Tumblr Analysis

Abstract

The LIS field is persistent in discussing the racial and class divide of technological access, especially for low income African Americans. Collectively, the field ignores the ever growing online presence of African Americans on social media platforms. However, in the wake of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the power of online community that exists on these platforms (Black Twitter, Black Facebook, etc) can no longer be ignored. My goal was to investigate how the Black presence on social platforms could be utilized to encourage new scholarship and utilization of materials housed in Special Collections. Tumblr specifically was chosen because it possessed a significant portion of my target users, and is a platform becoming more commonly deployed by academic libraries for curation and scholarly outreach. Using Tumblr, I created an online community around the representation and reception of Black people in popular media and fandom. Tumblr’s internal data and Google analytics provided key information about the content and the audiences reception to it. I observed both increases in the number of visitors and a steady number of return visitors interested in the content being posted.