A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures
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| Academic Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | a tumblr book: platform and cultures |
| Commentator: | Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein and Indira Neill Hoch |
| Date(s): | October 2020 |
| Medium: | book |
| Fandom: | media fandom |
| External Links: | at fulcrum.org at press.umich |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures (styled as a tumblr book: platform and cultures) is a 2020 academic anthology exploring various aspects of Tumblr culture, including a series of chapters on media fandom.
A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr
Chapter 16 provides a transcription of a 2017 roundtable discussion about Tumblr fandom, featuring participants Flourish Klink, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, and Lori Morimoto. Allison McCracken facilitated the discussion.
Topics Discussed
- Tumblr demographics: Younger, dominated by "female and/or nonbinary" fans (contrast male-dominated Reddit).
- Livejournal had closed communities with a hierarchical structure; does Tumblr, by contrast, have "contact zones" of cross-cultural mingling.
- Reblog features as facilitating greater visibility of critiques of popular media, especially anti-racist critiques.
- "Dehumanizing" and dismissive fannish responses to critics of racism in media and fandom.
- Tumblr's visual focus-- friendly to budding fan practices like racebending.
- Meta about harassment in fandom (by both fans and acafans) as insufficiently concerned with racist harassment and likely to blame fans of color for "starting drama" .
- Increased visibility of trans and genderqueer fans on Tumblr, leading to changes of language perceived as cissexist ("genderswap" to "genderbend").
- "Identity signposts" in Tumblr bios-- as a form of signaling to ideological allies and foes, as providing context to strangers' posts.
Kitten Thinks of Nothing but Murder All Day: Tumblr Text Post Memes as Fandom Détournement
J. S. A. Lowe analyzes a genre of Tumblr meme which pairs existing text posts with pictures of characters, analyzing them as a subversive form of commentary on and communal reinterpretation of canon. The chapter takes its title from a meme featuring Bucky Barnes.[citation needed]