TUMBLING AND TROLLINGAnastasia Salter

Assistant Professor, Digital MediaUniversity of Central Florida

Twitter: @anasalterImage from Alice in tumblr-land,

Tim Manley (Penguin 2013)

SOCIALLY MEDIATED PUBLICNESS

As people communicate publicly through social media, they become more aware of themselves relative to visible and imagined audiences and more aware of the larger publics to which they belong and which they seek to create. They negotiate collapsed contexts, continuously shifting power dynamics, and an open-ended time frame. Through discussing the personal, mundane, and everyday, people negotiate a sense of public place and help new publics—both wanted and unwanted—to coalesce. Socially-mediated publicness may be a source of support and empowerment while simultaneously posing conflict and risk.Baym, Nancy K., and Danah Boyd. "Socially mediated publicness: an introduction." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56.3 (2012): 320-329.

THE PUBLIC DIARY?

Tensions exist between (1) notions of diaries as personal and private vs. the recognition of online

journals as public and performative; (2) the efficiency of blending one’s social contacts into one audience vs. the

ability to provide different self–presentations to different groups; (3) the desire for personal control of discourse vs. the desire for connection to

others; and (4) values of individualism and autonomy vs. the desire for feedback and

attention.

Kendall, Lori. "Shout into the wind, and it shouts back: Identity and interactional tensions on LiveJournal." First Monday 12.9 (2007).

IS TUMBLR OUR CURRENT “BEST” MODEL FOR A NETWORKED PUBLIC /

COUNTERPUBLIC?

(maybe)

“

”

 I’M TIRED OF EDUCATING STRANGERS ON BASIC FEMINISM 101 POINTS THAT THEY COULD HAVE LEARNED WITHIN (A) THEIR FIRST WEEK OF AN INTRO TO WOMEN’S

STUDIES CLASS, OR (B) THEIR FIRST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS ON TUMBLR. 

http://globalcomment.com/goodbye-to-all-that-im-done-with-election-2016/

Sady Doyle

(maybe not?)

IN A WORLD OF TROLLING:

ARE THESE THE FOUNDATIONS OF A FEMINIST SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM?

RENNINGER: TUMBLR AFFORDANCES AS COUNTERPUBLIC

• Commentary is trackable but deemphasized• Trolling is de-incentivized• The original poster of an object is easily discovered• Near equivalent emphasis of posts from new and advanced users• Private and/or anonymous interaction with other users is available• Consolidation of (counter)public discussion

Renninger, Bryce J. "“Where I can be myself… where I can speak my mind”: Networked counterpublics in a polymedia environment." new media & society17.9 (2015): 1513-1529.

KANAI: WHATSHOULDWECALLME

…this participation requires sophisticated mobilizations of social knowledges which construct forms of sociality which are not equally open to all digital users. The classificatory imagination of digital culture combined with assumptions relating to the useability of the social is visibly operationalized in these shared spaces of meaning. Post-racial, postfeminist narratives of how identity operates in the world are not simply “out there” for youth to make meaning of their lived experience, but now in a visual format, form part of the literacy required to take part, and feel central in these cultural spaces.

Kanai, Akane. "Sociality and Classification: Reading Gender, Race, and Class in a Humorous Meme." Social Media+ Society 2.4 (2016): 2056305116672884.

TRICKSTERS AND TROLLS

Like trickster, trolls are woven into the very fabric they seek to unravel; like trickster, trolls have a great deal to teach...specifically, they unearth the biases, hypocrisies, and deep inconsistencies that compose mainstream culture--and in the process, handily blur the boundary between where the troll mess ends and the mainstream mess begins.Phillips, Whitney. This is why we can't have nice things: Mapping the relationship between online trolling and mainstream culture. MIT Press, 2015.

ON TUMBLR, EVERYONE’S A

TROLL

Anastasia Salter@anasalter