Where Is The Money on Tumblr? Cultures of Celebrity and Labour within Tumblr’s architecture

• In Event: Voice, Static, and Silence on Tumblr

Abstract

As Influencers become increasingly ubiquitous on global social media, their presence and practices on Tumblr have slid under the radar and evaded popular and scholarly attention. This begs the question: Who is being heard on Tumblr? Are any users making money on Tumblr? Are there Tumblr Influencers? Tumblr’s affordances often appear opaque to new users, bearing high barriers to entry that require learned digital literacies to navigate the site, network with other users, and participate in various groups. In fact, I argue that Tumblr operates less as an attention economy and more as an interest economy, stipulated by tacit knowledges of silos through ‘notes’ and ‘reblogs’ on an interest-curated dashboard, rather than through the ‘likes’, ‘comments’, and ‘shares’ of a conventional metric-curated newsfeed. I analyze the architecture of Tumblr in relation to celebritizing and monetizing affordances, and demonstrate where and how social, cultural, and economic capital flows among circuits of ordinary and prolific users, and across intertextual media platforms.

Crystal Abidin , PhD is a socio-cultural anthropologist of vernacular internet cultures, particularly young people’s relationships with internet celebrity, self-curation, and vulnerability. She is most known for her work on Influencers, a multimedia form of vocational internet celebrity. Crystal is Postdoctoral Fellow with the Media Management and Transformation Centre (MMTC) at Jönköping University, and Adjunct Researcher with the Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT) at Curtin University. Reach her at wishcrys.com or @wishcrys.

Author

• Crystal Abidin, National U of Singapore