New ways of seeing: Tumblr, young people and mental illness

Abstract

In this essay, I advocate for alternative, more user-based approaches to understanding mental health and its circulation on social media. I focus on young people’s use of Tumblr because of its popularity among my participants during this period. The platform’s affordances offered them new forms of expression and, therefore, new ways of seeing for me, allowing me to shift my focus away from images of self-injury to consider the wider array of “visibilities” the platform indicated. I share two conceptual frames based on my work with young people: visibility as recognition and representation, and visibility as emotional authenticity and recovery. The first example explains how “chat” posts, mem..