Techniques and Data
Research Question
During my initial browsing of Tumblr, We realized that there is a really active, available, and vocal LGBTQIA community that challenged even my very own notions of sex and sex. Therefore, whenever conceptualizing this research, I was most thinking about the ways Tumblr bloggers openly build their identities—often through labeling practices—and the implications of the available construction of the identities. Consequently, we desired to resolve the next leading question: “In exactly what methods do LGBTQIA Tumblr bloggers build and discuss their sex and intimate orientation identities? ”
Test Selection
So that you can examine identification construction on Tumblr, We selected an example of Tumblr bloggers by selecting 10 community-defined hashtags agent of this LGBTQIA spectrum: #gay, #girlswholikegirls, #bi, #ace, #queer, #lgbtq, #nonbinary, #gender fluid, #genderqueer, and #trans. These hashtags were selected since they are commonly discovered whenever LGBTQIA that is browsing content Tumblr. Although we selected tags on the basis of the LGBTQIA acronym, there’s absolutely no label for “lesbian” but instead “girlswholikegirls. ” I noted that, since Tumblr has an active Not Safe/Suitable for Work (NSFW) community (Tiidenberg, 2012, 2013, 2014a, 2014b), this search returned primarily pornography rather than posts generated by users who identified as lesbian when I first attempted to collect data under the #lesbian hashtag. Probably in reaction for this, articles published by people who defined as lesbian used#girlswholikegirls to rather tag posts than #lesbian. Also, in my opinion it is crucial to make use of community-defined hashtags and terminology as this knowledge gender that is regarding sex, specially on SNSs, is socially built, defined, and developed, and, frequently, these self-identified hashtags are another kind of sex and intimate orientation labeling practiced by bloggers. It’s also well well worth noting that search phrases in English primarily discovered United that is english-speaking States, though there have been some English-speaking bloggers situated in other nations such as for example Japan, holland, and Ireland. As all given information collected from all of these blog sites is voluntary, it had been usually the situation that the blogger’s location had not been disclosed.
Finally, because the item with this research is always to examine identity that is individual, I created exclusionary requirements so that you can garner an example of individual LGBTQIA blog sites: for instance, blog sites moderated by a number of individuals usually do not well express an individual’s NBG&SO identity construction. Exclusionary requirements are the following:
The writer is beneath the chronilogical age of 18.
Tags on search engine results that included #lovewins or #love victories. These articles had been excluded as the United states Supreme Court ruled that bans on same-sex wedding are unconstitutional during information collection (Obergefell et al. V Hodges, 2015), and bloggers from outside the LGBTQIA community frequently utilized LGBTQIA tags in party of the ruling together with #lovewins or #love victories.
Duplicate blog sites (the exact same blog sites sporadically turned up under various keywords).
It absolutely was not really a personal web log, as an example, your blog ended up being run by a number of moderators, the information regarding the web log had been mainly submissions of pictures along with other LGBTQIA content, or was a marketing weblog ( e.g., for films or clothes lines).
Your blog content is mainly pornography or other material that is sexually explicit. Note: This failed to exclude blog sites with periodic intimately explicit content or nudity.
The first 20 blogs that did not meet the exclusionary criteria were collected under each term search. Since Tumblr doesn’t add a formal description, plus some Tumblr themes try not to add timestamps on articles, it is hard to state if search engine results are shown chronologically or if an algorithm impacts the outcomes. Either way, the blog sites most notable research had been https://www.camsloveaholics.com/female/bondage active at that time the info had been gathered. These information were gathered through the months of June and July in 2015. These procedures lead to a preliminary total of 200 blogs gathered. Upon better examination, an extra 14 blog sites came across the exclusionary requirements for an overall total test of 186 blog sites.