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Millennials and the Age of Tumblr Activism
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The social-justice movement is always brewing on Tumblr, where users
exchange views and organize demonstrations. A “die-in” in Clayton, Mo.,
last month.
Credit...
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
By Valeriya Safronova
● Dec. 19, 2014
On a recent day, the feed of a Tumblr blog called Black Culture featured a
drawing of Lupita Nyong’o, a video of a protest at William Paterson
University and a text that read, “black lives > white feelings.” The blog
FreeQuency Frequently Writes posted a Tweet from Solange Knowles
decrying depictions of outspoken women, while another called Soul
Revision turned up a post with the hashtags #SeasonOfInconvenience and
#BlackLivesMatter.
As protests sparked by a grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson
began spreading nationwide, furor was also growing in cyberspace, in the
social-justice halls of Tumblr, a social-blogging platform dominated by
users in their teens, 20s and early 30s. Their feeds were vivid mash-ups of
articles, GIFs, cleverly labeled images, court documents, smartphone
videos, stickers and cartoons, and their posts contained news about
Ferguson, along with tidbits about identity, inequality, police abuse, racism,
body shaming and more.
“A lot of millennials have been discouraged for a long time,” said Zellie
Thomas, 30, creator of Black Culture. “Now, with social media, they feel
empowered, like people are hearing their voice. And Tumblr is a great
platform for all types of media.”
There are more than 215 million blogs on Tumblr and, according to
comScore, an analytics company, 50 percent of Tumblr users are from 15 to
34 years old. The company’s internal surveys show that 64 percent of users
say that they care about social causes and look into them on Tumblr. These
numbers suggest that millennials, who have long been pigeonholed as an
apathetic bunch, have a strong interest in social issues — it’s just hidden
from the eyes of their elders.
On Facebook and Twitter, users tend to engage with people they know,
while on Tumblr, they connect based on themes and interests. Because of
the anonymity it allows and the variety of media it can host, Tumblr gives
young people a chance to experiment with different personas, many of
which might not match the ones their friends and family are familiar with.
“You can create your own identity via Tumblr,” said Moya Bailey, 31, a
postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University in women’s studies and
digital humanities. “I see many more diverse images on Tumblr than I see
anywhere else. It’s one of the few places where I see fat people, trans
women and trans women of color who are celebrated.”
The cyber social-justice movement is always brewing on Tumblr, and it
picks up steam when shocking news hits the country or when protests take
place offline. On Dec. 4, when a jury decided not to indict in the Eric Garner
case, Tumblr experienced what Liba Rubenstein, director of social impact
and public policy at Tumblr, called “extreme peaks” in the use of the “social
justice” and “black lives matter” tags.
“Tumblr is kind of like a gateway drug for activism,” said Philip Howard,
44, the principal investigator at the Digital Activism Research Project at the
University of Washington. “Once you connect to other people who feel
strongly about race or crime or gay marriage, you stay engaged on that one
issue area.”
Image
Young demonstrators on the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol in
Harrisburg this month during the Black Lives Matter “die-in,” protesting
police abuses.
Credit...
James Robinson/The Patriot News, via Associated Press
Because Tumblr allows users to post anything from a video to a Tweet, and
because reblogging a post is as easy as two clicks, Tumblr is an ideal
dumping ground for media that might not easily coexist on Facebook or
Twitter. “So much of activism is driven by digital artifacts like a video or a
photo of someone beaten up by cops, and Tumblr helps people post and
repost these,” Mr. Howard said.
The platform’s capacity to spread messages quickly is key, said Kim Moore,
29, creator of Soul Revision. Ms. Moore turned to Tumblr to raise
awareness of social issues. “I thought this would be a good place to branch
out more,” she said. “I went on Tumblr and never left.”
Mwende Katwiwa, 23, creator of the FreeQuency Frequently Writes Tumblr
and a community organizer offline, thinks Tumblr has helped create new
opportunities for engagement. “The last national movement in the black
community didn’t have access to social media like this,” Ms. Katwiwa said.
“Without those retweets and reposts, we wouldn’t still be talking about
Trayvon Martin.”
Ms. Bailey said that many people describe what they do on Tumblr as
getting an education on topics that aren’t explored deeply in standard
school textbooks, like African-American history or colonialism. Similarly,
Mr. Howard, whose Research Project devotes time to measuring the success
of digital movements, said that while many online campaigns don’t force
changes in public policy, they keep stories in the news and help expose
people to new sources of information.
But whether passion on Tumblr translates into participation in the real
world is up for debate. Ms. Katwiwa described a time when she used
Tumblr to promote a protest in New Orleans. She was disappointed when of
the thousand or so people who promised to show up, only 400 materialized.
“One fault of social media is that it has people thinking that’s all you have to
do,” she said. “I think it’s a tool in a toolbox. It should be used in
conjunction with ground-level activism.”
Ms. Moore, on the other hand, recalled organizing a moment of silence in
San Diego after Michael Brown was killed. Nearly 400 people attended the
event — a number that’s large for the small and conservative San Diego, Ms.
Moore said — and many others followed up with emails asking to
participate in the future. “I was blown away at how engaged and how
passionate people can be on Tumblr,” she said.
An emotionally difficult downside of using Tumblr is the negative responses
activists receive from commenters. As part of her thesis project at Wayne
State University, Amanda Levitt, 29, creator of Fat Body Politics, collected
disparaging comments from a blog she moderates, This Is Thin Privilege.
She saved a total of 4,200 negative comments, some of them suggesting she
should die. There were points at which the messages overwhelmed Ms.
Levitt and she took breaks from using the platform, but she always
returned. “A lot of people I enjoy talking with are online so it’s hard not
being in that space,” she said.
Mr. Thomas shares the sentiment. “Activists online deal with a lot of hate
and death threats, and very vicious attacks,” he said. “It’s something a lot of
us have to try to ignore. And it’s still worth it.”
While online attacks may be unpleasant, Mr. Howard suggested that they
are a part of contemporary political engagement and can help activists
develop a psychological armor. “We all make mistakes with whatever media
is new to us,” he said. “It’s part of contemporary growing pains. Each
generation has had to learn what activism means for them.”
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