Behind the Scenes (Challenge 4)
This week’s challenge has been to lurk on two social media sites about our respective social problems. “Lurking” is the act of simply observing what others say about a topic on social media and not personally participating in it.
For my lurking experience, I lurked on Twitter and Tumblr in “#lgbt representation” and would scroll through results and read what people posted about it. For these two sites, it did not feel too strange to be lurking, because a majority of my time spent on those social media outlets is done by browsing and scrolling my feed (occasionally liking, replying, sharing and posting my own material). However, it was different to be within a certain tag for about 10 minutes every day. I do not usually go too deep into specific subjects.
Twitter and Tumblr offered similar results while I lurked. The only limit for my results on Twitter was the character limit for each tweet. Each tweet is only allowed 140 characters; so users must be short and to the point when posting. For this reason, what I read on Twitter was very concise and straightforward: users are looking for more representation in the TV shows they watch. They also use their small amount of characters to give praise to shows that actually do give a good amount of LGBT representation. Audiences seem so hungry for this sort of representation, that even the smallest amount of appropriate representation in TV will create a flurry of tweets by the watchers. How To Get Away With Murder is a current TV show that people are especially pleased with in terms of LGBT representation.
Tumblr on the other hand has no character limit, so this allows its users to speak more about the topic. Often, the posts I see in the tag on Tumblr are of people creating compilations and lists of shows that account for moments of LGBT representation. Users of Tumblr seem especially excited when children’s cartoons and shows exhibit representation because the TV stations are informing children at a young and impressionable age that being in the LGBT spectrum is normal. Here is a post someone made that compiles different scenes of LGBT representation on television shows for children: http://13eclaire.tumblr.com/post/114361939801/what-a-time-to-be-alive . TV shows are given bounds of praise for not constantly showing heterosexuality to be the norm because there are so many different relationship types and sexualities. On Tumblr, people also give lengthy responses to questions asked by their followers on their opinion regarding LGBT representation.
For both Twitter and Tumblr, users seem to be more comfortable in speaking their mind and using their own voice. They are not afraid to let their opinion be known, despite people reading their material and responding to it. Representation is important because there is not just one type of person. In order to feel like they can connect to a show or any type of media, people need to see their own traits be portrayed in popular culture.
