Adam Nisbet

CCTP-767-01

New Media and Politics

Final Project

The Rise of Microblogging: Why the Millennial Generation will Lead as Early Adapters

Because of recent reports of a decrease in blog reading and blog operating among younger

Internet users some critics have questioned the potential for emerging new media platforms termed

“microblogging” to attract a significant audience from the Millennial generation (PEW Generations

Online Study). As stated in the recent PEW Internet study:“There are still notable differences by

generation in online activities, but the dominance of the Millennial generation that PEW documented

one year ago has slipped in many activities. (PEW Generations Online Study).” There is an increase in

nearly all online activities among all age groups, however one activity appears to be on the decline with

younger Internet users and that is blogging or operating a blog. With this information it could be

assumed that a new short-form of blogging known as microblogging would not be a viable business

option or an appealing communication platform for young Internet users. However, it seems that

microblogging usage has grown ever increasingly more popular around the world with 145 million users

in China by the end of the year, a nation where microblogging has become very popular while Twitter is

banned by the state (Chang). However, in the United States microblogging has become more popular

recently as well most notably with the microblogging platform Tumblr which has nearly 10 million users

as of December 2010 and garners 1.5 Billion page views per month and is growing rapidly(Solis). This

study seeks to find out which generation is most likely to lead the way as early adapters to

microblogging platforms such as Tumblr and label what the specific motivations for that medium are

when compared to traditional blogging. This study seeks to find whether Internet users from The

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Millennial Generation are more likely to be early adapters to microblogging and Tumblr use because

they have a higher usage of Internet activities associated with Twitter, Video sharing, and searching and

commenting on online news.

Tumblr overview

This study will seek to develop a conceptual definition of the microblogging medium and take

into account scholarly work on the this medium. This overview will also discuss the origins of the Tumblr

medium and when the first political applications of the medium were used? Tumblr.com by definition is

a Internet platform that offers pages to their subscribers to post tumbling blog posts that are usually

shorter in content than the usual personal or news blog. Some have terms this new type of blog “light

blogging,” and some articles have even said that Tumblr falls in between Wordpress and Twitter (3).

One great political definition of blogging was summed up by Mortensen, that blogging through such

platforms as Tumblr shows that “Weblog software and blog clients are tools to meet the needs and

interests of users .... The semi-publicness of blogs is used to deal with political issues (9)”. The first blogs

appeared as early as the 90’s but have really taken off as a medium in the 2000’s to convey many stories

and perspectives on community politics, opinions, and news. Since the advent of Twitter, with its short

format posting, more people have wanted to post in shorter methods. Building upon the idea of a

scrolling information bar, as commonly used in blogs, and popularly used on Facebook as the “Wall”, the

Tumblr application is a hybrid that utilizes the best attributes of Twitter and Facebook, giving their users

the ability to build a online network of friends and followers and repost others content as well.

My initial question is whether messages created in the platform are also entirely legible across all

other platforms, in the same manner as Wordpress blog posts would be. Ease-of-use is supposed to be

the selling point of the Tumblr blogging platform and it is supposed that their users will create smaller

blog posts with text, video, photos, and audio, sent from smart phones or laptops. But many skeptics

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ask if this format will catch on, or is it just buzz? It seems that the developers of Tumblr have received

notable press in major newspapers and business periodicals but what is their user share? Tumblr pages

are garnering nearly a billion page views per month and have about 4.5 million users according to the

Lost Remote. Now it seems that even several news organizations are starting Tumblr pages to attract

this niche audience (Lost Remote). When the race is between a few portals such as in the past like

Friendster, Orkut, Myspace, and Facebook how can small changes to the communication platform make

big differences for the amount of users that are loyal to the platform and adapt to the format. How

seamlessly can blog posts created in Tumblr be shared throughout the web, can specific hyperlinks be

shared directly to Tumblr posts? These are the questions I hope to answer in my review of Tumblr and I

feel the easiest way to do that is by starting a new account and testing the service.

I have reviewed as many popular listings for Tumblr’s as I could find through popular search engines

and their own categories. I searched through areas of politics, art, and community to review the

richness of content, one professionally done tumblr blog was http://artlistpro.tumblr.com/ and an

interesting political tumblr: http://evilteabagger.tumblr.com/ a very interesting community fan site:

http://communitythings.tumblr.com/ or a justice blog: http://kohenari.tumblr.com/.

It appears that the Tumblr media format allows the user to display content with links, attribution

signification, and easily adjustable thumbnails that can create a compelling multi-navigable page for a

reader. Depending on various page themes chosen by the creator the content is manifested in blocks,

or smaller blog articles, that sit easily on top one another and may be presented in any number of

columns. Another key feature of Tumblr is the ability to repost blog bubbles from other people on your

own blog, while keeping attribution. I hope that my project, building a Tumblr page, will show the uses

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and gratifications of such a blogging medium model and what potential it has in politics.

Content Analysis of key Tumblr political sites the week after the 2010 midterm elections

Richard Davis points out the ever-evolving relationship between blogs and mainstream media in

“Typing Politics,” where he discusses the role of traditional blogs. He described the gaff scenario of

Trent Lott’s remarks on Strom Thurmond, and how the discussion was resounded through the

blogosphere until broadcast media picked up the story and eventually Lott resigned as majority leader.

Again, this trend was repeated when voxpopuli.com released the correct facts surrounding a case at

Georgetown University, and later broadcast media changed their details. Blogs are often given praise

for their ability to generate discussion on broad and specific elements of political news, sometimes very

localized and sometimes very personalized and theoretical. However, blogging formats have evolved in

recent years into hybrids of social media “news feeds” and short-blogging sites such as Tumblr. With

the advance in technology toward more freestyle uses of blogging is there still the potential for blog

commentary to be advanced into the mainstream media? This study will seek to characterize the

attributes of political discussion taking place on the Tumblr medium and whether it has given users

further capacity to spread political information or has rather limited reach.

This study will look at the technical capabilities of Tumblr for creating feedback interaction with

their audience as well as ways the posts are disseminated. Our analysis will seek to determine whether

Tumblr is used to create political conversation, and when the option for conversation is open are others

in the community involved? It is interesting that most Tumblr’s do not include an area for comments on

posts but often “notes” can be left when another individual reposts the blog post. In most cases, even

when a post has been reposted many times and appears to be highly popular it may only have received

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one comment. It appears that the Tumblr medium is not intended for people to leave comments but to

only repost content in a crowd-think manner.

Posts can be searched for by their hashtags through the Tumblr search bar. Multi platform

connectivity seems to be a concern when using Tumblr because often times it appears that

communications taking place in Tumblr never leave the platform. Although each authors page has a RSS

subscription link it appears that the program is made primarily for conversation internally within Tumblr.

This can be a potential problem considering the amount of traction a news item must gain through the

blogosphere or twittersphere until it may be picked up by traditional media and broadcast news. It

seems that Tumblr has the potential to reach cross-platform presence in the manner that “twitter-deck”

has been able to streamline twitter posts across platforms and blog readers. It seems that there are

other items of concern when using Tumblr as a source for political information. Just like many blogs, as

Davis points out, “bloggers don’t necessarily say where the text is coming from (Davis, 60).” Although

there is appears to be a ton of organically created content, along with great numbers, facts, and

quotations, many of it is useless without proper citation. Similarly, many Tumblr authors may link to a

more reputable source or quote from that source without mentioning the source directly in their article.

Throughout most of the Tumblr pages that were reviewed in the sample most of them had

prominent articles on politics but most of them had posts on other issues of personal interest as well.

The majority of posts on Tumblr are similar to blog posts in that the author posts commentary and

opinions on politics. Much of the posts contain numbers from polls, quotations of politicians or

historical figures, or images of political humor. Most posts on Tumblr are very short, if there is text it is

usually under four sentences.

Methodology:

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 Since this examination was conducted only one week passed the 2010 midterm election it

seems like a great time to search Tumblr posts for commentary related to politics and elections. The

sample of Tumblr feeds has been taken in a way to ensure that the pages are the most up-to-date and

most active in political conversation. I have done a search for “election” within the Tumblr feed and

have decided to code the content from these sources based on the questions I have chosen. This is not

a random sample but an intentional one to hopefully gain a perspective on the most active political

conversations happening on Tumblr. By viewing how many times a certain post has been reposted we

can see how much reach a specific item may attain; similar to a retweet for twitter. Since we will be

observing content on the first 10 posts many may not be particularly all political but this study will seek

to measure the depth of content that is on Tumblr.

Sample:

The sample will contain 10 different Tumblr pages linked by their most current post tagged “election.”

Since it has been only one week since the midterm elections it can be hoped that there will be a larger

amount of content surrounding this topic at this time. I felt that it was more important to try to get a

randomized sample rather than to search for the most dominant political Tumblrs. In this manner all

cases of political discussion has a chance to be analyzed and a small sample can provide us with a

window into the type of political conversations taking place on Tumblr.

Coding scheme:

Five questions have been selected that have either a “yes” or “no” answer making the data simpler in

nature for statistical analysis. The questions I have chosen are:

 The post is relative to the 2010 midterm election?

 The post is a liberal post?
 The post is a conservative post?
 The tumblr page is majorly political content?

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  The tumblr post contains video/image/audio content?
 The tumblr post has been reposted?

These questions will allow us to analyze the conversation and platform from different perspectives
including depth, ideology, technical, and media-richness.

Analysis:

Tumblr blogs appear to be an interesting new area to spread political information through the

use of images, videos, text, and multimedia links to other content. Because users have the ability to

repost much of the content they like on their own site popular images that relate to political

commentary are reposted thousands of times.

In this sample there was a large variance of political ideologies and content types represented,

and surprisingly most of the posts were original content not rehashed content from major news outlets.

But it also seems to be a venue for organically created discussion of politically charged issues, usually in

a humorous fashion. And yes, some Tumblr’s do even include cat themed satire content. But above all,

Tumblr seems to be a venue for sharing multimedia rich items such as graphs, photos, charts, and

political advertisements from Youtube or Vimeo. Please see Fig. 1 below, this is an image picked from

the sample posts that includes a great deal of information regarding the recent election. While the

survey was conducted by Yahoo it is disseminated by users on Tumblr and has the capability of catching

on very quickly and being spread exponentially throughout the Tumblr network.

Throughout our sample there was a variance between political ideologies although most of the

Tumblr pages appeared to be liberal in scope. Most of the posts were directly related to the midterm

elections and much of them discussed the outcome pertaining to Democrats and historical perspectives

on midterm elections. About half of the posts contained multimedia; images, videos, or audio. A small

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percent, about 20%, of the posts had been reposted by other users, a sign that the item has been picked

up by other readers and passed on. Interestingly, about half of the Tumblr pages were focused

primarily on political issues and the majority of posts on their sites were related to political issues,

primarily the 2010 elections. The scope of the content was from very short statements or quotations to

very in depth blog style rants.

However, it seems that Tumblr suffers from many of the same downfalls of blogging in that

there are reputational inadequacies and a major lack of collaboration between sources presented in the

content. In fact, it seems that Tumblr, just like Twitter, has given a more open role to the author to

bring together prefabricated content and interpret in new ways despite any accountability taken by the

author. Many of the Tumblrs reposted articles from more mainstream blogs on political topics but failed

to site their sources. But while much of the content was reposted and unoriginal, although maybe new,

other content was entirely authentic and personally inspired. This may be the sparkle of hope for

Tumblr in that it allows users to create content in their own manner and make strong assertions with

little text or comment but relying heavily on the use of images and videos. I believe that Tumblr may

inevitably have the same potential that blogs do in placing relative political stories in the mainstream

news media but that it may face some technical challenges based on the platforms interconnectiveness

with other social platforms and the fact that it seems to stifle conversation, such as direct messaging,

between members. Also, it is important to note that Tumblr is not a social networking site so that users

do not court friendships or have any direct contact with their audience for the most part, any attempt at

this seems to be laborious for the users. Tumblr may see its highest potential for influencing

mainstream media through its ability to touch on highly localized issues as they are erupting, such as on

the scene personal accounts of details or other personally related facts from big events. The study will

look forward to advances with the Tumblr application but also continue to review the Tumblr platform

as a communication tool.

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 Fig. 1

Fig. 2

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 Audience Analysis

Considering that Tumblr did not officially launch until April 2007 it is a very new platform

(MacManus). Because Tumblr is a new platform it is easier to measure the growth and attention it has

received from its audience. This study will seek to describe how an audience was built around Tumblr

and how it has grown consistently and used the platform for their changing needs. It’s overall audience

is very diverse and dynamic by first appearance, ranging from as many topics as one would expect from

a free blogging platform. This study will look at growth of the platform as well as seek to find any

demographics for the users that are there. This stud y will also seek to characterize early adapters to

the platform that are communicating about politics.

Furthermore, the fact that it is relatively new should help us shed light on how a new media

platform grows an audience base, and considering the smaller population could provide more vibrant

shifts, or notable changes, in the audience segment. This study will also seek to answer many questions

about how a new theoretical framework could be established to measure audience interaction with new

media. The questions about media motivations below, presented by Dr. Diana Owen, were considered

when developing this study:

“Common motivations for media use developed during the mass media era
include: 1) information seeking and surveillance/media monitoring, 2) developing and
reinforcing a sense of personal identity, integration, social interaction, 3) maintaining
personal relationships, and 4) entertainment, diversion, escapism, and relaxation
(McQuail, Blumler, and Brown 1972).

These media uses include: 1) consuming, defined as watching, reading, or

viewing media, but never using media actively; 2) participating, which involves
interactions between users or between users and content, such as sharing election-related
emails, but not actual content production; and 3) producing, which includes the creation
of personal content, such as the production of election-related images, text, video, and
ads (Shao 2008).”(Owen).

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 Data sources for the audience segment are mostly compiled page views and some have argued

that this is a misleading representation of the audience that is attentive on Tumblr because one of the

main focuses of the Tumblr user is creating blogs posts. It seems more difficult to quantify how engaged

the audience is on the platform, which may take a more qualitative analytical approach to understand.

Right now we have raw numbers for page views on Tumblr and unique visitors to the site. That means

we can see how many times tumblr pages are viewed, and how many times new visitors have come to

Tumblr for the first time. By looking at the graphs below you can infer that both are on a rapid increase,

and based on a randomized poll it appears that Tumblr is the preferred microblogging platform.

However, to analyze the audience further we must extrapolate information from other data sets

that may not be entirely focused on Tumblr such as PEW data sets that focus on smart phone usage or

blogging and try to pull demographic material from that. But from other accounts of the audience

demographics it appears that Tumblr creators are primarily younger users from the Gen-Y segment.

“Gen Yers seek an overall personalized web experience where regardless of where you are, you can

comment or share your opinion (Lyon).” The user base of Tumblr has been calculated as 37 percent

gen-y (Lyon). So, it may be the best route to analyze the audience by doing a cross section of a specific

user segment such as the gen-y group and observing data about their media uses, such as a data set

about college tech use (datablock). Because Tumblr is such a specific segment of the tech user

population it will take a statistical project to dissect the modes and uses of the audience from a larger

data set from PEW such as “Info on the Go: Mobile Access to Data and Information, that reports

demographic differences based on age and race. This survey asks many questions related to tech use,

but does not ask specifically if the user used their device to leave a blog post. Another PEW research

report shows that initially young people were more involved in blogging than they are now, but

considering that Tumblr is not traditional “blogging” could that mean younger users are searching for

new platforms, and Tumblr has benefitted? “Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults

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reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older.

In 2006, 28% of teens ages 12-17 and young adults ages 18-29 were bloggers, but by 2009 the numbers

had dropped to 14% of teens and 15% of young adults. During the same period, the percentage of online

adults over thirty who were bloggers rose from 7% blogging in 2006 to 11% in 2009 (Lenhart).”

Luckily, Tumblr has been receiving a great deal of media attention and it is quite easy to find

information about the companies’ growth within the past few years. Luckily, I have also been able to

find a few graphs that account for the growth of the audience as well as how traditional media

companies have favored Tumblr over other lightblogging platforms. The fact that many traditional

media companies are flocking to new media is nothing new, but does that convolute or notion of

audience? It seems that the media pillars are looking for new ways to get their content out and have

switched to this platform, also using it in new ways (NYULocal).

Tumblr’s success may be due in part to the founders’ commitment to their users uses and

gratifications needs, keeping it very simple and responding to the uses that are desired by their

audience. "They pay close attention to the user experience, keep things simple and straightforward for

the user, instead of the other way around, which is how a software engineer makes us adapt to their

tool (Maleady)" But most importantly it seems that the closest factor to likelihood for a person to be an

early adapter is their desire to use the media and what they plan to use it for. Moreover, Brian Solis

describes blog trends in 2011 as having four tiers of audience members including consumers, at the

lowest level and curators at the second level, creators, and then the elite bloggers or content creators at

the top. He believes that 2011 will be the year of the curator based on the agility and dynamics of new

platforms such as Tumblr which allow users to collect and publish multimedia content that is valuable to

them and their social audience. Tumblr creates a network of hyperpersonal relationships that is built on

the integrity of the posted content, considering that the only connection the audience has is through

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their interest in the content and not one of a social network. So, because the Tumblr platform gives

users the ability to showcase a myriad assortment of videos, images, audio, and more it allows its users

to develop a curate and express their ideas and opinions in unlimited variability of media use.

Statistical Methodology

Hypothesis:

H1: Internet users from The Millennial Generation are more likely to be early adapters to microblogging

and Tumblr use because they have a higher usage of Internet activities associated with Twitter, Video

sharing, and searching and commenting on online news.

Null Hypothesis:

Internet users from the Millenial Generation are not morelikely to be early adapters to microblogging

and Tumblr use because they have a higher usage of Internet activities associated with Twitter, Video

sharing, and searching and commenting on online news.

This study has used the data set provided by PEW Internet Research on Cell Phone Use 2010.

This data set includes survey responses from all generations considered in the United States including:

“Millennials,” “Generation X,” “Young Boomers,” “Older Boomers,” “The Silent Generation,” and the

“G.I. Generation.” This survey asked respondents about their specific Internet use habits including if

they used the Internet for Twitter, video sharing, or for news.

To create the initial generational scale a syntax code was used to order the respondents

according to age. By doing so we could hone in on differences in media usage between the age groups

and test for significance.

Dependent Variables:

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 Within the data set I decided upon three variables that had a similar underlying concept related

to Internet use which include: ACTIV112, “Do you ever use the Internet for Twitter?;” ACTIV02, “Do you

ever use the Internet to search for information related to the News?;” and BACTIV102, “Do you ever use

the Internet to post or view videos on sites such as Youtube?”

Before running any frequencies it is necessary to label discrete missing values. Each of the

variables contain the same type of respondent answers of “Yes,” “Yes, not yesterday,” and “No.”

Originally there were other variations of answers such as “Unknown,” these were labeled as missing

values to correct the scale of measurement.

These variables were then recoded and renamed as: “Twitter,” “OnlineNews,” and “Videos.”

Run Frequencies

Crosstab

The first step will be to compare the independent variable, Age, against each of the indicators to

see if there is any significant correlation with any group of the “generations” by producing a crosstab to

analyze the output.

Initial Analysis for a Good Fitting Model

Once we have found that the variables are statistically significant at the .000 level, and not just

random numbers, we are safe to proceed in creating a scale. A scale is created for the group of

variables that labels the underlying concept as “ApplicationUse.” This is done in the syntax code by

writing compute ApplicationUse=Twitter+OnlineNews+Video. The next step is to run the crosstabs to

show if these variables when combined together show a strong correlation because of the assumed

underlying theme.

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Regression Analysis

Internet Application Use=a+b1AGE+Region

Linear regression analysis is ran on SPSS to find best fit within the variables and it seems that each of the

variables within Application Use is close to .5 and a good fit for the model. When looking at the

outcome it is found that Twitter may be the least likely of the three application uses to be a predictor for

early adaptation of microblogging. However, when Twitter is removed from the group Application Use

the benefit to the studies accuracy is very minimal and does not seem to override the strong current

apparent when viewing all three items combined in Application Use.

Collapse Scale

After running frequencies with our original scale of generations the scale was taken away and a

frequency was ran to see if there was a benefit to the R2 and Coefficients but the gain was very minimal,

and keeping the responses in a generational scale allows for further analysis within the subgroups.

Dummie Variable

Searching for a dummie variable proved to be one of the most difficult aspects of the model and

was a challenge to construct the data to meet the needs of the linear regression analysis test. For this

study several dummie variables were attempted including race and ethnicity and even community type.

In the end the best match for this test, due to the variable responses being a dichotomy was the

CRegion variable. The missing values were coded and the syntax is ran. The coefficients are checked

and the R2, which can be read as a percentage likelihood of predicting the outcome is only 8% which is

not a high predicting level. A higher predictor level is desired but it will be necessary to include other

dummie variables. The next dummie variable to run against our model would be broadband adoption,

another simple dichotomy variable.

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Observations:

The study may be improved first by finding a better dummie variable that proves a higher

percentage of correct prediction as shown by the R Squared feature. There may be a much better fit for

this model. The study could also seek to hone in on the variances of select generation groups within the

scale such as from “Millennials” to “YoungBoomers”. There may be more of a significance when

analyzing these age ranges, but the likelihood is not high.

Fig. 1 This chart shows the number of unique visitors to Tumblr since 2009 (MacManus).

This chart shows monthly page views for 2010 (Vator News, Quantcast).

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Total Page Views by month from 2009 through 2010 ( Sabet, ComScore).

A Poll of Unique Visitors from Oct 09 to Oct 10 (Sherman, Compete).

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Tumblr Blog Network Visits Globally (Quantcast).

Monthly View of Unique users (Quantcast).

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Randomized poll of lightblogging platform preference from unique visitors to Read Write Web
(MacManus).

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Generations Online New Media Summary. Source: PEW Internet Data

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What Types of Media do you regularly use for your blog postings? Source: Brian Solis.

The 3 C’s Creation, Curation, and Consumption. Souce: Brian Solis.

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