The case of Tumblr

This chapter presents data collected in an ethnographic study, both online and offline. The focus of my research is young people, and so I carried out most of my observations in schools; both in classes and outside of formal learning school settings. The chapter explains processes of schooling and online engagements by young people as entanglements of learning and identity construction, particularly the ways in which schooling and online learning can be co-constructive, and can permeate the learning and self-expression of gender online. My ethnography develops explanations transversal to the increasing correlations between the expansion of youth technology use and a perceived learning problem, one where the institution of the school and its politics are constructed as being in crisis, out of touch, or unrelated to everyday life. Youth around the globe frequently use various Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Tumblr. These platforms intensify the possibilities of visibility, searchability, spreadability, and durability of content online. ¹ They also act as mediated mirrors of social surveillance, accessible to anyone in possession of a computer and an internet connection, or any connected mobile technology, which radical accessibility marks them as belonging to the public domain, and also blurs our preconceptions about the limits between public and private in everyday life. Due to the popularity of SNSs and the seeming ease with which young people engage with these platforms, I argue that they have become a site of struggle, possibility, and responsibility in which young people are constantly renegotiating their everyday lives and resisting some elements of social life. In discussing these issues, online encounters are understood within the realm of social surveillance, but also as sites of escape from and struggle with social surveillance. Similarly, social networking sites and the virtual as a neoliberal space are also put to work by young people to resist and redeploy 164school learning. In this article, I will therefore explore ways in which a specific student, Danielle, actively uses her online engagements to renegotiate constraining gender relations as experienced in school, and how she resists her school’s social surveillance of gender by writing herself online.