Mini Online Research Assignment: Emotional Information Seeking, Tumblr, and Aesthetics

I've chosen tumblr as a potential emotional/affective space for study because of the ease with which tumblr users can customize their blogs to create a particular aesthetic/mood, and the way this aesthetic is often represented by commercial products.

What is it? Tumblr is a highly customizable microblogging platform and social networking site that allows users to blog (and reblog) photos, music, links, quotes, videos, and personal writing.

Who is it tailored to? Tumblr has 82.2 million blogs. It is popular for "curation," where users put together collections of images and other media that create a particular feel, mood, or aesthetic, or fit a particular theme or subject. Users often keep tumblr blogs that they treat much like other blogging platforms such as blogger or wordpress, writing personal text posts and including images from their own life - but the nature of tumblr as a microblogging platform makes it easy for users to quickly dump brief, immediate thoughts on their blog, much like twitter. Businesses and companies often have tumblrs, where they both promote their products and interact with the greater community. For example, the publishing house WW Norton & Company has a tumblr where they not only promote their books but discuss and share all kinds of interesting literary things. The clothing chain Anthropologie has a tumblr where they post media that fits in with their overall aesthetic (though they don't necessarily contain Anthropologie products). Independent of explicitly business-run tumblrs, individual users often seek, like, and reblog commercial products, use tumblr as a way of finding new items to purchase, or blog images of particular products in order to contribute to their blog's overall aesthetic. 

What emotional relations might exist? Users of tumblr often develop relationships based on shared interests (self-portrait photography, fashion, poetry, literature, etc), or similarities in personality - it can be a way of finding friends online who share your interests. But tumblr's focus on aesthetics, and its ability to easily create a particular aesthetic (because of its customizability and the ease with which things can be reblogged to a site) or embody a particular mood, means that people are often attracted to blogs that communicate a particular aesthetic, mood, or identity (which is often represented by commercial products, and other peoples' music/photography) that they share or can relate to.

Why would it make an ideal case study? The relationship visible on tumblr between aesthetic/mood/identity and commercial products is relevant to the project's focus on ICTs tailored towards "emotional communication, resources, and identities, as part of a larger trend in marketing and commercialization." Also tumblrs are often used as extentions of other social media platforms, like YouTube channels or more "professional" websites, making it possible to explore emotional information seeking across online spaces, and the relationship between tumblr and other parts of the web.

Potential methodological challenges. Narrowing the 82.2 million blogs on tumblr to a manageable and cohesive sample seems to be the most immediately forseeable methodological challenge. Operationalizing notions of aesthetic, mood, and identity in the context of tumblr blogging would also require a lot of thought and care.