Data Analysis Memo #1

For my first piece of data, I originally intended to write a short post on The Autobiography of Jane Eyre and post it to Tumblr. However, when the time came to it, I was in a more Photoshoppy mood, so instead I made a graphic.

Visual media is often the most popular way to express fan enthusiasm on Tumblr. The graphic I made, pictured below, is what’s known in tumblr circles as a “picspam” – a collage of pictures or screencaps that usually centers around one theme. (Possible themes are a particular episode of a TV show, a particular fictional character, a particular fictional character’s most excellent hairstyles, screencaps that feature certain colors or settings, etc. – the possibilities are basically endless.) Picspams are a very common Tumblr “genre”, so it felt more natural for me to contribute to the AOJE fandom in this way than through a text post.

A screencap of my tumblr post. Click for full size.

In this picspam, I wanted to express one thing I admire very much about the series: even though it is set in modern day and produced on a rather small budget, it still strives to capture the Gothic atmosphere that is such an iconic part of Jane Eyre. Originally, I planned to express this in a text post, but I then decided that I wanted to incorporate images from the show itself; ultimately, I decided to let the images speak for themselves. I picked screencaps from episodes that feature particularly dark,eerie,  tense, passionate, or emotionally powerful scenes to encapsulate the Gothicness of it all. Then I posted it to my personal Tumblr blog.

Tumblr users can respond to posts in two ways: by liking or reblogging. Liking is very similar to the Facebook function of the same name; you click a little heart, and it goes on record that you “liked” the post. Reblogging is the way that Tumblr posts actually circulate; by choosing that option, you re-post the item on your own Tumblr blog. That way, it will be seen by all of the users who follow your Tumblr, and will gain more attention. Together, the like function and the reblog function make up Tumblr notes. All posts inform you of the number of notes they have received; it is something of a status symbol or mark of prestige on a Tumblr post.

Over the past week, my picspam post has received 83 notes. This isn’t a particularly high figure for Tumblr (popular posts have hundreds or thousands), but considering the AOJE fandom is still rather new and small, it’s a decent number. It is also about double the number of notes that my one previous post on AOJE, a text post, received.

Most interestingly, my picspam post was reblogged by Alysson Hall, the actress who plays Jane Eyre in the series. She added a quick comment: “CRAY! It’s BEAUTIFULLLL!!! [she says modestly because most of it is pictures of her]”.

Lankshear and Knobel’s concept of the attention economy comes to mind in this instance. Alysson Hall receives a great deal of attention in the AOJE fandom for obvious reasons; she is in the position of simultaneously being a Tumblr user and a writer/actress at the center of a fandom (like a smaller-scale Felicia Day, as discussed in the Ellcessor and Duncan article). Therefore, my post gained a lot of attention from being reblogged to her Tumblr blog. In fact, the majority of the reblogs were a result of her version of the post, not my original version.

STATS

Reblogged the post from Alysson Hall: 16 Tumblr users

Reblogged the post from my original post: 12 Tumblr users

The rest of the notes were likes.

This data is particularly interesting to me because it illuminated how the fans and the creators of this series share an affinity space on Tumblr. When a fan of AOJE posts about the series on Tumblr, it is with the knowledge that there’s a very good chance it will be seen by Hall and other people involved in making the show.

I am still narrowing down my focus re: Tumblr and AOJE, but this experience made me realize that I’m very interested in examining how fandom contribute and interacts with mediums that aren’t text-based. Yesterday, I did an experiment of sorts by posting a picspam and a text post of the newest episode to see which would gain more attention – but that’s another data analysis for another day!