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When the animated TV shows Young Justice (2010–) and Green Lantern: The Animated Series (2011–13) were canceled, fans of the shows campaigned together to have both shows renewed. I refer to this campaign as #saveYJandGLTAS, a hashtag frequently used on internet posts related to the campaign. This case study investigates how Tumblr served as a counterpublic space for this movement, while other social media platforms served as the more public face of this campaign. Through my analysis, I draw conclusions about how fandoms operate and the changes occurring as a result in the relationships between the media industry, creators, and consumers.

Abstract
The December 2018 adult content ban instituted by the social media and microblogging site Tumblr had far-reaching effects. The ban cost the platform its user base, and its economic value plummeted. Purchased by the media conglomerate Verizon as part of a $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo's internet business in 2017, Tumblr was sold in August 2019 for less than $3 million. This article reviews the factors that led to the adult content ban, including Verizon's plan to eliminate pornography to attract more advertisers to Tumblr, heightened concern about sexual harassment lawsuits in the wake of #MeToo and Time's Up, and the passage of two new federal laws, SESTA and FOSTA, aimed at combatting sex trafficking online. It analyzes the critical role that Tumblr played in connecting and supporting marginalized sexual communities, especially trans communities, and others whose livelihood depends on freedom of sexual speech, such as sex workers, and discusses the centrality of online communication to processes of sexual self-discovery and self-actualization. Corporate control of sexual speech, and pornography bans, which are increasing as platforms like Facebook institute ever-tighter community standards, pose a direct threat to queer individuals and limit the possibility for authentic, positive representation of trans bodies and trans sexuality.

Four authors representing disparate disciplines recount their experiences meeting each other through Glee (2009–15) fandom via Tumblr, with an exploration of the popular microblogging site's utility as a platform for fan scholarship. This aspect of the site has been understudied; we thus explore the ways that Tumblr's particular culture and features support professional networking, facilitate the researching of fandom practices, and provide support mechanisms for scholars. In discussing the pleasures and challenges that Tumblr provides the acafan researcher, we weigh whether academia needs to rethink its own paradigms for audience engagement and professional development.

In November 2018, after being suspended from Apple's App Store for hosting child pornography, Tumblr announced its decision to ban all NSFW (not safe/suitable for work) content with the aid of machine-learning classification. The decision to opt for strict terms of use governing nudity and sexual depiction was as fast as it was drastic, leading to the quick erasure of subcultural networks developed over a decade. This article maps out platform critiques of and on Tumblr through a combination of visual and digital methods. By analyzing 7306 posts made between November 2018 (when Tumblr announced its new content policy) and August 2019 (when Verizon sold Tumblr to Automattic), we explore the key stakes and forms of user resistance to Tumblr "porn ban" and the affective capacities of user-generated content to mobilize engagement.

Abstract
Combining raciolinguistics and social semiotics, I explore a snapshot of socio-politically and historically contextualized multimodal digital activity in social networking site Tumblr involving American entertainer Beyoncé. I examine a set of 41 Tumblr posts, gathered in 2016 during Beyoncé's heightened social and political salience, in which users expressed counterhegemonic stances. I first demonstrate how Tumblr users employ images and references of Beyoncé in ways that resist visual and linguistic hegemonic discourses and realize and index issues of race and gender. I show how Tumblr users resemiotize and reentextualize Beyoncé in decolonizing stances, including those that challenge White gazes, prioritize non-White subjectivity, and destabilize Whiteness. I conclude that Beyoncé's use as a semiotic resource adds to her indexicalities as she is deployed in various stances. I assert that a raciolinguistic perspective elucidates intersectionally racialized and gendered ideological changes to Beyoncé's multimodal indexical field and that attention to digital semiotics increases the multimodal and intersectional perspectives of raciolinguistic analyses.

Activism for socio-political movements has been affected by the progression of technology, enhancing the conditions under which advocates can communicate worldwide. Recently, Tumblr has announced accommodating large numbers of young transgender identified individuals. This article will offer an historical analysis of the progression of gay rights throughout the twentieth century, in comparison with the similar trajectory of the transgender movement now being catalysed by technology. Through discussing key arguments in transgender theory such as the pathologisation of Gender Dysphoria in the DSM; the heterogeneity of the transgender community; and rejecting essentialist ideas of gender: we can begin to understand the need for further integration of the rhetoric of gender fluidity into the public space, in which wrong body discourse and the politics of passing can be deconstructed. By dissecting the history of mainstream media representation of gay identities, we can now understand them to be in the final 'respect' stage, progressing through 'non-recognition', 'ridicule', and 'regulation' (Clark, 1969). A further comparison with transgender representation will highlight a non-recognition of the full heterogeneity of their community, which exemplifies the need for public discussion. Tumblr has a unique opportunity, as the biggest cyberspace community of young transgender identified individuals, to impact dialogues created around transgender politics. A discourse analysis of Tumblr's platform evidences a need to optimise its usability for transgender members. The arguments will conclude proposing that Tumblr has the ability to create a space for influential dialogues that could expand past Tumblr and into wider public spaces.

Tagging practices on online platforms prioritize descriptive elements that contribute to information discovery. As a secondary tagging practice, commentary tags expand the functionality of online tagging to incorporate creative and expressive elements that initially seem to contribute little to information discovery systems. These tags have gained popularity, particularly within online fan communities and their preferred platforms, such as the social media blogging site Tumblr. Although popularized on Tumblr, commentary-style tags have become a recognizable fandom practice across platforms that host fan communities, including the fan work repository platform Archive of Our Own. Examining fan use of commentary tags provides insight into how such tagging practices could broaden information discovery to incorporate elements of creator expression and deepen user engagement with information resources.

Cover -- Inhalt -- Einführung - Von der Hoffnung zu ›Harambe‹ -- Kapitel 1 - Die führerlose digitale Gegenrevolution -- Kapitel 2 - Die Politik der Transgression -- Kapitel 3 - Gramsci und die Alt-Light -- Kapitel 4 - Konservative Kulturkämpfe von Buchanan bis Yiannopoulos -- Kapitel 5 - Von Tumblr zu den Campus-Kriegen: Knappheit schaffen in der Tugend-Ökonomie -- Kapitel 6 - Eintritt in die Mannosphäre -- Kapitel 7 - Massen von Normalos -- Fazit - Nicht mehr witzig: Der Kulturkampf geht offline

This essay examines fan interactions on "The All-New Ms. Marvel Backstage Pass," a Tumblr site initiated by Marvel Comics to promote the Ms. Marvel (2014–) comic book. I conceive of this site as a space in which racial, ethnic, and gendered identity dimensions can be uniquely articulated in accordance with identity markers of the Ms. Marvel character, a female teenage Pakistani American Muslim. These articulations are possible due to Tumblr's unique affordances as a mediator of fandom formation—affordances that are both technological and social. For Ms. Marvel fans, Tumblr affords opportunities for intertexual and paratextual productivity, orienting emerging fans into broader rites and practices of fandom participation and specific forms of identity expression undertaken in accordance with identity vectors of Ms. Marvel, its creators, and its fans. For Marvel Comics, fan activities on "The All-New Ms. Marvel Backstage Pass" are a source of promotional labor inflected with the veneer of authenticity, providing the company with a centralized means of instigating fannish promotion and emboldening an emergent audience that corresponds to institutional desires for audience diversification. This Tumblr therefore brokers the economic and institutional drives of Marvel Comics and the cultural drives of an emergent diversified fandom.

Abstract. Background: Social networking about depression can be indicative of self-reported depression and/or can normalize risk behaviors such as self-harm and suicidal ideation. Aim: To gain a better understanding of the depression, self-harm, and suicidal content that is being shared on Tumblr. Method: From April 16 to May 10, 2014, 17 popular depression-related Tumblr accounts were monitored for new posts and engagement with other Tumblr users. A total of 3,360 posts were randomly selected from all historical posts from these accounts and coded based on themes ascertained by the research team. Results: The 17 Tumblr accounts posted a median number of 185 posts (range = 0–2,954). Content was engaged with (i.e., re-blogged or liked) a median number of 1,677,362 times (range = 0–122,186,504). Of the 3,360 randomly selected posts, 2,739 (82%) were related to depression, suicide, or self-harm. Common themes were self-loathing (412, 15%), loneliness/feeling unloved (405, 15%), self-harm (407, 15%), and suicide (372, 14%). Conclusion: This study takes an important first step at better understanding the displayed depression-related references on Tumblr. The findings signal a need for suicide prevention efforts to intervene on Tumblr and use this platform in a strategic way, given the depression and suicidal content that was readily observed on Tumblr.

2020 Summer. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; This thesis considers social media platforms and the fluid nature of online spaces. Specifically, I examine the social network site (SNS) Tumblr and the controversy that surrounded its recently amended community guidelines and adult content policy. Tumblr had previously had somewhat of an "alternative" identity as compared to mainstream SNSs such as Facebook or Twitter. This identity had largely resulted from its previously lax policy toward pornography and other adult content. Such content had previously been allowed on the website, which enabled a wide degree of personal freedom and expression. This policy, along with the platform's specific affordances, had contributed to Tumblr's characteristic as an online queer space. Many LGBTQ+ individuals and groups had once used the platform to share pornography and adult content, but also just to form a sense of community and express their identities in ways that were not always possible on other SNSs or within the physical world. But in December 2018, Tumblr Staff announced significant changes to the website's community guidelines, and that after December 17, 2018 any such content would no longer be allowed on the platform. This policy announcement, which became colloquially known as the Tumblr porn ban, represented a divergence in how the platform's users and its corporate owners envisioned the online space. For Tumblr users, the platform had been an online queer space characterized by a significant degree of individual autonomy and expression. But for Tumblr Inc., the platform could only be an online queer space until it was no longer profitable, and thus adjusted the content policy in response to various political economic pressures. In this thesis, I use digital discourse and political economic analyses of Tumblr Staff's announcement as well as Tumblr users' responses. I argue that the controversy that emerged surrounding the Tumblr Porn Ban represents the fluid and co-construction of platforms and online spaces. The negative response to the Tumblr Porn Ban was not necessarily directly in response to the loss of pornography and adult content, but rather a loss of what such contented had once represented—individual freedom and autonomy for users. Removing the adult content was significant because it changed what the online space had once been. By studying the Tumblr Porn Ban, this thesis demonstrates that online platforms are not static or monolithic entities. Instead, they are fluid online spaces that are constructed, shaped, and continually redefined by a platform triad of users, corporations, and state power.