Paper by Tim Highfield and Stefanie Duguay, presented at Association of Internet Researchers conference (IR16), Phoenix, AZ, 21-24 October 2015.

1. “Likeamonkey
witha
miniature
cymbal”
culturalpractices
of repetition
in(visual)socialmedia
Tim Highfield @timhighfield
Stefanie Duguay @dugstef

2. Research motivations
The cultural logics and practices of everyday
social media use, the affordances and
capabilities of platforms and users
Examination of social media content for
personal and public LGBTQ expression
(Visual) social media content’s potential to
influence individuals, attitudes, practices,
platforms, and the presentation and
interpretation of identity

3. On repetition and loops
Analysing and
conceptualising looping
(visual) social media content
– its formats, practices,
cultures, logics
(cf. Cho, 2015; Ash, 2015;
Poulaki, 2015; Maeder &
Wentz, 2014)
The importance of repetition
to memes, to internet culture
more generally
http://www.dailydot.com/lol/gif-vine-flipbook-video/
but differences between discrete repetitions of
‘same practice, different instance’ and the
perpetual looping of GIFs and Vines?

4. On visual social media
Cultural and social media literacies, practices
including identity, play, fandom, community,
celebrity, microcelebrity…
through
profile pictures
image-sharing apps, platforms, cultures
selfies (Senft & Baym, 2015, et al.).
GIFs (Eppink, 2014; Ash, 2015)
videos
memes and macros (Shifman, 2014; Milner,
2013; Miltner, 2014...)

5. LGBTQ social media
Use of digital tech for
Meeting others
Identity development
Visibility
(e.g. Cooper & Dzara, 2010; Raun, 2014)
Embodied and visual social media
From <> (Campbell, 2004; Correll 1995) to 🍆
(#🍆🍆)
Exchanging porn & dickpics (Mowlabocus, 2010;
Race, 2014)
Visibility but…
Heteronormativity/homonormativity often persist
(Barnhurst, 2007)

6. Digital materialities
Platform studies
Platform politics (Gillespie, 2010; Gehl, 2014)
Political economy of platforms (van Dijck, 2013)
Software, algorithms, and design (Bucher,
2012; Light & McGrath, 2010)
Materiality of visual objects (Buse, 2010)

7. Vine
Launched by Twitter in 2013
Over 40 million users reported in 2013
24% of American teens (Pew, 2015)
6.5 second videos
Featured Viners, memes, # conversations

8. Tumblr
Founded 2007; ~260 million blogs (Oct
2015); bought by Yahoo! in 2013
Blogging (of sorts), emphasis on resharing
content
importance of the visual (GIFs, videos,
crossposted media, users’ art and photos)
(Lasting) communities formed around
identity, content types, fandoms
(Tiidenberg, 2015; Fink & Miller, 2014; Renninger,
2014; Cho, 2015; Petersen, 2014)

9. Research design
#lgbt on Vine and Tumblr (safe-search on), four
days in June 2015 – most recent ten Vines,
Vines on Tumblr, GIFs on Tumblr added to
corpus
Following review of corpus, 30 Vines, 15
Tumblr Vines, 30 GIF posts (including GIF
series) in our analysis
Coding – using approach from Morse &
Richards (2002), descriptive, topic, and analytic
coding; iterative design; selected findings
presented here

10. Loop functionalities
Narrative
Humour
Feelings
Creativity
Statements

11. Loop functionalities
Narrative
https://vine.co/v/eVXeviTLnbX

12. Loop functionalities
Narrative

13. Loop functionalities
Narrative
Vines created to tell a story, with set-up and
‘resolution’ in six seconds
Series of GIFs tell narratives through
progressions of feeling
series of loops work both in isolation and
in sequence (rather than overload/over-
extend a single GIF, make the looping
focused and efficient)

14. Loop functionalities
Humour

15. Loop functionalities
Humour
Loops accentuate humour – repetition to let
a joke sink in, to realise full details (situation,
set-up, reaction); more effective in more
condensed forms?
Reward rewatching, without needing to
actively seek out replaying; surreal and
ridiculous content can become accentuated
in perpetuity

16. Loop functionalities
Feelings

17. Loop functionalities
Feelings

18. Loop functionalities
Feelings
Vines build sexual tension or other feelings,
especially through drawing attention to
specific gestures
Temporal structure of Vines with a common
point of highest tension/emotion several
seconds in, encouraging a second/third/[n]th
rewatch

19. Loop functionalities
Feelings
GIFs primarily focus on one emotion,
accentuate a single feature (with diversity of
feels through series of GIFs)
Immerse in emotion through facial focus,
encouraging identifying with these feelings

20. Loop functionalities
Creativity

21. Loop functionalities
Creativity
User creativity on Vine through mash-ups
and remixes, personal engagement with
existing media (including lip syncing)
Looping draws attention to the detail a Viner
has put into the video (e.g. rapid succession
of curated clips; splicing of music; special
effects and editing; signatures and
watermarks)

22. Loop functionalities
Creativity
GIFs feature user creativity through
artworks, animations, and intertextual
fandom, isolating and recontextualizing
moments for other purposes
Using secondary media to stand in for
personal experiences?

23. Loop functionalities
Statements
https://vine.co/v/eBBbVOZwEAK

24. Loop functionalities
Statements

25. Loop functionalities
Statements
Loops provide emphasis for statements
around Pride, LGBT rights, marriage
equality
Mix of personal views and identification with
ideas through celebrities

26. Looping media + LGBTQ identity
Limitations
Small sample, researchers’ interpretation
Need for further platform analysis & interviews
Tumblr’s participatory fandom perpetuates
LGBTQ images from mainstream media = young,
white, high SES, domestic, ‘cute’
Vine’s norm of self-representation = wider
diversity in terms of race, gender, SES,
expressing more explicit sexual desire and
messages challenging norms and stereotypes
Tumblr’s mainstreaming was evident in cross-
posted Vines

27. Talking points and next steps
Differences in looping content, user practices,
communities – the demographics of the
platforms, cross-platform posting?
Clear contrasts between Vines on Vine and
Vines shared on Tumblr in our corpus
Beyond #lgbt – unexpected/differently
intentioned uses of hashtag within sample, the
motivations of using #lgbt vs. LGBTQ identity
construction through visual social media;
everydayness of shared loops

28. Thanks!
Tim Highfield @timhighfield
t.highfield@qut.edu.au timhighfield.net
Stefanie Duguay @dugstef
stefanie.duguay@qut.edu.au stefanieduguay.com

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