Fellow at CAIS from May to October 2019
elena.pilipets@cais.nrw
With the digitization of the communication and the entertainment industry, traces that we leave when we use social media networks become part of the affective economy of attention, sharing, and recommendation. Operating as data-intensive distributors of content, internet corporations translate participation into a source of control and value generation. Popular platforms thrive on intensive engagement, but what happens when their distinctive experiential affordances noticeably change?
In my CAIS project I explore the latest transformations in the community- and algorithm-driven networks revolving around the social micro-blogging site Tumblr. In December 2018, after being suspended from Apple’s App Store over child pornography issues, Tumblr banned all “adult content” from its users’ Tumblogs in a move that negatively affected multiple body-positive and art-related platform subcultures. Especially the failure of automated filtering tools in this context, the proliferation of porn bots and the phrase “female-presenting nipples” from Tumblr’s new moderation guidelines attracted major criticism.
Adapting (visual) digital methods to follow hashtags and memes that were shared in the aftermath of “Tumblr purge”, I approach platforms as mediators of conflicting business models, lifestyle practices, and political interests. In particular, I focus on memes through which Tumblr’s restrictive policies were playfully reappropriated and provided with new intensities and connotations.
