Abstract

Webweaving is a networked, creative archival practice hosted on the social blogging platform Tumblr. Weavers combine text, images, and other media elements and compile them into posts reflecting personal or intimate themes which fellow users can then share and recreate. The creative process of weaving reflects the values and ethics of Web 1.0 (connectivity, expression, dehiearchized content) and as such does not follow conventional trajectories of platform presence and art consumption of the contemporary digital landscape. Employing network ethnography and research-creation, this thesis answers three major questions. First: what is webweaving? Second: what does webweaving reveal about cultural production and digital life on Tumblr? Third: how do Tumblr users use webweaving to create humanistic meaning and connection online in an increasingly corporate platform landscape?
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Operating at the intersection of platform studies and digital art history, this thesis documents an understudied and uniquely ‘born digital’ creative phenomenon. Drawing from theoretical frameworks like Jennifer Pybus’ work on platforms as archives of feelings, we build on existing platform theory to study the symbiotic relationship between art and community. Finally, we fill a research gap in the paradoxical nature of the Tumblr user experience in 2024, as weavers participate in thriving and irreplicable digital life on a platform that is considered long past its prime.