility of a post is not entirely demonstrated by its note count. When creating or reblogging a post, Tumblr users are given a small section to enter in hashtags and keywords relevant to the post. Like Twitter, users can then search for the relevant using a small search function at the top of their dashboard’s toolbar. However, tagging is entirely voluntary. Tags can also limit visibility, however. Some users regularly emphasize a browser application called Tumblr Savior, especially when confronted by users in asks regarding controversial content on their blogs (“Please help me”). This

9 application, when enabled, allows users to enter in the tags of posts they do not want to see and compresses the posts into small “blocked” notifications on the user’s Tumblr dashboard. Even more importantly, I observed a large number of the blogs I follow using the tags section as a sort of private, non-rebloggable comments section. These comments were regularly humorous and highly impractical as tags; it is hard to overestimate the likelihood of “WTF THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID” or “I want three” being searched for as post subjects or catching on as broadly applicable tags (“carudamon119”, 2015).

While Tumblr posts often are themed with particular interests and have a high degree of exposure within specific communities or interest groups, posts that evolve into reblog chains often escape specific communities and reach new circles and cliques within the

Tumblr structure. My account, for instance, was initially created as part of participant research within the brony subculture, a high-density community based around common interests in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Many of my connections followed many of my other connections, and almost all of them chiefly reblogged My Little Pony fandom material. Despite this, even when I was just starting, reblog chains encompassed a variety of topics including social justice, art and design, science, celebrities, other fandoms, language, humor, and literature. Reblog chains shifted and changed in topic and perspective, often clarifying or debating with previous voices or changing the post’s overall tone. While some users address particular groups or demographics of their followers, most users make posts knowing there is a chance that their content and its discussion will escape their control.

10 One post (“with all the force”, 2014) featured two animated gifs of actress Ming-Na

Wen displaying her skill at martial arts. The original poster, mysnarkasm, wrote, “When I grow up I want to be Ming-Na Wen”, suggesting that the post was aimed at an audience for fan admiration. The first reply suggested that it did, in fact, reach a user who was a fan of Ming-Na Wen. However, this user, housetohalf, instead emphasized her voice acting work saying “She’s the voice of Mulan, as if she wasn’t amazing enough.” The next two rebloggers on the chain broadened the scope of admiration with comments on her physical strength and an exclamation of shock at Ming-Na Wen’s age. The next, poster, however, changed the post’s tone. Teamfreekickass stated “Fun fact: When you break things with your hands like that you have t [sic] break your fingers on purpose before so that they heal stronger. So basically this woman is so badass she broke her hands just to do this.” While it added context for admiring Ming-Na Wen, this post emphasized the science behind the feat. However, this statement subsequently reached a user who took offense to teamfreekickass’ phrasing and subsequently clarified what he perceived to be misinformation. Fuckingconversations used his reblog to call out the previous reblogger by simultaneously praising Ming-Na Wen and displaying both knowledge of famous movie martial artists and the science behind their martial arts training. Subsequent reblogs on the chain made reference to parallels between Ming-Na

Wen and the character Mulan by quoting lyrics from the film of the same name.

By making these shifts, different circles were able to contribute information and appreciation from different circles. It is highly unlikely that all of these users follow each other or are in the same social circles, and there are also likely countless rebloggers who

11 did not add to the body of the thread. Draelogor did not reblog the thread from darkchocolateandtea, the last reblogger to add text. Instead, he reblogged from shezzablue who, in turn, reblogged from acornwitch. The trail backwards goes dead almost ten reblogs back with a user named aaronwarnerignitesme. The format of this user’s blog eliminates the direct link to the user he reblogged from, making it difficult to establish a direct lineage. Most of the blogs traceable on the chain were not themed blogs but personal, unthemed ones. It is more than likely that a substantial number of the

630,000 notes have little relation to each other beyond possibly the dialogue on this particular chain reblog. This community of strangers transferred a post that they noticed and were motivated to reblog for their own reasons from a simple post in admiration of an actress to the dashboard of a Tumblr account initially associating purely with brony- made blogs.

The Reblogging Public

It is clear, at this point, that Tumblr reblog chains by nature create a relation among strangers determined by preexisting dialogue. In addition, considering the system of likes which bolster the post’s notes, users who do not directly contribute to the chain still are part of the dialogue by their mere attention. A Tumblr public self-creates itself through the process of reblogging and sharing and sustains itself through the continued attention and cycling of the post. It is only in the post’s stagnation that this public ceases to exist

(See Warner, 2002). Tumblr allows users to have direct agency and control over language

12 in the medium. By making decisions over what to reblog, how much of the post to keep, and what to respond to, Tumblr negotiates itself in real-time. These publics negotiate specific reblog chains and therefore select for their personal linguistic conventions, creating multiple styles and subgenres within the overall Tumblr structure. There is a particular difficulty of tracing time on Tumblr, however, due to inconsistency in and occasionally complete lack of post dating. Users also may delete posts from their blogs at will or break links by changing their blog’s URL and title, often leaving a reblog chain without crucial links. This can be particularly relevant for sensitive, political, or social justice posts, as some users may not want posts that invoke anger, sadness, cynicism, or depression to upset future readers and discourage new blog readers from following.

The nature of Tumblr reblog chains’ allows for flexible addressees as well. Many posts vary in their form of address, although almost all Tumblr reblog chains take into account a broader, more amorphous audience or public. For instance, many times feelings will be stated without any intended recipient. “I laughed too hard at this” and “I think my dinner is possessed” in a thread with a video about a hum-screaming microwavable meal package are meant as general broadcasts, inviting others to emote and speculate (“O_O”).

Other posts use subject-less commands as if to instruct a specific person while allowing it universal applicability. “Imagine banging someone on that table” and “imagine being home alone and seeing imprints on that table”, and “noooooo stop” are all interpreted as appeals to the reader on a post regarding a thermochromatic table (“I wonder if”). Even though the “stop” and later “aaaah” are motivated by the discomfort from the previous posts interpreting the table into alien and uncomfortable contexts, the language actively

13 encourages other later rebloggers to take the feeling into account despite not necessarily encouraging them to actually stop. Posts sometimes even use general groupings or terms to respond to those already in the reblog chain and later readers. “You guys” and

“friends” both make appearances, as does groupings like “you humorless animals” in a more frustrated thread. Sometimes, reblog chains also use the singular “you” in contexts that are meant to be interpreted for the larger public. “YOU’RE MAKING IT WORSE

DAMMIT” in a black humor thread referencing two unalike fandoms is referring specifically to the previous poster, but just like the “stop” and “aaaah” from the table thread it is implied to have meaning for a subsequent reblogger.2

While there are exceptions, reblog chains tend to keep in mind an observing audience with something to gain. Language is particularly shaped both to the addressee and a more general reading public. There are repercussions when reblog chains become insular and betray the implied ethics of accounting for a participating public. In one instance, a

Pokémon blog, sylveon, posted content ranting on the design of a city in the video game franchise supposedly based on Paris. When another individual disagreed in a reblog, the content blog reblogged the disagreement and issued a rebuttal. Three full cycles of this occurred with only four other bloggers reblogging at any part of the heated discussion.

Each blog’s language was particular to the other reblogger. “It’s a game dude, don’t read into it that much”, “Erm, ok ‘dude’”, “I’ sorry you disagree with me, but to each his own”, and “this is YOUR personal blog post” all provide examples of this exchange’s singular-intended “you”. The debate resulted in multiple insular posts that were broadcast

2 Post no longer exists due to the deletion of the source blog “justasillyfilly” between Oct. 2014 and Feb. 2015.

14 on both blogs’ followers’ dashboards in short succession. The penalty for not allowing outside voices to be introduced was just as sudden. The very next day, sylveon wrote

“Jesus Christ people I get it, I’ll stop reblogging the Lumiose/Paris post. Calm the fuck down.” 3

By spamming and violating the open response of the reblog, sylveon angered their followers and received backlash. In Tumblr, this often results in readers unfollowing or submitting negative feedback using the ask system. However, there are exceptions for creative use of breaking this rule. One user, imaginefallout, reblogged his own post seven times in succession in order to make additional jokes in reference to a costume portraying a scythe wielding computer error message. By doing so, the staggered reblog quotations created a visual reference reminiscent of someone pausing and then adding extra punch lines in an effort to save a failed joke from a silent room. This visual reference was compounded by the fact he was the only voice within the reblog chain. His final message in the chain, however, both acknowledges the taboo he has crossed while advertising his risk-taking: “you better reblog this because those jokes lost me 3 followers”

(“imaginefallout”). As the post had over 66,000 notes when it initially appeared on my dashboard, it can be reasonably assumed his post was at least moderately successful in attracting approval from a public.

Tumblr’s structure and genre conventions limit and structure reblog chains, shaping and framing motives or illocutionary forces. As Tumblr users become more keenly aware of the conventions around and how they can be edited and played with, they become

3 Sylveon’s blog previously used a unique non-Tumblr URL, sylveon.org, to host their Tumblr blog. When this changed in early 2015, all links to their posts before the URL change were broken.

15 more visible through being chosen-for in reblog chains and circulated. However, some posts are meant to evoke action and thought beyond the further circulation of their words.

These are realms for actual social action and emotive play aided by the deliberate formation of and participation in these posts. In short, Tumblr reblogging is a form of co- performance, a process of assessing participant awareness of the contexts at play and assessing significance of the larger speech act. These co-performances not only are shaped by prior discourses and convention but are also an opportunity to shape future discourse within the public. These can range from simple references to particularly viral past posts to major recurring themes and from basic interpretation of emotive language and “reaction gifs” to ideological comprehensions of what language can and should do.

Knowing existing conventions are particularly important for interpreting humor posts, but many conventions are particular to certain types of posts. Failure to catch on to context can sometimes result in even experienced bloggers misinterpreting particular intentions. This results in a recontextulization of the discourse that can sometimes result in further humor or stress. In one post analyzing a clip from Captain America: The First

Avenger, thezhenger uses lowercase and unpunctuated text to jokingly chide the title character for what seems to be an expression of pleasure after an incredibly painful procedure. Subsequent replies, however, are punctuated and grammatical, evenly positing possibilities for why the character would reasonably be experiencing pleasure. The response from thezhenger at the reblog chain is one of astonishment:

16 oh my god are yall even is this literally happening right now i wrote that comment at like 1AM on a whim NOW THERES ACTUAL INTELLECTUAL OVER WHAT IS LITERALLY A VISUAL SEX GAG. WITH PROPER PUNCTUATION AND EVERYTHING IM PISS [sic] (“thezhenger”)4

This statement not only points out the markedness of using full punctuation and grammar in responding to what was intended to be a joke post but also illustrates the increased humor that occurs as a result. By continuing to use comedic text to emulate his increasing astonishment and joking frustration, thezhenger recontextualizes the post once more.

Context also provides a major theme for many Tumblr reblog chains, especially when based around reported speech from other sites. A particularly severe case recently came to a head when a seemingly racist tweet from @ColbertReport started a feud on Twitter.

When the tweet was taken in its contextless form and put on Tumblr, the resulting Tumblr reblog chain that reached my dashboard was one selected for adding context. Besides the fact that Stephen Colbert has built a persona around obliviousness and blind patriotism, the quotation was part of a satire piece where he was actually mocking racist dialogue from the Washington Redskins. In addition, Stephen Colbert had no control or ownership over the Twitter that had tweeted the out-of-context quote. Appropriately parodying the original poster who posted the tweet with the comment “daily reminder to stop supporting stephen colbert”, stvkln wrote “Daily reminder to start looking into things before jumping to conclusions” (“daily reminder”).

Many other reblog chains depend on the building of additional context especially in response to questions or challenges to social justice statements. In a post encouraging the

4 Original post source unavailable due to deletion of source blog. Alternate source provided in citation.

17 boycott of Lindt chocolates, users used outside sources and additional information to explain why their support of Autism Speaks was highly problematic (“Well shit”). A post featuring an animated captioned gif of Bill Nye speaking about gender dynamics in science professions quickly turned into an impassioned series of perspectives calling gender stereotypes and professional labels into question:

Gee, I wonder if that’s because when a woman is hired to be the primary cleaner and caretaker of a property, it gets called ‘housekeeping’ or ‘maidservice’ and pays less than the EXACT SAME JOB, which if done by a man is given the title ‘janitor’?” (“Oh my god”)

Calling out gendered language, moniquill contests the assumption that it is natural for specific genders to be cast in specific professional categories. There are even contestations that language is inherently sensible and natural, including English to natural

English speakers. These ideologies of context and linguistic critique are also important in revealing counterpublics at work on Tumblr, attempting to build a world through coperformance contrary to dominant ideologies.

Themes of post escalation and subversion of expectations run through many reblog chains. Escalation is primarily used in less serious topics such as artwork, humor, or fandom where absurdity doesn’t betray a topic attempting to be taken seriously. A post can begin sensibly but soon stretch to a logical extreme. One post advertising Homestuck- themed merchandise unironically posted an image of a hat with an image of a hat on it.

Amplified by the sense of irony the two associated Homestuck characters are known for, fans who reblogged soon made an image of a shirt with the hat-hat on it, an image of the character wearing the shirt with the hat-hat on it, and an image of a hat with the image of the character wearing the shirt with the hat-hat on it (“tavrosnitramversustheworld”).

18 While consistency is good for some topics and for keeping a reblog chain from drifting too far, subversion of the post’s theme or mood is more attractive. In addition to breaking a chain that contains too consistent responses and injecting humor, subversions can also result in new and multiple perspectives on the same core topic. While initially discussing the amusing sexual implications of the thermochromatic table, captain-snark’s reblog resulted in a sudden perspective change to that of supernatural horror or mystery (“I wonder if”). A discussion about the deep emotional content and realistic content of the film Lilo & Stitch received much attention after a reblog by rainbowrites added “it always makes me so happy that the most realistic Disney movie is one about adopting Elvis- impersonating aliens” (“rainbowrites”).

There are degrees to which this subversion can go wrong, however. Content alone may be absurd, but reblog chains are dependent upon all users understanding the implicit purpose and meaning of a reblog. When adding to a post, the addition must have some connection to the context and theme of the post. It is also highly impolite to advertise or otherwise hijack a reblog chain for self-promotion or advertisement. One reblog chain reached significant popularity precisely for its failure to function according to the site’s implicit structure. A sequence of images using a rubber horse head mask and Guy Fawkes mask was initially the site of playful banter between one reblogger and the original poster. Acting as if offended by the post, a second blog with the same name except

“6969” at the end responded “what the fuck did you say to me”. One user responded by asking “did you just add 6969 to your url”. Up until this point, the humor and chain of dialogue was consistent even if scattered. However, the next reblog in the chain by

19 quirkybrittany did not follow the pattern:

that’s the sex position xD i’m not even 18 and i know it :) It’s always a good time at quirkybrittany. Follow her for a peasant and hipster- free blogging experience ♒(★‿★)♒! [sic] (“jardsard”)

In addition to not following the previous reblogs’ humorous structure, she introduces multiple smilies – a convention generally used in chats and instant messengers – and advertises her blog with a template. Instead of smilies, it would have been more appropriate to find an animated gif that emulated an emotive reaction to use in her

Tumblr post. In addition, the asserting of her age with an age-inappropriate and non- relevant statement created an awkward pause to the mood of the post. The dry “thank you brittany” reblogged by nep-eta-leijon in response was later clarified by a second reblog from jardsard reading “this post is a certified Natural Disaster”. An ask published on brittany’s blog reads, “I find you incredibly annoying. yes it's only from your advertising that you post on things, but regardless anyone who uses peasants as a derogatory term is disrespectful” (“I find you”). By breaking the chain, quirkybrittany was subsequently reblogged in a defamatory way.

The implicitly taught and assumed writing and reading conventions of Tumblr illustrate a shared language ideology. The familiarity of strangers on Tumblr is made possible by this mutual understanding of how posting, reblogging, and language in general functions. Much of the Tumblr publics and counterpublics in my data share this aspect, allowing each of them to complete their more specific world-view as they see fit.

All these publics are united, though, under the structure that Tumblr provides and encourages. It is this perceived unity that encourages some users to claim that Tumblr is a

20 community to itself, encouraging events such as International Tumblr Day. Ironically,

International Tumblr Day was also an opportunity to show how not united Tumblr was as a whole, scheduled for March 3rd and March 5th at different points in time. The result is a number of diverse interest groups, fandoms, and ideologies mixing together, each believing that Tumblr’s structure and environment are ripe for their own poetic world- building and co-performance.

There is one final aspect of Tumblr that must be confronted: the capacity of users and other groups to control information. As mentioned before, many knowledgeable Tumblr users recognize that posts can easily move through a number of different circles and communities in unpredictable ways. However, while each user is a curator of posts on their dashboard and picks, edits, and reblogs the information they see fit, the control over their post stops there. From the moment a post is made, it becomes vulnerable to being recontextualized, edited, and commented upon by any other person. If a user their post, its visibility is increased and will reach even more people, and these people may curate the post as they see fit. If even one other person reblogs the post, the post’s creator no longer has any say in its usage. Even if they delete the source post, change their blog name, or delete their entire account, their content will remain in every reblogged iteration of that first post.

Tumblr users are not blind to this aspect of the site. One particularly amusing recognition of this system took the form of a comic (Fig. 2; “m-oshun”, 2014). Many artists use Tumblr as a way of quickly spreading their work and gaining recognition and

21 possible commissioners. However, they have no

way of fixing or removing art that does not fit their

standards as soon as one other blog gets their hands

upon it. Similarly, a fake PowerPoint presentation

post addressed people’s concerns regarding text

from the reblogger’s side of things (“nightmargin”).

“The text space is not sacred,” the post assures

users. Unlike Facebook, Vine, or YouTube, where

deleting the source post removes all subsequent

comments and dialogue, Tumblr posts do not need

to be screenshot and saved as an image in order to

preserve content. As one Tumblr post so perfectly

described, many other sites present a writer-curated

Fig. 2: A content creator feels space. Tumblr provides a reader-curated space (“I powerless once their work has left their control. believe so”, 2014).

This does not, however, mean there is no way of censoring or controlling content from outside of the user system. Tumblr is surprisingly tolerant of many types of content banned on other social media. Most famously, Tumblr allows many forms of pornographic and fetishistic content on its site. But there remains content which is disallowed and is actively censored or moderated. Videos of full My Little Pony:

Friendship is Magic episodes, for instance, were commonly shared among bronies on

Tumblr. However, copyright claims still would regularly reach the posts and make these

22 posts content-less. Non-copyrighted content also is vulnerable if Tumblr feels the content is against its community guidelines, and these guidelines are not always applied consistently. After its acquisition by Yahoo, Tumblr also severely reduced the visibility of adult and NSFW-tagged blogs across the site (Wolford, 2013). While some users feared the total removal of all adult content, the move effectively censored adult blogs by reducing them to gaining visibility only through direct follower connections and reblogs without removing the content altogether.

The most infamous content take-down in the circles I followed was the take-down of a large amount of content relating to Leelah Alcorn, a transgender girl who committed suicide and posted a suicide note on her Tumblr blog. Leelah’s mother did not accept her as being transgender and pressed to have the blog removed. Before the blog’s removal, users attempted to screenshot and save much of the blog’s content through queued reblogs and postings of the captured images. Tumblr, however, removed the images from their server, preventing reblogs from saving the content (“21stcenturytragedy”). Despite being a reader-curated space, Tumblr is not invulnerable to outside influence. If user reports, copyright pressure, or wide-spread popularization of a controversial post or blog put enough pressure, the site can and will exert its power over the system. Despite this, compared to many popular social media sites, Tumblr remains one of the most content- tolerant sites accessible, allowing a wide array of users to post, reblog, and comment upon on a large number of mature topics and content.

23 Protest on Tumblr

Tumblr’s reputation online has become increasingly tangled with people labeled as

“social justice warriors” or “SJWs”. While the title had been around for over twenty years with little negative connotation, its use as a pejorative term grew on Twitter and exploded to wide-spread popularity through the Gamergate controversy. In social justice warrior’s definitions on the popular KnowYourMeme and Urban Dictionary websites, Tumblr is listed as one of the supposedly favored websites for SJWs (Ohlheiser, 2015). Despite this, there is no agreed upon marker of what makes someone a SJW. It’s not to find a good number on blogs to fit any definition, though; whether it’s defined as a label used to stigmatize progressive blogs and people, a term warning people of hypocritical or popularity-seeking bloggers, or a label of quick-to-action and slow-to-fact-check social media users, Tumblr has at least a few high-profile examples to meet any definition thanks to its diverse publics. It isn’t hard to find a good number of blogs that label themselves as anti-SJW either.

I followed brony blogs, a leftover of my undergraduate research. None of the 114 blogs I followed labeled themselves as SJWs, rebels, protesters, or progressives. I didn’t know if anyone I followed was labeled with or self-identified with any particular racial identity, and in some cases I didn’t even know the gender identity of many of the Tumblr users I followed. For almost all of them, I knew them only as fans of the show My Little

Pony: Friendship is Magic who were older than the show’s intended demographic. Most self-identified as bronies. I had only met four of the bloggers in real life, including the

24 two who encouraged me to use the site for my research. While recent events posts would occasionally drift across my dashboard, I was far more used to the near-constant flood of fan art, jokes, and theories regarding My Little Pony and other television show fandoms.

So on August 11, 2014, despite knowing Tumblr’s reputation for hosting blogs and posts around social justice, I was still surprised to find my feed flooded with posts concerning

Michael Brown’s murder two days prior and the protests not even twelve hours old.

It is important to note that not all of the 114 blogs I followed reblogged material on

Ferguson or the protests. Blogs with an established theme did not tend to deviate in what they posted, and most of these blogs posted at a set or infrequent rate. Blogs that artists used to promote their own work, for instance, rarely posted anything not directly relevant to a new art piece, commissions, or their method. Instead, a group of twenty personal blogs or moderator blogs – also called “modblogs” for short –were the main sources of new topics on the dashboard. These modblogs act like Tumblr’s version of a Facebook wall, a place where people express their personal identity mainly through what type of content they share or reblog on it. Reblogging as one of these blogs was not simply a method of reader-curation but also a method of identity-curation or self-branding. Users who like a personal blog’s branding and collection of reblogged topics follow as a way of opening up their dashboard to a semi-random element, a curator of similar but not necessarily identical interests. There is an implicit request for more dedicated Tumblr users to follow blogs whose posts are consistently reblogged by modblogs they follow. A less powerful implicit request is for users to give some amount of attention to blogs who consistently reblog their posts. Careful curation of topics, then, becomes crucial to

25 maintaining your appeal to your current followers and flavoring your blog to appeal to new visitors and potential followers.

These implied social obligations may play an important role in forming Tumblr’s reputation for being a favorite site of SJWs. A common phrase on Tumblr with regards to issues of social justice and topics of passion is “if you don’t reblog this, you’re heartless”.

This phrase acts similarly to “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” and suggests that the lack of a particularly powerful topic on a modblog marks the blog with negative connotations. There is a powerful incentive, then, for modblogs to at least give some amount of attention to current matters of outrage and protest in order to not seem unappealing as curators to their current and potential followers. In the days following

Ferguson, all but two modblogs I followed reblogged at least one post regarding

Ferguson, racism, or violence committed by police. By 2015, however, only five of those blogs continued to reblog posts regarding these topics. These five blogs were froborr, a media critic whose blog specifically lists “social justice” as a theme he reblogs regularly, vigaishere, a modblog with little labeling beyond a real-life picture of the mod herself, appendingfic, an untitled blog for one of the bronies I knew as a part of the DC brony community, wilwheaton, the personal blog of actor Wil Wheaton and his progressive political views, diegohavoc, the modblog of a former brony artist, and bananafingers, a modblog heavily focused on reblogging fandom material and animal posts.

For these five blogs, the choice to reblog material related to Ferguson and its resulting movement went beyond the desire to avoid being called heartless by anonymous asks or jilted followers. These five reblogged these topics as a part of their larger strategy

26 of self-branding and establishing their blog’s identity. For those with no listed branding beyond their avatar and the posts on the blogs themselves, the choices to reblog protest- related material become all the more important to how they appear to new visitors. In addition, by being able to consistently reblog protest material, they identified other blogs who were similarly or even more protest-oriented than they were. In this way, the act of reblogging can be seen as a constant and long-term act of identity-making. Every single reblog imbues the reblogger, the source, the original poster, and the reblogger’s followers with new meaning. For Ferguson, these reblogs marked the modblogs as members of a larger protest community.

Initially, the type of posts that reached me were what I call “broadcasts”: posts made for the express purpose of spreading live information and media regarding Michael

Brown, Darren Wilson, Ferguson, and the growing unrest there. The posts were image- centric and often cooperative with other social media, using screenshots of Twitter posts or “tweets” from Ferguson protesters and witnesses, photographs, links to active livestreams, and imbedded Vines. Vines, six-second video clips shot through a free phone application, were particularly valued due to their ease of upload by on-the-street protesters, their immediate audio-visual impact on online networks, and their ease of integration into Tumblr posts for sharing. The screenshot tweets were taken as the primary text resource of the protests for similar reasons. Tumblr became a location were these text, visual, and audio-visual resources could be collected, packaged, and distributed. As a reader-curated space, it also became a location where new posting conventions regarding the new wave of protest could be negotiated in real-time.

27 Early broadcasts were in-the-moment accounts for quick reporting of an “uncensored” truth, various media being collected and compiled into posts and dispersed through the system. Many times, these posts were focused on revealing police action from the perspective of protesters.

The blending of tweets, images, links, and commentary varied in form at first while Tumblr users waited to see what the reader-curated network determined to be the most appropriate conventions. Some broadcasts were even borrowed text from mainstream news outlets without links or visuals of any kind, such as one post echoing the Associated Press’ release regarding the no-fly zone requested by Ferguson police (“AP: Ferguson police”, 2015). However, within a month, Tumblr protesters had settled into posts reblogging consolidated tweets and images with links to trusted news sites and resources.

Some “happening now” broadcasts revealed riot Fig. 3: "Happening now" broadcast with livestream link and legal helpline gear police among peaceful protesters, turned-off body cameras (“iwriteaboutfeminism”), protest arrests (Fig. 3; “theramblingsoftheurbanjawn”), and equipment for intercepting

28 cellular signals (“thinksquad”, 2014). Others focused on protecting other social media reporters, reporting on police activity and arrests of other users of Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, and livestream services recording the events (“justice4mikebrown”).

“Happening now” broadcasts were not made solely for the purpose of recording evidence or protecting protesters. They also were used as a way of demonstrating methods of protest and impressing on people the size of the movement. Multiple posts circulated reporting “die-ins”, where protesters lay on the ground in public areas and impede traffic (“land-of-propaganda”; “socialjusticekoolaid”, 2014), and more than a few posts celebrated the spread of the “hands up” gesture of solidarity from shop workers, government workers, and football players (“micdotcom: Congressional”, 2014; “krxs10: in case yall”, 2014). Particular members of the overall #BlackLivesMatter and Ferguson protests were highlighted for outstanding acts, such as Bree Newsome’s take-down of the confederate flag in South Carolina (“odinsblog”), and large displays of solidarity were proudly shown as affirmations of the cause. One post collected Twitter messages and images showing Ferguson supporters from around the world, reaching almost 200,000 notes in a few days (“revolutionarykoolaid: Solidarity”, 2014).5 Where the other broadcasts hosted mainly emotions of outrage, these were reblogged with positive comments encouraging participation and further acts of protest.

By the time I began formally collecting data, Ferguson had already took hold as the center of a national protest against racism and police abuse. “Happening now” posts were no longer sufficient. Tumblr began to be used as a method of revealing other similar incidents and broadcasting them to a wider public as evidence that their outrage was not

5 Original source URL from froborr no longer works. Alternate source provided in citation.

29 only justified but necessary. The source posts still used images and captures of other social media responses, but their commentary usually maintained mainstream conventions of grammar. A link to a news source was often provided as a way of backing up the information provided, linked either in the original post or added by a reblogger.

Cases from before Ferguson, such as the murder of Darrien Hunt, were newly contextualized by the protests at Ferguson and the dialogues on Tumblr (“nopenis4me”,

2014). The assault on Pearl Pearson was implicitly put in parallel with the police’s actions after the killing of Mike Brown, the original poster going so far as to dryly comment

“Naturally, it’s paid vacation time” with regards to the responsible cops’ suspension with pay (“laliberty”). Even a post regarding the arrest of Daniele Watts was used to rebuff critics of the protest. After user sunflowyr highlighted a quote from the involved police officer, lamardeuse responded with clear frustration, repeating the quote in bold text and adding “Has everybody got that? Does anyone still think any of this bullshit ‘has nothing to do with race’?” (“congenitaldisease”, 2014) Another post compiled a collage of news headlines and bold protest images concerning ten different cases of violence against

African-American individuals over the past four months as a way of rebuffing critics who believed the Mike Brown case to be an isolated incident, choosing to accent the collection with an angry italicized and bold message for emotive effect (“krxs10: for all the ignorant”, 2014).

While the main use of Tumblr was broadcasting relevant news and motivation for the cause, some posts aimed to have a more direct effect. Posts were made to assure protesters concerned with staying within legal boundaries of their rights, encouraging the

30 filming of police and explaining how to avoid legal traps used by police if arrested

(“Know Your Rights”, 2014). Another provided a simple infographic explaining how to make a homemade tear gas remedy after the tear gassing of protest crowds in Ferguson and New York City (“the-dude-sisco”, 2014). Two more widely circulated posts had options for all readers to help. Explaining that Ferguson was a food desert, user wintergrey posted a link to a donation page for a local food bank to offset the loss of school lunch for many children in low-income families (“wintergrey”, 2014). Even defying the usual pressure on posts to provide an eye-catching image or media clip, a plain text post with a link to a petition for federal criminal charges to be filed against

Darren Wilson gained over 100,000 notes (“phantomdoodler”, 2014). These options enabled Tumblr users to do more than simply reblog if they were motivated enough.

By the time these posts reached my dashboard, a large number of them had already breached 100,000 notes. Posts rarely breach a million notes, and a large proportion of those that do are humor posts of the subversion type I described in the section prior.

Therefore, posts that reach the tens and hundreds of thousands I have labeled as

“successful” in terms of spreading through the network. The posts reporting current events and prior examples of violence against the black community were largely successful in this way. As these broadcasts spread through Tumblr, a level of assumed knowledge was created. Posts were able to react with more common perspectives, responses, and information without having to directly link or showcase any single post or response. This assumed knowledge allowed for inter-post dialogue and preemptive responses, such as lamardeuse’s earlier comment reacting to the assertion that the

31 Ferguson incident and the other similar cases raised by the growing #BlackLivesMatter movement were not about race on a post about Daniele Watts.

However, this assumed knowledge was gathered from highly circulated posts, and not all highly circulated posts were properly fact-checked or supported with reliable information. Some posts following the formation of this context were dedicated to fixing misinformation in the larger Tumblr public. Tumblr user sirfrogsworth, for instance, compiled a large post highlighting various pieces of circulating knowledge that he described as being “not true or cannot be proven at [that] time”. One of the most interesting points on the post was “Tumblr staff never cleared the Ferguson tag” (“A few things”). This point addressed a rumor initially spread by posts questioning the sudden disappearance of a number of posts tagged for visibility in the search function on Tumblr.

In addition to emphasizing the use of systems other than reblogging, this rumor demonstrates the vulnerability of a search function not curated by readers with distinct strategy. Much like in the case of Leelah Alcorn, screenshots were taken of posts as a way of protecting against outside legal pressure, bias-motivated user reports, or Tumblr itself.

When some posts were no longer found in the search function under Ferguson, some users immediately assumed that their voices were being suppressed and posted these screenshots in an attempt to preserve the content (“n0t-so-mean-girls”). My dashboard also contained some theories that the staff had flagged Ferguson as NSFW content and thereby made it invisible to users not allowing that type of content, or that they were targeting specific high-profile blogs. However, sirfrogsworth’s post as well as a number like it were equally quick to circulate.

32 Misinformation did not always come from within the protest. As proven by the presence of both self-labeled SJW blogs and anti-SJW blogs, Tumblr was not a pure bastion for progressive and left-leaning blogs. One post featured a photoshopped image of a protest sign saying: “No mother should have to fear for her son’s life every time he robs a store” and declared it “Ferguson in a nutshell.” However, none of the blogs I followed had reblogged anti-Ferguson material prior to this. Due to the outward- spreading nature of reblog chains, the version of the post I found on my dashboard was one of skepticism and later the original image with the sign reading “No mother should have to fear for her son’s life every time he leaves home” (“hominishostilis”, 2014). The original poster, hominishostilis, labels himself on his blog as “debating mush-mouth feminists, 'progressives', and dimbulb social justice warriors” (“The Asshole Behind The

Blog”). Among anti-SJW blogs, this post likely had a few very different reblog chains. In another post, an anonymous asker confronted user lgbtpeopleagainstextremists by asking

“Did you hear that Anita Sarkeesian tried turning Ferguson into a feminist issue?” In the chain, a user named equalityiseverything provided what appeared to be a screenshot of a tweet by Sarkeesian. However, the full chain that reached my dashboard included evidence the image to be doctored (“Did you hear”). In this way, reader-curation was used by protesters as a way of correcting misinformation and managing their particular public’s pool of knowledge.

As shown above, Tumblr protesters were not using the network as simply a broadcasting network but a method of compiling information and correcting misinformation. My dashboard received some manufactured or false claims, but the

33 individual judgment and values of the blogs I followed rewarded posts with higher amounts of credibility and impact. The larger note numbers, while not directly correlated to public opinion, give a good sense that these choices were not unique to my dashboard.

Even ask posts, which are generally less circulated due to their tendency to usually be a direct exchange between two users rather than remaining open to a general public, were widely reblogged as examples of successful responses to common critiques. An anonymous ask chastising a protest blogger for their support of Tamir Rice resulted in a huge post of outraged responses to various points with a wide array of links to evidence

(“SERIOUSLY???????”). Another less confrontational ask from user crowesinthegaslight was responded to in a similar fashion, but it received far less circulation (“I want to open”).

These protest posts clearly demonstrate a deep familiarity with Tumblr and its basic structure. However, basic structure is only part of the discussion. In order to best appeal to Tumblr users, the protest posts knowingly engage with the broader conventions of subversion, gif usage, and a keen attention to language. In other words, Tumblr protesters not only show a recognition of the site’s inherent strengths and weaknesses but also its resulting culture and how best to package their material for circulation and wide-spread appeal. This site-specific knowledge and use of conventions assures Tumblr users newly exposed to the protest that the protesters, too, are part of the Tumblr community, normal

Tumblr users who found themselves outraged at recent events and the systematic oppression they saw in those same events. As diverse as the site’s publics may be, these

34 shared conventions help reinforce the idea that Tumblr is a community of strangers rather than simply a social media platform.

Animated gifs are particularly well received as the body of a Tumblr post for being eye-catching and not requiring audio. A particularly explicit gif of a cop using tear gas on passerby, for instance, drew a large amount of attention while providing a link to the source video for those wanting to see and hear more (“kropotkindersurprise”). Animated gifs of particularly expressive people, animals, or characters are also used as often exaggerated reactions to content when reblogging. In late 2014 and early 2015, a favorite subject of protest posts fit both categories: animated gifs of Jon Stewart. At least four different gif sets made rounds on my dashboard made from segments of Show on police violence and racism. Ranging from passion and fury to comedic disbelief and smugness as seen in a segment on the controversy around Andrew Hawkins’ “Justice for

Tamir Rice” shirt (“redrubied”), Jon Stewart found widespread popularity on Tumblr. One of the most popular posts erupted with hundreds of thousands of notes due to its particular usefulness in the Tumblr context of the time. Many users were beginning to complain about the large flood of Ferguson related content through the month of

November. The last gif from the show ends with Stewart saying “You’re tired of hearing about [race]? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it” (“karmaplus”, 2014). This was simply one variation of the response many had to people being “tired” of the protest, but Stewart’s expressions and visual appeal packaged the message in a more Tumblr- friendly form.

35 Another similarity that boosted Jon Stewart’s use on Tumblr was that both he and

Tumblr protesters openly dedicated themselves to combating bias in popular media. In one gif set, Stewart labels this work as “media counter-errorism” and openly fumes about the unfair burden of proof placed on protesters and the lack of accountability on established news networks (“sandandglass”). On Tumblr, this “counter-errorism” mostly took the form of pointing out inconsistencies and bias in police actions and news reports.

A post comparing the United States of America’ CNN homepage with the international

CNN homepage, for instance, revealed a key difference in word choice: the international headline read “Protests Erupt” while the national headline described the protests as

“Violence” (“redplebian”). Linking to Darren Wilson’s testimony, one user highlighted the phrase “like it was making him mad I was shooting at him” as evidence of the officer’s lack of emotion or empathy (“frantzlandom”, 2015). There was no shortage of posts highlighting the many negative labels such as “thug” or “ex-con” news outlets applied to black people (“titytwochainz”), and neither was there a shortage of posts highlighting white shooters who were called “sweethearts” (“niadidas”) or “a good kid”

(“prepstergrunge”, 2014). On a site like Tumblr, where language play occurs daily, these signs of bias were quickly picked up on and contested by the protest public.

With the exception of posts directly aimed at Darren Wilson and the events surrounding his non-indictment, the angriest reactions I saw on Tumblr came after the rise of #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter. Both campaigns were formed as reactions to the #BlackLivesMatter. The first tag was created with the claim that

#BlackLivesMatter deliberately ignored other races, including white victims. The second

36 hashtag refers to the blue police uniform, asserting that #BlackLivesMatter was a direct offense against police. In January of 2015, it appeared as though a horde of Tumblr protesters sought to prove that the Blue and All hashtag campaigns were not truly made to defend lives but to distract and depreciate the movement. Protesters circulated a news article about Zachary Hammond and the #AllLivesMatter movement’s silence regarding the police killing a white teenager (“huffingtonpost”). They pointed out the case of Cariol

Horne and challenged the #BlueLivesMatter movement to protect a cop working to fight police brutality (“unite4humanity”, 2015). Post after post of extreme frustration, all-caps shouting, and direct conflicts between the hashtag movements filled my dashboard.

Two posts in particular showed up multiple times on my dashboard with different reblog chains. However, the notes and responses were filled with comments from devastated Tumblr protesters. The case of police chief Louis Ross was presented as almost a precise polar opposite to the killing of Mike Brown. The news reported a “white survivalist” shot Ross four times when he was searching for someone who had called in a bomb threat and received no charges. One version of the post linked to a CNN article with more context, but the same reblogger pointed out the lack of support and donations given to Ross compared to the large outpouring of support for Darren Wilson (“youwish- youcould”, 2015). While this post received comments of disbelief, another more rage- inducing parallel was set up in another post between Eric Garner and Michael Zekry.

Michael Zekry was found with thousands of untaxed boxes and was peacefully arrested, while Eric Garner was choked to death. The post displayed an image of Zekry’s supply of cigarettes with a traditional meme text layout: a line describing the circumstances at the

37 top, and a line describing the outcome at the bottom. The first time I saw it, the only comment besides the original post’s copy-paste of the linked news article was “I want to fucking SCREAM” (“america-wakiewakie”). The other responses I saw were just as pained.

Posts like these helped the protest community build a precedent on Tumblr, and many more examples soon followed. Despite the pain the Michael Zekry post bore, the subversion of the usually humorous meme template also serves as another example of protesters adapting the Tumblr culture to suit their needs. Recognizing the wide popularity of humor posts across multiple Tumblr publics, protesters used it as a way to reach dashboards and blogs that would otherwise find the topic too “serious” or “mood- killing” to reblog. Political cartoons and sarcastic tones, for instance, combined humor with messages pointing out inconsistencies and abuses of power. One user photographed a printed political cartoon their teacher had hanging on the wall. Their caption, however, emphasized the realness of the subject matter with a stunned “...just wow...” (“the- dougster”). Another user used a simple text post and sarcastic tone as a humorous reaction to people objecting to open riots. In it, user ladyshinga said:

You’re right, we should totally ignore peoples’ valid rage and anger and their case for justice if they happen to be destroying property while they protest. Destroying things to make a point is wrong. Next we know they’ll be throwing a lot of tea into the ocean or something. (“ladyshinga”, 2014)

By drawing a parallel between the Boston Tea Party and civil rights riots, ladyshinga effectively pointed out a contradiction and defended the movement’s credibility. More importantly, by packaging it in a sarcastic tone signaled by the italicized “totally”, ladyshinga received a high amount of circulation despite her post having no media or

38 links of any kind. One response in the reblog chain I received, “You are a goddamn saint”, emphasizes the post’s success in at least one direction (“ladyshinga”, 2014).

This form of dark humor became a staple in Ferguson-related reblogs, including two posts that accrued over half-a-million notes. Both posts were gif sets of people with clearly definable emotions, adding to their Tumblr appeal. Additionally, both posts contained widely recognized people and media. The first post was a captioned gif set of comedian Chris Rock during an interview with HOT 97 (“lol”, 2014). The joke told, contrasting black men and endangered species, was aided in the gif set by Rock’s distinct gestures and mouth movements; in other words, the content was not held back by its medium to a degree capable of reducing its widespread appeal. The other post played out a scene from the television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The Fresh Prince is a show popularly used in online memes and already has a reputation on Tumblr in posts praising the show’s comedy, altering or remixing the show’s title sequence song, or debating the nature of particularly emotive scenes. Multiple versions of posts claiming and debunking the story of actor Will Smith breaking character in the show to vent about his reportedly neglectful father were particularly well-circulated (“tommy-riddle”, 2013). This particular post used a scene, originally aired in 1991, where one character refuses to relax around an armed cop due to fearing “six warning shots in [his] back” (“mvgl”, 2014). The humor of the scene is immediately subverted by the comments in the reblog chain, one user directly tying the post to the Black Lives Matter protests by saying “nearly 25 years later, still relevant”.

39 By intelligently combining a large number of publicly accepted conventions and being applicable to the wider message of the Black Lives Matter movement, both protest posts reached a wider audience than almost every protest broadcast I saw. However, what does an unsuccessful post look like? It is difficult to know for certain given that the nature of Tumblr naturally favors the presence of posts with high note counts. However, a

Tumblr user’s followers rarely remain stagnant, especially when exposed to a new topic and, as a result, new blogs. As networks grow, the likelihood of finding posts of a particular topic with lower note counts increases. One of the bloggers I followed that commonly reblogged Black Lives Matter content, appendingfic, expanded the number of people he followed in this way. As a result, some of the posts he reblogged contained barely a hundred notes and never managed to approach a thousand notes. The fact that these posts had some amount of visibility and yet did not manage to spread to the degree other protest posts did may have to do with their design.

Two of these less successful posts used no images, gifs, videos, or audio. Both used the main body to promote a link to a larger story, but only provided a short tag-line rather than a large selection of text. The post with less circulation, barely breaching 100 notes when I saw it, contained only one additional comment, and it was provided by the original poster: “This is an excellent thing. Very proud of Am Yisrael tonight” (“Jews

Protest Racism”). These two lines have no playful use of language and text styles, and the

Hebraic term “Am Yisrael” is only defined in context. Without taking into account a larger audience and the conventions at play, it does not meet many of the expected elements of a successful post. Similarly, a post linking to a column article calling for the

40 fixing of grand juries ignored those same conventions, failing attract additional comments in the reblog chain. It also suffered from the marked presence of the author’s name, repeated both in the link title and again in the first quotation (“If Eric Gartner’s killer”).

Name promotion was rarely present in protest posts, and the underwhelming response is reminiscent of the response to quirkybrittany’s self-advertisement. However, text and link posts are not the only type of unsuccessful content, and the popularity of the source blog may not be a factor either. Wil Wheaton posted a number of strips from a political comic called The Modern World. These comics, however, were compressed due to Tumblr’s size restrictions, and their text-heavy panels were difficult to read on the dashboard as a result

(“The Modern World”, 2014). The copy-and-paste panel style, additionally, did not make the image as visually appealing on the dashboard when compared to more expressive and dynamic images. The posts’ lack of success may be due to a failure to recognize the site’s limitations and the image’s lack of appeal.

Tumblr protesters are keenly aware of the limitations of their medium. The dashboard is an unconfined space where numerous other topics battle for attention from multiple different sources. Multiple protests often collide with each other for attention, sometimes resulting in direct conflicts. One protester responded to this in a widely reblogged text post, saying “This is not the Tragedy Olympics or the Oppression Olympics. You do not have to pick one team” (“ahubofhuntersandangels”, 2014).Additionally, significant time investment is required to not miss any post from all blogs you follow if you follow more than a scant few. For fear of being lost in the information overload, some users schedule content to be automatically posted or reblogged periodically over the course of weeks or

41 months in order to prevent the topic from being forgotten (“godtxt”). And Tumblr users are well aware of the potential power the site’s staff and managing companies have over the content stored there. One post displaying a survey at the Newseum in Washington,

DC showing that an overwhelming majority of visitors believed that Ferguson was not being handled fairly by the media was reblogged with the message “save this in case staff removes it” (“stunningpicture”). Whether or not the fear is unfounded is immaterial; the ability of users to identify and move to work against larger forms of power is crucial to forming coherent and comprehensive protest strategies.

The success of many Black Lives Matter posts on Tumblr comes from a keen understanding of the benefits and limitations of the site’s structure, conventions, and contexts. In addition, Tumblr provides a place for protesters to manage, collect, and curate other social media sites’ content in a form of cross-network interaction. These successes are visible in other protest publics on Tumblr as well. For instance, the general model for “happening now” broadcasts used by Black Lives Matter protesters was also used by similar groups. For example, one post by Brown Lives Matter protesters followed the model: it collected tweets and images relating to the murder of Antonio

Zambrano-Montes, accompanied it with the protest’s hashtag and a textual time-stamp to account for blogs with only vague “posted on” date ranges, and provided links to relevant media evidence (“revolutionarykoolaid: #BrownLivesMatter”, 2015). Tumblr is not the only social media network utilized for protest, but each site’s structure and community shapes its potential in different ways. .By understanding the system and the conventions

42 formed within it, protesters on Tumblr recognize the potential of the site for discussion and spreading the word.

There are those that believe blogs and similar online communication are ineffective for protest. However, protesters who have experience and knowledge of the online world disagree, and their strategies are evidence that these newer forms of communication, while similar to prior mediums, have potential advantages beyond simply shortening the distance between people. As they observe various new types of posts, sites, and forms of media, protest bloggers carefully form strategies to best broadcast their message and consolidate a common knowledge pool. One Twitter user, @GucciJoy, described this perspective of social media providing a needed alternative to mainstream news media in a string of tweets:

The sad truth is if it wasn’t for social media, Michael Brown would have died a thug, Eric Garner would have been died over cigarettes, Leelah Alcorn would have died a boy and 3 Muslim victims would have died over a parking spot – social media has enabled us to call bullshit On the media. But, I wonder how many previous victims died as a result of society’s taught hatred? and the sad thing is, we’ll never know because we were all convinced that their deaths was a result of something they did and not society. [sic] (“ablacknation”)

This string of tweets was posted on Tumblr, reaching almost 150,000 notes. To protesters on social media, this perspective is crucial to their continuing struggle and fuels their desire to push sites to their absolute potential.

43 SCHOLARLY CONTEXT

The Form of Internet Research

As noted by Gabriella Coleman in her 2010 review piece, existing scholarly work on the Internet and other forms of digital media, commonly grouped under the label of information and communication technologies or “ICTs”, often focuses on analyzing their promises of being more “democratic” structures (489). The idea that anyone can access the Internet and have their voice heard online is not uncommon, after all. However, this seemingly simple question of democratic potential is plagued by a number of fierce theoretical debates. Who really does have access to the Internet? Can anything truly be said online? Is it as free from external hegemonic forces as it suggests? All of these questions ultimately answer to a larger debate of structure and agency that has persisted in academia for decades. This project responds to a broader call for media studies to carefully analyze how particular forms of structure shape, constrain, and allow for agency

(Hesmondhalgh & Toynbee, 2008). Without understanding how individual action online is limited by larger forces, it is impossible to make any claims to the medium’s democratic nature.

Postmodern approaches to digital media must avoid essentializing the Internet’s usefulness. Despite claims to the contrary, there is substantial evidence that it has yet to live up to its promise of representing everyone and anyone. Both previously existing and new structures of power are at play in shaping Internet access and use (Coleman, 2010).

44 The very nature of communication is vulnerable to systems of hegemony, especially when placed in the context of media (Toynbee, 2008). Even the shape and format of online sites, their code, and infrastructure limit the possibilities of their usage (Bowker,

2007). However, this demand for an attention to structure is not a call for a purely structuralist approach. As Coleman concludes in her review:

This anthropological imperative posits that the devil is in the details. Although there might seem to be an analytical price to be paid by considering the minutiae of social life, resolutely following the details...does not imply a delinking from totalities or global processes. (p. 497)

Susan Cook, in her 2004 piece “New Technologies and Language Change”, similarly calls for “situated, empirically rich ethnography placed on a broad conceptual canvas” (p.

112). I do admit that part of the appeal of such a method may be rooted in a desire to see the, as Jason Toynbee puts it, “possibility of and need for radical social change” preserved (2008, p. 277). However, I believe this merely is the result of an increased preference for modern practice theory in general and Internet media studies.

Anthony Giddens’ structuration and Pierre Bourdieu’s practice theory, therefore, are both directly relevant to this approach to digital media. The development of Bourdieu’s practice theory is a perfect fit for the current call to action within media studies; it rejected the purely structural and sought to ground the purely subjective (Knauft, 2011).

Every individual, in Bourdieu’s theory, contains a history of dispositions and tendencies that shapes their future decisions. These dispositions are called the habitus, and the habitus is shaped and changed as the individual grows by their own actions and the structures around them. In other words, the actions of an individual are their own, but they are shaped and guided by the systems of power around them. Giddens similarly

45 observes that structures of power constrain human agency, but human agency is responsible for shaping the structures of power as well (1979). Now, practice theory represents an understanding of society as a vast system of hegemonic structures that constrain action at the same time as they are shaped by action (Ortner, 1984).

This give-and-take relationship between agency and structure in these models invites the possibility of studies that are grounded, as Coleman requests, in detailed analysis of social life. Here, in situated ethnography and studies of particular networks and actions, we can perceive individual choices as they act both wittingly and unwittingly with the larger structures around them. For instance, as Alison Hearn writes in “Variations on the

Branded Self”, the choice of particular users to label themselves with particular images or descriptors is an individual decision. However, this branding is shaped by an understanding of others’ uses of labels and images and, ultimately, is shaped by mainstream narratives and codes (Hearn, 2008). In Hearn’s particular area of study, she points out how users in social networks are limited by the structures of existing meaning and associations at play. But how users choose and distinguish between these provided meanings is left ambiguous, and we are left to wonder where radical social change could happen within this scenario. We are given a system, but we do not get to see, as Sherry

Ortner says, the “tactics and strategy” of the actors within it (1984, p. 145).

Ultimately, if we are to understand systems of contestation, we must analyze them from a perspective that allows them to have agency and the power to inspire change.

Without analyzing small-scale choices and use of ICTs by protest groups, we lose the opportunity to see where change can happen. At the same time, neglecting the structures

46 of hegemonic power that surround these movements and groups does media studies a disservice by leading to over-essentializations and an ignorance of the inherent complexities of radical social change and anti-hegemonic forces. This is why, in response to these different calls-to-action in media studies, I believe a modern practice theory inspired by Bourdieu and Giddens’ writings is required. Ethnographic work on the

Internet may be difficult due to issues of group visibility, tendencies toward over- generalization, and often hard to see changes in basic infrastructure. However, anthropology is well situated to find new and under-represented areas of web activism and life and put these new areas in conversation with the broader structures of power and influence online.

Public Sphere as Democracy

As stated before, many works on ICT use, especially the Internet, often focus on its promise of being a more “democratic” option. However, what is really meant by

“democratic” in this context? The most dominant answer seems to be comparing the

Internet to Jürgen Habermas’ concept of the “public sphere.” As described in his article

“ and the Public Sphere”, Andrew Ó Baoill writes:

In the context of Habermas's [sic] view of the restriction of the public sphere, it is interesting to note the growth of the Internet, and to consider the extent to which this provides a twenty-first century forum for the lifeworld corresponding to the eighteenth century coffee houses. (2000)

In an article on TamilNet.com, Mark Whitaker similarly claims that the internet “appears to satisfy to an amazing degree all three features of Habermas’ normative model” (2006,

47 p. 259). Essentially, Habermas’ public sphere is used as a stand-in many times for democracy. It represents a place of “communicative action” where effective, rational, and political discussion can take place. As long as anyone can access it, debate, and have their points considered regardless of rank, the public sphere exists as a realm in which this sort of “democractic” action can take place and move towards consensus or something that might be called “public opinion” (Ó Baoill, 2000; Habermas, 1992).

I would suggest that this perception of democracy as Habermas’ public sphere carries two potentially major flaws. The first flaw, I would argue, is that of “consensus”.

Consensus is a move towards a generally shared opinion or majority rule. The difficulty in considering such a majority position as “public opinion” in online discussion and action, especially that of protest, is that it necessarily eliminates a large number of dissenting voices. Determining the point of consensus, therefore, is determining a point of exclusion. Secondly, determining what is “rational” is also inherently exclusionary. As

Kari Karppinen writes in “Media and the Paradoxes of Pluralism”,

The deliberative emphasis on communicative reason leads inevitably to a support for the status quo of exclusions and inequalities becauase it fails to acknowledge the normalising tendencies involved in the designation of “rational” and “legitimate.” (2008, pp. 32-33)

As a result, Habermas’ normative model is hardly a perfect replacement for the full implications of its use as a replacement for “democracy” in media studies. As an example, there were more than a few posts on my dashboard defending and sometimes encouraging destructive protest or revolt, and there were also a good number of posts which contained highly charged language and labels. These posts rarely received more than a few thousand notes, and therefore fell outside of the majority or supposed

48 consensus. In addition, such content is often rebuked by the mass media as irrational and therefore unworthy of consideration. However, these voices have a definite role in the protest movement, and their potential exclusion from a broader, national public sphere is highly problematic.

However, Habermas’ public sphere should not be rejected outright. While consensus and rationality may be problematic terms, it still is highly relevant in its understanding as a realm where actors otherwise rejected by other communicative and media spheres may negotiate identity, ideas, and opinions they otherwise could not. This understanding of the public sphere is raised often in discussions of diaspora online. While diaspora may have, at first, implied a displacement with an idealized return, there are many modern diaspora which have rejected the idea of a return to a homeland and forced an understanding of diaspora not defined by spacial displacement alone (Gibb, 2006). Online, individuals can create communities not bound by distance or spacial boundaries. They are “displaced” and must create, as Bernal Victoria writes, “a social context for themselves that transcends their location” (2005, p. 661). The Internet, in other words, provides an environment – a new public sphere – for the co-creation of identity among a number of otherwise “out-of-place” individuals.

However, even this public sphere is not defined by consensus. As Bernal writes with regards to Eritreans on Dehai.org, “conflict emerges as a central dynamic and one that is not only destructive but also productive of identity, community, and the public sphere”

(2005, p.662). Instead, Bernal suggests that the public sphere can be expanded beyond

Habermas’ definition of rationality and discussion into an idea of a place where those

49 previously silenced by existing media and networks may have an outlet for their own personal identities and opinions. I would argue that Eritreans and the #BlackLivesMatter protesters have a lot in common. On Dehai.org, Eritreans presented themselves as needing the site to have a voice as opposed to silence (Bernal, 2005, p. 668). In the

#BlackLivesMatter posts, many times the hashtag and phrase #StayWoke was used as a way of encouraging people to be actively aware of continuing oppression and new instances of racially-marked violence as opposed to being “asleep” or ignoring the events around them.

Tumblr’s position as site for the public sphere is still worth questioning, however.

Bernal actively rejects the idea that the use of cyberspace for “broadcasting” is not equatable to a functioning public sphere. “A dynamic public sphere is not simply created through open access to information or even participation in deliberation,” she concludes.

“The opinions formed in the public sphere must be linked to government decision making” (2005, p. 672). I am cautious to fully accept this qualification, however, as it seems make the concept of the public sphere dependent upon a loose definition of success. It is clear that #BlackLivesMatter has achieved some amount of consideration.

From the “hands-up” gesture in the House of Representatives (“Comments about how”) or Bernie Sanders’ assertion in the October CNN Democratic debate of

#BlackLivesMatter over #AllLivesMatter, the protest has reached government discourse.

However, the issue is Tumblr’s specific role as a site in the protest’s success. There is no way of marking clear responsibility to one social network or another, especially when it is unlikely Tumblr will be credited given its volatile reputation. Even given Tumblr’s

50 currently not unimpressive position at #22 for site traffic among all sites in the United

States (“Tumblr.com”), any evaluation of its success as a public sphere is pure speculation.

What is clear, however, is that Tumblr’s role as a site for civic journalism has placed it in the position of potentially facilitating the generation of a more participatory public sphere. According to Lou Rutigliano in “Emergent Communication Networks as Civic

Journalism”, this public sphere is only possible when new “democratic structures” successfully “increase public access and counteract the concentration of ownership and the growth of media conglomerates” in a larger movement of “radical media activism”

(2007, p. 226). The #BlackLivesMatter protest’s utilization of the site as a method of contesting mass media depictions and offering an almost real-time counter-narrative clearly is proof that Tumblr actively pictures itself as part of this “radical media activism”. By extension, Tumblr presents itself as a public sphere that enables anyone to actively engage with dialogues and broadcast the information and media they see and deem worthy. With this said, I would argue the question of Tumblr’s success lies in its particular structural appropriateness and how truly accessible it is.

Questions of Access

The concentration of ownership in media conglomerates has long been accepted as a key problem in mass media today. The influence of market forces is not reliable enough to ensure most mass media remains accessible, and, as a result, alternate forms of media

51 and media practice have been created in an effort to increase accessibility (Hallin, 2008).

This may be part of the reason why ICTs are commonly touted as revolutionary approaches to democratic media. However, despite the claim that anyone can use the

Internet and have their voice heard, there are a number of very clear boundaries that still skew who truly has access. As a result, even Tumblr’s network is vulnerable to outside systems of power controlling access and availability. This, in turn, limits and skews what information can be placed on Tumblr. However, even beyond this question of raw access, there are barriers keeping people who do have access from being heard. Many of these barriers have deep historical roots, while others are purely due to the limitations of the site’s structure and culture themselves.

In 2007, only seventeen percent of the world’s population used the Internet (Baron,

2008). Despite this, the perception that the Internet spans the entire world is pervasive.

The truth is that poorer populations and marginalized groups sometimes do not have even the most basic possibility of Internet access. Even though the cost investment may be somewhat reduced when compared to the creation of other media networks, these reductions do not by themselves solve the problem of access. However, at the same time, it cannot be assumed that all poorer communities or marginalized groups have no access.

Many, in fact, have put particular emphasis on developing connections to these networks specifically in order to make their voices heard (Ginsburg, 2008). For instance, Alopi S.

Latukefu illustrated this complex relationship with the Internet and other ICTs with concern to Australian Aboriginal communities in “Remote Indigenous Communities in

Australia: Questions of Access, Information, and Self-Determination.” The Australian

52 Aboriginal nations are shaped by a history of oppression and knowledge destruction performed in the name of “assimilation”. As a result, their access to both technology and the knowledge base needed to make use of it has been limited. However, despite this, they seek to contest these basic facts. Latukefu goes one step further, asserting that

“Aspirations for ICT development are tied into ongoing struggles for self-determination”

(2006, p. 47). In essence, acquiring the infrastructure and skills necessary to use ICTs helps them regain control over their own identity and narrative.

This perception of the Internet as a method of self-determination for previously marginalized groups is not unfounded. Many groups across the world have utilized it as a safe space for counterpublics to flourish and assert a narrative both for groups themselves and for global witnessing. Both the Irish Republican Social Movement and the

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan are examples of this assertion of self-determination. Most especially, RAWA represents the Internet’s strengths. Despite the fact their organization is branded as illegal in their country and their funds are highly limited, RAWA is able to use the Internet as a vehicle to make their voices heard and have the world at large witness their protest (Dartnell, 2006). The fragmented nature of the

Internet makes censorship difficult and costly, while its multimedia capabilities allow for the access, editing, and transmission of many other types of existing media. By utilizing such a difficult to control medium, groups are free to discuss and debate previously unmentionable topics, contesting existing cultural assumptions and working towards shared goals (Kadende-Kaiser, 2006).

53 While access to and the difficult-to-control qualities of the Internet make it a prime choice, physical access is not the only hurdle. Even access to training and knowledge concerning ICT usage and computer hardware management are not enough. One of the most important obstacles preventing many potential marginalized voices from utilizing online media and communication is time. Technology obsoletes at a rapid rate, and so the skills and equipment used must be continually updated. In addition, a significant time investment must be made to manage, interpret, and utilize online media (Dartnell, 2006).

This is especially true for Tumblr, where the dashboard updates as fast as all of the blogs you follow combined. And, as stated before, following other blogs and engaging with their material at a regular rate is necessary to increase your own visibility as well as obtain the same contextual knowledge as your connections do. Beyond this, there is also social obstacles constructed by mainstream media. Even when marginalized groups access and successfully utilize technology, dominant forces can discredit and deflect attention away from their cause.

In the case of the Million Woman March in 1997, online activism resulted in a highly-successful real-world effect. Despite this, no TV stations broadcast the event despite plenty of warning and possible access to the information (Everett, 2009). More importantly, the media made no change in their depiction of black computer users, as

Anna Everett puts it, as “isolated anomalies and perplexed net novices” (2009, p. 151).

By doing so, the media not only discouraged future use by marginalized communities but also subsequently discredited those who had successfully and on multiple occasions utilized it for clearly visible protest actions. I would argue this is not dissimilar to the

54 spreaded reputation of Tumblr as a host for SJWs. SJWs, after all, are routinely discredited for being prone to hyperbole, exaggeration, and overreaction. As anyone promoting a social justice cause can be labeled as such given the label’s vague requirements, social justice on Tumblr often suffers beneath a veil of obscurity. Despite only being fourteen positions below Twitter and hundreds above Vine on the Alexa site traffic rankings in the United States, both have significantly more visibility among more mainstream media sources (“Top Sites in United States”).

As a result, those who have significant access to the Internet and online social networks are still primarily individuals with relative economic security and significant amounts of free time. Marginalized groups still face a number of hurdles in order to access the Internet, develop skill sets for its strategic use, and acquire visibility. Even when these requirements are met, there is no guarantee that their voices will be heard without significant momentum. Tumblr users require time to grow in followers, be highlighted in searches, and have their posts reblogged in positive and subsequently rebloggable ways. In addition, while relatively optimized as a site, specific blogs can be designed by users in ways which are slow to load or complicated to manage. A dashboard with a considerable number of animated gif files and other large sized file types may be difficult to load as well, especially when browsing multiple pages on the same screen.

While the Internet is still considerably more open to participation than previously existing networks, its ubiquity should not be assumed.

It is worth noting, however, that all of the above is merely about Internet use, the utilization of already existing massive structures, systems, and networks. Site usage is

55 only one small part of the Internet, and the creation of personal sites is similarly small- scale when compared to options available to the more affluent and technologically- trained. Just like how Tumblr users who know code or graphic design can create more visually appealing and customized sites or how Tumblr users with money can purchase design templates from the site itself that may better suit their blog, users with substantial experience, training, and resources can go beyond passive usage and create large online structures for themselves. Tyrone D. Taborn, CEO of Career Communications Group, was particularly on-point with one analogy:

Saying that the Digital Divide is closing because minorities have greater access to [the computer and the Internet] is like saying minorities have a stake in the automobile industry because they drive cars, or that they are Bill Gates because they own Microsoft Office 2000. The truth is that the Digital Gap is widening. (2001, p. 10)

Marginalized populations can still be marginalized online. Their historical contexts still severely shape the degree to which they can exert themselves and their voices online.

While money and internet speed may not be as limiting on Tumblr as they are on Second

Life or massively multiplayer online games, these inequalities still have an effect which must be recognized.

Digital Play on Social Sites

Tumblr was hardly the first social media site after the dot-com bust, with early sites like Ryze and SixDegrees being created in 2002 and 1997 respectively. It certainly isn’t the most active social site, as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pintrest all surpass it in

56 the Alexa ratings (“On the Web”). It isn’t even the first or most active free blog host-site, with Blogger launching in 1999 and Wordpress surpassing it in the global Alexa rankings.

As a result, much of its basic network mechanics share similarities to its predecessors.

For one, most networks begin with smaller, dense networks of similar interests. The creation of personal profiles or blogs are often made through comparisons with other existing profiles or blogs and a read of the current social contexts of the site. And, of course, the site’s administration and architecture limits what content and formatting may or may not be acceptable. In these senses, danah boyd’s study of is a study of general social behaviors in present-day digital networking. Successful users must show a great deal of social intelligence, then, to become and remain relevant.

Similarly, boyd’s observation of the formulaic nature of activity on Friendster is also somewhat relevant to an understanding of Tumblr. In a similar way to how profiles or blog formats and labels are used in a broader context of self-labeling and grouping, one’s actions on these sites are conspicuous, observed, and judged against a context of behavior and implied social rules. “One cannot simply ‘be’ online,” boyd writes. “One must make one’s presence visible through explicit and structured actions” (2007, pp. 145-146). In many ways, the reblog culture of Tumblr creates a similar set of requirements for inclusion in the social reality of the site. Every reblog or response invites a new level of interpretation, and even the presence of followers can pressure users to alter their actions accordingly (See Senft, 2008). Friendster’s “Fakesters”, non-biographical profiles made to act as different individual or anthropomorphized entity, share a similar match to

CanonMod blogs on Tumblr, blogs made with the intent to perform as if a specific

57 fictional character were running the blog (boyd, 2007). The concept of Friendster sluts should be familiar to users of social site today; the number of posts on Tumblr celebrating and comparing follower counts or note counts on posts is only another echo of the subscriber counts of YouTube, friend counts of Facebook, or any other advertise-able number made to represent popularity online.

One might believe that these similarities eliminate the need for additional studies of social networks and their realities. However, this is hardly the case. In her study, boyd identifies two clear points that prove the need for further ethnographic research. First, boyd points out that the particulars of Friendster’s model of relations and interactions was directly shaped by the architecture of the site itself. Second, boyd claims that users shaped this social reality further by their playful interactions with the structure and unique community dynamics (2007). These two points, together, form the same idea that inspired this very project: social networks design entirely new social structures through a combination of their specific design and the unique community formed by users and their already existing identity-groups and subcultures. Pre-existing structure and independent action jointly create entirely new environments and dynamics which enable different forms of interaction and use.

This social play is a signature of digital culture. In her analysis of digital cultural production, Mizuko Ito claims that “hypersocial exchange is about active, differentiated, and entrepreneurial consumer positions and a high degree of media and technical literacy” (2007, p. 97). This type of “hypersociality” may explain the extreme success of fandoms in the new digital age; it may be a perfect representation of digital play as well.

58 In addition to enabling the quick formation of new communities, the Internet gives users a wide array of tools to use in remixing media and create new meaning. The media and technical literacy Ito mentions is not limited to fandoms, of course. The same insubordination potential she sees in the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom and otaku subculture can also be wielded by other social groups, most especially protest communities in their contestation of mass media and journalism (Ito, 2007).

Just as there is play with media literacy, digital communities are also renowned for their linguistic play. The reactions to this linguistic play are pretty widely known, as well.

Whether a critique of texting and abbreviations and grammar-breaking tendencies or complaints regarding offensive or inappropriate speech in comments sections and blog posts, the idea that digital communication is leading to the death of language is nigh universal. While this play may be occurring at a faster rate and more publicly visible form, linguistic play of this kind is nothing new. Abbreviations, word play, the coining of new words and meanings appear commonly in poetry and old letters

(Baron, 2008). Additionally, language that might seem antagonistic or irrelevant may serve important functions within a particular context (Lange, 2009). This sort of play is hardly the death of language; if anything, this play is evidence of Bakhtin’s natural centrifugal forces at work, forcing continual redefinitions of meaning and new forms of speech (Morson and Emerson, 1990). I would argue that Tumblr’s playful use of language is evidence of a broader digital speech genre dependent on a contextual understanding of emotive grammar and onomatopoeic cues. Whether it is unique to Tumblr or not is a question for a broader study.

59 I posit that digital communication has resulted in a new assortment of speech genres rather than the speech death that many fear. As a result, there should be a particular emphasis on reading utterances in their full linguistic contexts, paying careful attention to cues that emerge from careful study of dialogue and exchange (Bakhtin, 1986). These speech genres are defined in particular by the structure of the sites and are in constant communication with other genres, constantly defined and redefined by online users and their texts (Doostdar, 2004). This becomes especially important to carefully consider in the case that these speech genres are purposefully selected for as an anti-authoritarian move. For instance, in an analysis of linguistic battles in the Persian blogging community,

Alireza Doostdar comments that the formation and choice of particular speech genres online could be “one dimension of a struggle for the creation of hegemonies and counterhegemonies” (2004, p. 660). In communities labeled by their contesting of a dominant policy or social trend, this could be an important and deliberate marker of dissent.

These forms of play are ways for users to feel out and shape social realities on and across sites. Figuring out the rules and contexts of a particular site is a crucial step prior to any assumptions regarding the site’s content or use. In addition, by identifying the types of play at work, we can clearly see a degree of social intelligence and self- awareness on the part of everyday users. New users on a site who are familiar with online social networks may even be able to read the site’s context and culture and make decisions regarding how they want to use the site and how they want to make themselves through carefully selected actions. Ultimately, though, the results of their actions are

60 dependent upon how others interpret them. Without careful management and responses, a user can quickly lose control over any media or work they have posted (Peretti, 2007).

Researchers who misread the contexts or ignore them entirely often leads to misunderstandings and essentializations that disguise the possible agency of users and the inherent complexities of Internet life.

A particularly good example of media studies research’s potential for failure lies in

Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture by Geert Lovink. Due in part to a failure to carefully situate his research, Lovink delivers a number of broad claims about blogging that often have no citation whatsoever. For one, he appears to ignore everything but political blogs, but at the same time he appears to ignore a wide range of non- conservative and activist blogs. Strangely, he also claims at a separate point that blogs act as a counter to mainstream media, actively working to “dismantle the mighty and seductive power of the media”, a claim I find hard to believe if the most powerful blogs he can find are all highly conservative. At another point, Lovink claims that blogs do not have any support or use from geek, academic, or activist communities (2008). As pointed out by reviewer Kevin Wallsten, this was not true even during the time of Lovink’s writing and certainly not true today (2008). These broad claims failed to engage the medium as a new speech genre or as a site for play, and as a result his book describes the act of blogging as inherently nihilistic and situated solely as a shallow and unsupported counter to mainstream media (2008). Without reading the network’s culture or putting the blogs he chose to focus upon into perspective, Lovink fails to recognize the particularities

61 of his blogging community and instead generalizes his findings to the entirety of Internet blogs.

Activist Blogging

Lovink may have overgeneralized it, but he did have a point when recognizing blogs’ potential for contesting other forms of media. Especially on Tumblr, where posts are encouraged to have non-textual content, bloggers often have the tools and media literacy required to not only remix media but respond to and critique it. In addition to the general affordances and accessibility of the Internet at large, blogs present a context of media use and quick, individualistic posting that allows for activist users to both present a compelling case and be appealing as an alternative to standard mass media journalism. I would argue that activists’ use of blogs is not simply a change in the scale of activism but also a shift in the type and shape of the listening public. Tumblr, in particular, shapes its public in a way difficult to imagine in the physical realm alone: because it is reader- curated, activist posts on it gain a sense of “public opinion” that further increases their authority without compromising the clearly situated nature of the original post. In addition, the multiple different threads possible allow for a number of different dialogues and discussions to occur among widely different publics.

In their book, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age,

Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport take great care in distinguishing the two arguments regarding activism online. On one hand, they present it as simply an upscaled version of

62 the same activism that occurs offline. On the other, ICTs change the shape activism takes in significant ways. They theorized that the difference occurs due to two reasons. First, scholars may define activism in different ways, and some scholars may actually understand activism to be only realized in offline actions (2011). I, personally, believe activism can take place online and freely recognize that bias. However, I find this to be more a matter of definition or opinion and difficult to argue academically. Therefore, I shall focus more intently on their second point: an ICT does not, by itself, lead to a specific type of change. Instead, they assert it is how individuals and groups utilize the potential of the Internet and its more unique elements that determines what form their activism will take. They call this form of decision-making and strategizing “E-tactics”

(2011).

E-tactics, according to Earl and Kimport, are shaped by each activist’s own skill set, innovative ability, and historical context (2011). In short, the e-tactics available to any one activist are limited by habitus. Early online protest likely took a familiar form and resulted in similar results as offline protest due to early users’ ideas of what protest entailed: offline action, marches, and appeals to the public at-large. However, the Internet and newer ICTs have a wide variety of possible uses that are mostly limited by their users’ creativity and resources. As a result, the possibility for completely new forms of e- tactics and activism is present, and academics engaging in media studies must be prepared to see both familiar e-tactics and novel e-tactics (Earl & Kimport, 2011).

Blogging, at least initially, was a slow and almost intimate process. To fully grasp any one particular blog, readers had to engage with the blog over time and become aware

63 of its larger story. Blogs tend to create a personal relationship rather than organizational credibility, and blog communities were formed through links to other blogs and context- dependent responses rather than consolidated sites (Rettberg, 2008). Tumblr became a new form of blog host site by allowing a centralized, consolidated dashboard while maintaining the loose organization and providing personal blog URLs. It also amplified posts’ abilities to easily spread through its network of blogs with the reblogging system in various replicated forms. It also increased the searchability of posts after implementing the search function and a dedicated section that stores a user’s liked posts. These advantages, combined with the already existing speed of broadcast, makes Tumblr even more well-suited for civic journalism than prior blog sites. In addition, these improvements further increase Tumblr’s structural advantages over offline activism, and users often are well aware of these features and how to utilize them (Rettberg, 2008).

The general preference of blogs, especially Tumblr blogs, to present a personal relationship is a key factor in contestatimg mainstream media. Despite many blogs’ obvious biases, many users see blogs as more credible and honest than the mainstream media due to their transparency (Rettberg, 2008). Other users see blogs as watchdogs or alternatives to voices of authority and hegemony in the government and mass media

(Kaye, 2007). Essentially, blogs present themselves as naturally credible despite not being recognized as having oversight or institutional expertise. The frequent lack of attention given to personal blogs by the mainstream media may a clear tactic to discredit the threat they pose as a new source of journalistic authority or a dismissal of their existence as irrational (Anderson, 2008). Many even try to avoid including counterpublic

64 blogs under the label of “online journalism”, excluding the personal and transparently biased while promoting blogs meeting more mainstream definitions of journalism (Boyer,

2010).

In Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, David

Weinberger brings up a particularly pertinent example of this conflict:

In February 2005, Michael Gorman, the president of the American Library Association, lambasted weblogs in the association’s flagship magazine, Library Journal. “A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web... Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.” (2007, p. 131)

In addition to failing to recognize blogs as a unique speech act, Michael Gorman dismisses blogs as a credible source on the grounds of a perceived lack of education, linguistic mastery, and informational curation. This attack situates itself as hegemonic, especially when considering Gorman’s self-identification as “old fashioned” in his belief in the publishing process (Weinberger, 2007). Ironically, this may just give more credibility to the blogs in the eyes of their readers. Gorman confirmed that some critics of blogs are those with the easiest access to existing forms of media, clear proof of a need for a more democratic media. Coincidentally, the existence of such a large collective of clearly biased blogs interacting with each other, especially on a site as integrated as

Tumblr, creates a diversity of voices capable of contesting mainstream media from almost every imaginable angle. Weinberger claims that this huge conversation effectively negotiates the biases into an overall neutral point of view while maintaining the

65 individualistic authenticity. In essence, the vast network and dialogue of blogs creates a new “mode of knowing we’ve never had before” (2007, p. 146).

As a result, Tumblr may currently provide one of the largest collective responses to mass media. As a new “mode of knowing”, Tumblr blogs allow for a range of clearly situated viewpoints that, taken together and processed by a wider public, obtain a sense of authority and authenticity. In addition, its spread even to blogs and users not primarily labeled as social justice or activist may expose movements like #BlackLivesMatter to individuals and groups that may not have been previously receptive or included in offline activist publics. Tumblr represents an increasing level of structural creativity and a userbase capable of adapting and creating new e-tactics to skillfully and deliberately promote voices and narratives previously marginalized to obscurity. Over time, as

Michael Dartnel writes, “attiudes toward the ‘truth-values of the Web will change as societies and individuals are more fully able to access its impacts and limits” (2006, p.

97). Until then, sites like Tumblr will provide a haven for counterpublics looking for alternatives to mainstream voices and ideologies.

Exclusions in Blogging Culture

Up to this point, we have seen how Tumblr presents a new form of information spread and participates in a larger context of counter-media, new speech genres, and deliberate tactics. However, Tumblr is not the final, complete answer to democratic engagement or the public sphere. In addition to a vulnerability to systems of copyright

66 and administrative action, Tumblr remains vulnerable to the same tendencies most social networks have. Most importantly, Tumblr seems to obey the power law, a term in network theory used to describe how networks often tend towards uneven distributions of power.

Tumblr users with a significant number of followers tend to have their posts receive a larger amount of exposure. With a larger amount of exposure, blogs have more users follow them. While a “trickle-down effect” may occur when larger blogs point out smaller blogs they see value in, as a whole, the potential for visibility is drastically skewed. In addition, smaller blogs wanting more attention often will try to gain visibility on larger blogs. This preferential attachment results in even greater concentrations of visibility and communicative power (Rutigliano, 2007). So while the potential for visibility and even mass visibility exists, only a small number of blogs will achieve it, and often this will only occur for a tiny number of successful posts on those blogs.

In addition, Tumblr as a whole has clear preferences regarding the types of posts that succeed. Individual users also have strong opinions regarding posts. As a result, some opinions and posts may be actively penalized or passed over for reblogging by crucial links in Tumblr’s social network. Patricia G. Lange does an excellent job of describing how some social environments online may make debate difficult in her study of a Free and Open Source Software community called Learning World. In her article, Lange describes how strong opinions over operating systems were framed in notions of good and evil. While Lange does not believe the exchanges were necessarily hostile but contextually situated, she does firmly conclude that these interactions complicated attempts to propose dissenting opinions and actively interfered with some users’ ability to

67 converse (2009). It is difficult to notice where similar lines may or may not be drawn within Tumblr and its many different communities given the structure of the dashboard, but the potential for this type of exclusion should not be dismissed lightly.

Finally, the very nature of Tumblr’s activism should be recognized as dominantly fitting a Western notion of protest. The distinct preference for nonviolent protest and publicly broadcast displays to incite moral outrage may be problematic for marginalized groups and activist projects that do not want to conform to such standards (Landzelius,

2006). As a result, groups with alternative perspectives on protest may not be able to utilize Tumblr’s network to gain visibility or progress towards their goals. This conflict of interests is particularly apparent with groups that see violence and revolt as viable options to encourage or actively engage in, as Western perspectives often dismiss any political or social messages of such actions and instead condemn such activities as psychological issues or confirmations of harmful stereotypes (Dartnell, 2006). Not only would said groups find it difficult to engage in meaningful discussion, but having their narrative circulate in the particular reader-curated environment that is Tumblr may be nigh impossible.

68 SECTION FOUR: CONCLUSION

Regardless of whether or not the #BlackLivesMatter movement is perceived as successful, its protest was clearly heard. It actively used a variety of sites to promote the cause, keep people informed, provide opportunities to actively engage, and counter dominant narratives that would marginalize and work against the cause of racial equality.

But its participants did not use these networks recklessly. Instead, many protesters made themselves heard by keenly recognizing the inherent strengths and weaknesses of their selected sites and adapting their e-tactics to suit their networks. These deliberate choices constitute a larger awareness of structures of power while exerting personal and group agency. Tumblr, in particular, seems to provide unique opportunities for social network savvy activists. Without any prior action needed, the dashboards of many Tumblr users filled with material regarding Ferguson and systemic violence. Even on a dashboard previously dedicated to a fandom for a children’s television show, #BlackLivesMatter found a way.

By particularly analyzing Tumblr’s structure, I hoped to reveal how it and other larger forces shaped the options available to protesters on the site. When placed in conversation with a larger literature of activism and the Internet, I believe this project demonstrates how crucial it is to carefully understand the particulars of a site’s infrastructure. In addition, academics engaging in media studies should consider small scale ethnographic study as a way of analyzing how individual tactics are shaped by and around these larger structures of power. Without carefully examining the contexts and

69 details of these choices, it can be easy to erase key voices and only reinforce the marginalization of some groups. While the Internet has a long way to go before becoming any sort of idealized public sphere, academics should not play a role in erasing what diversity is currently there.

Studying Tumblr, due to its high speed, volatile links, and often vague timestamps, is extremely difficult. Future research on Tumblr should account for a large degree of selection bias as well as complications regarding research of any particular post, reblog chain, or blog over time. A significant amount of time and resources will be necessary to maintain any lengthy data collection period or extensive mapping of a post with a large note count. However, there is plenty of room for research regarding low-follower blogs, unsuccessful posts, isolated communities, and specific forms of engagement such as humor, linguistic play, or emotive speech. Merely compiling a different dashboard may result in wildly varying results, so all studies regarding the site should be careful not to over-extend. A more code-oriented look at Tumblr may also yield promising results in investigating the most basic level of site architecture and how it limits and enables users.

I am forced to agree with Cook, Coleman, Hesmondhalgh, and Toynbee: future research in digital media and communication will require new methods and considerations. If we are to understand ICTs and their potential for social change, we must situate ourselves within new and particular online realms, investigate the social realities of these communities, and then place them into larger contexts of structure and hegemony. By dedicating ourselves to the details and individual tactics and decision- making of casual users and protesters, SJWs and anti-SJWs, lurkers and content-creators,

70 and every type of user we can find a way to study, we can reveal the larger potential of online action and better understand the ever-expanding digital world.

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81 appendingfic. SERIOUSLY??????? Tamir Rice had a gun [Tumblr blog 34 post]. Last retrieved November 24. 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/104194217789/seriously-tamir- rice-had-a-gun-a-gun-with diegohavoc. I want to open with a clarifying statement... [Tumblr blog 34 post]. Last retrieved November 24, 2015 from http://diegohavoc.tumblr.com/post/103025399768/i-want-to-open- with-a-clarifying-statement-i-am diegohavoc. kropotkindersurprise: January 15 2015 [Tumblr blog post]. 35 Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://diegohavoc.tumblr.com/post/109574811068/ kropotkindersurprise-january-15-2015-peaceful appendingfic. redrubied: Indeed [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved 35 November 24, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/107032579184/redrubied- indeed wilwheaton. (2014, November 27). karmaplus: “You’re tired of hearing 35 about it?” [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 24, 2015 from http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/103751108173/karmaplus- youre-tired-of-hearing-about-it appendingfic. sandandglass: TDS December 8, 2014 [Tumblr blog post]. 36 Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/104749385349/sandandglass- tds- december-8-2014-jon-stewart diegohavoc. redplebian: CNN US vs CNN International [Tumblr blog 36 post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://diegohavoc.tumblr.com/post/103639354169/redplebeian-cnn- us-vs-cnn-international diegohavoc. frantzfandom: “like it was making him mad I was shooting 36 at him” [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://diegohavoc.tumblr.com/post/103558620698/be-blackstar- daniellemertina-frantzfandom appendingfic. titytwochainz: smh [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved 36 November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/106226299944/havocados- ibadbitch

82 appendingfic. niadidas: … Example number 4739208679... [Tumblr 36 blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/108340684449/ stopwhitepeopleforever-dekutree-niadidas vigaishere. (2014, October 26). prepstergrunge: this guy killed people’s 36 children... [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://vigaishere.tumblr.com/post/101002579502/ prepstergrunge-this-guy-killed-peoples appendingfic. huffingtonpost: A Cop Killed A White Teen... [Tumblr 37 blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/126195823499/huffingtonpost- a-cop-killed-a-white-teen-and-the froborr. (2015, January 13). unite4humanity: Why “good cops” don’t 37 tell on “bad cops” [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://froborr.tumblr.com/post/108021943096/trixstra- unite4humanity-why-good-cops vigaishere. (2015, January 20). youwish-youcould: #WAKETFUP 37 [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://vigaishere.tumblr.com/post/108704984472/tinyhousedarling- thatdudeemu appendingfic. america-wakiewakie: NYC man busted with 500,000 38 untaxed cigarettes in his van [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/105343815754/smidgetz- america-wakiewakie-nyc-man-busted diegohavoc. the-dougster: My teacher had this hanging on her wall 38 today... [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://diegohavoc.tumblr.com/post/103742898622/the- dougster-my-teacher-had-this-hanging-on-her froborr. (2014, November 25). ladyshinga: You’re right, we should 38 totally ignore people’s valid rage... [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://froborr.tumblr.com/post/103605990696/sassy-gay-justice- ladyshinga-youre-right

83 bananafingers. (2014, December 9). lol [Tumblr blog post]. Last 39 retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://bananafingers.tumblr.com/post/104793376372/lol bullshit-Internet-facts. (2013, June 4). tommy-riddle: That awful 39 moment when you learn that this wasn’t scripted [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://bullshit- Internet-facts.tumblr.com/post/52146079553/tommy-riddle-that- awful-moment-when-you-learn froborr. (2014, November 25). mvgl: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air 2x09 39 [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://froborr.tumblr.com/post/103562347691/johnskylar-drifting- ona-memory-mvgl-the appendingfic. Jews Protest Racism and Police Brutality on the First 40 Night of Hanukkah [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/105486057159/ jews-protest-racism-and-police-brutality-on-first appendingfic. If Eric Gartner’s killer can’t be indicted, what cop 41 possibly could? [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/104701855039/if- eric-garners- killer-cant-be-indicted-what wilwheaton. (2014, December 1). The Modern World (via Cartoon: 41 Black and white) [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/104092967169/via- cartoon-black-and-white froborr. (2014, December 19). ahubofhuntersandangels: Be outraged 41 over Michael Brown [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://froborr.tumblr.com/post/105593399781/ ahubofhuntersandangels-be-outraged appendingfic. godtxt: please do not let ferguson die out like everything 42 else big does [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved on November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/104014025014/ extendedburning-godtxt-please-do-not-let appendingfic. stunningpicture: Saw this in the Newseum in DC [Tumblr 42 blog post]. Last retrieved on November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/104008503674/ eternalstruggleofrhubarbpie-stunningpicture

84 appendingfic. revolutionarykoolaid: #BrownLivesMatter (2/12/15) 42 [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved on November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/110924075929/ revolutionarykoolaid-brownlivesmatter-21215 appendingfic. ablacknation: think about it [Tumblr blog post]. Last 43 retrieved November 25, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/111100196554/ablacknation- yo-think-about-it-doesnt-it-make appendingfic. Comments about how House members are unnecessarily 50 “politicizing” the event... [Tumblr blog post]. Last retrieved December 6, 2015 from http://appendingfic.tumblr.com/post/104191375654/dynastylnoire- nydailynews-the-hands-up

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