2025/10/01 by Indira Neill Hoch · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Digital Games and Media #Asian Culture and Media Studies #Japanese History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1386/jfs_00117_1
openalex publication_date 2025/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/11/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article uses multimodal discourse analysis to address responses to perceived sexualization on Tumblr through the explication of a specific post and its reblogs. Tumblr’s particular affordances in the period around 2018–19 prevented (and continues to prevent) discussion between and among fans, in contrast to other online spaces, such as message boards. Instead, this post, utilizing content from anime Kill la Kill (2013) serves as material for a process of digital assemblage, by which Tumblr users reblog these posts, sometimes appending additional content and sometimes without adding anything, as part of an online construction of self, steeped in conflict. Rather than participating in a discussion about sexualization intended to persuade or influence, these reblog chains instead become the materials of an online assemblage of self, always subject to transformation based upon the context in which they appear.