In regards to Tumblr, diasporas come into play in a more abstract way. Tumblr is an extremely diverse network whose users mostly consider themselves social activists and political crusaders. In many instances, Tumblr users, along with many other users across various blogging platforms, have called out celebrities, politicians, public figures, and fellow bloggers on a range on different issues- from sexism and misogyny to the appropriation of black culture. Even recently, bloggers have called Taylor Swift, usually a squeaky clean and popular celebrity, out on her ‘racist’ videos. What does any of this have to do with diaspora?
Well, the hyper-aware and, as many ‘haters’ would call it, ‘nit-picky’, identity of Tumblr comes from the ‘…feeling of sharing a 'common origin’…’ (Mung, 2005) Due to Tumblr’s diversity, many groups wrongly considered ‘minorities’ in everyday society are actually becoming majorities within Tumblr, allowing their voices to be heard and speaking up over the oppression they have suffered that is part of their identity. Their diaspora brought them together on this social network and gave them the power to proudly claim their identity and teach others about the hardships that built them as a people.
The knock-on effect of this is actually quite positive and democratic in a way as it has given the people the power and the knowledge to those who already had it to stand up for those who didn’t. Issues that are so overpoweringly evident in everyday society, such as cultural appropriation, sexual objectification, racism, slut-shaming, body-shaming, and negative stereotyping, that we have become desensitised to them are now being picked up and rejected by the majority of Tumblr users. The future could be brighter than we think.
References
Ishler, J. (2015)
Taylor Swift Slammed As Racist For Depicting ‘Colonialism’ In ‘Wildest Dreams’ Video. HollywoodLife. retrieved from http://hollywoodlife.com/2015/09/02/taylor-swift-racist-wildest-dreams-music-video-colonialism-critics/ Mung, E. (2005). Comparative European research in migration, diversity and identities. University of Deusto. Retrieved from http://learnjcu/jcu.edu.au
Image reteived from: http://peacepowerlight.life/power/
What you said here sparked something in my mind about Tumblr and how it allows users to cultivate identity.
ReplyDeleteTumblr’s tagging system is a mess. It is buggy—the site only ‘tracks’ the first five tags—and so users have developed different ways to interact with this system. Most users ate ‘tag-happy’: they over-tag, use tags as something more like hashtags than the minimally-worded identifiers many other websites use (even JCU’s website uses these identity tags). Tags are still used to sort posts—to classify them, to identify them—but this more organic, less constrained method makes it easier for members of a diaspora to identify each other. Tumblr currently does not allow users to search multiple tags at once, but this longer tagging method enables users to get very specific as to what they want to see. Members of a diaspora need “Perseveration of shared identity, coherence separate from host state, significant contacts with country of origin”, and certainly Tumblr, with its users so happy to clearly state the identity of their posts, enables users to keep up a sense of “shared identity” (Kuttainen, 2015).
REFERENCE
Kuttainen, V. (2012). BA1002: People networks [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from learnjcu.jcu.edu.au