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Global social media practice: Case study on china (‘Winter has come’: Censorship of China’s social media platforms)

China is being ranked as the world’s largest Internet user with 513 million people which is double the number of users in the United States. For example, more than 300 million people uses blogs, microblogs and other online communities (Chiu, Ip & Silverman, 2012). However, the Chinese government has kept a tight control over traditional and new media to prevent potential disruptive to its own authority. Monitoring systems and firewalls are one of the strategies used on strict media controls such as, jailing dissenters and blocking websites or publications (Xu & Albert, 2017). Therefore, the Chinese government has catered to its citizens’ needs by providing its own social media platform, such as Tencent QQ, QZone, Sina Weibo, YouKu, WeChat, 51.com, Pengyou, RenRen, Jiayuan, Kaixin001and Douban ("China Social Media | Social Media Monitoring in China", n.d.).

Bypassing the censors

Regardless of the systematic control over the news, the Chinese public has discovered other ways to avoid it. For example, famous software such as, Psiphon, Freegate and Ultrasurf are allowing the Chinese users to set up proxy servers and avoiding controls. Besides that, VPNs are also one of the popular software which allow the users to insert new IP address into the host files even when the government cracked down on the systems. Not only that, a free of charge software program, Tor or SSH tunnels also helps to direct the internet traffic through a remote server. The Congress indicates that one to eight percent of the Chinese Internet users are using VPNs and proxy servers to get away from firewalls (Xu & Albert, 2017).

Creative Terms to disrupt Censorship

Moreover, Weibo, a microblogging site have become the dominant platform for the Chinese netizens to speak up their opinions as well as discussing taboo topics. Throughout the years, the Chinese netizens have developed a large amount of homophonous and visual puns, slang, memes, images and acronyms circumvent the censors and restrictions (Xu & Albert, 2017).

Examples of Coded Phrases (Luo, 2015)

1.     (帝都-dì dū): Beijing. To avoid the criticisms of Beijing, ‘Imperial capital” is used by netizens to avoid censorship.

2.     (翻墙-fān qiáng): Getting passed the barrier of Internet. The Chinese netizens used the term to refer as them utilizing software such as VPNs to get through Internet blockade.

3.     (裸官 luǒ guān): Corrupted Government officials transferring illegal funds to bank account in the overseas while ignoring the poverty of China.

Social media bringing changes to China

Wen Huajian, China’s first microblog novel’s author claimed that Weibo has become a more direct and transparent platform for the Chinese society. For example, the topic of corruption has with debated and a few local officials have been forced to stand down from their position. Weibo’s ability to stay connected with the society has also helped the street children and stop the use of sharks’ fin through organizing campaigns (Hewitt, 2012).

Examples of the campaigns

For example, a campaign ‘Take a Photo, Save a Child’ campaign was established in 2012 after Yu Jianrong whom is the Director of the Center for the Study of Social Problems at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) seek help from his followers to help with the search of a missing child from Fujian. A large number of people were participating in to join the search. Yu then realized that uploading photographs on microblog can help to reach a large number of audiences and it is a useful way to increase awareness of child begging ("Take a Photo, Save a Child | Human Rights in China 中国人权 | HRIC", 2012). In addition, ‘WildAid’ campaign in stopping people consumption of shark fins has raised awareness through working with Weibo. It is reported that the sales of shark fins has dropped by 82 percent and reaching 200 million subscribers with 50 millions posts read and 340,000 users uploaded photos ("New Report Finds Shark Fin Demand Down, Awareness Up. - WildAid", 2014).

With Sina’s new feature of including images, it has constructed relationship with Youku that enables the young generations to upload videos and featuring their talents online which allows them to express their emotions and themselves (Hewitt, 2012).

Tencent, has lend a helping hand in the Wenchuan’s earthquake that killed 69,000 people in the year of 2008. For example, Tencent Charity which is the company’s desktop and mobile donation site are enabling 100 million users to donate $250 million, 1.7 billion yuan which is an average of $2.50 and 17 yuan respectively (Flannery, 2017).

Reference:

China Social Media | Social Media Monitoring in China. Retrieved from https://www.translatemedia.com/translation-services/social-media/china-social-media/

Chiu, C., Ip, C., & Silverman, A. (2012). Understanding social media in China. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/understanding-social-media-in-china

Flannery, R. (2017). How China's Social Media Giant Tencent Is Shaking Up Traditional Philanthropy. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2017/05/22/how-chinas-social-media-giant-tencent-is-shaking-up-traditional-philanthropy/#31f98cb7e6c0

Hewitt, D. (2012). Has Weibo really changed China?. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18887804

Luo, I. (2015). 20 Ingenious Code Words Chinese Netizens Use to Skirt Censors. Retrieved from https://www.theepochtimes.com/20-ingenious-code-words-chinese-netizens-use-to-skirt-censors_1711255.html

New Report Finds Shark Fin Demand Down, Awareness Up. - WildAid. (2014). Retrieved from https://wildaid.org/new-report-finds-shark-fin-demand-down-awareness-up/

Take a Photo, Save a Child | Human Rights in China 中国人权 | HRIC. (2012). Retrieved from https://www.hrichina.org/en/crf/article/6457

Xu, B., & Albert, E. (2017). Media Censorship in China. Retrieved from https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/media-censorship-china

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Social gaming

When people think of “Social Gaming”, first thing came to their mind is definitely Facebook games. Facebook had certainly become an amazing platform for social games a few years ago. Most of us who are on Facebook must’ve received tons of invitation links of the games on Facebook to join the action. To quote just a few examples, Farmville, Tetris Battle, and the list goes on and on. The relentless Facebook requests for such games have been declared slower, but today, all sorts of social gaming titles are still available to large audiences ("What exactly are social games and what makes them different?", 2018).

What is Social Gaming?

When the Facebook platform was launched in 2004, many observers from this new platform quickly realized that gaming became one of the most popular application categories on the site (O'Neill, 2008). What social gaming is, that being said? What is a social game and what distinguishes it from others? It is a game on Facebook, you might say. However, it might not be so simple like that. It is due to the fact that not every Facebook games is the same ("What exactly are social games and what makes them different?", 2018). Hence, to answer the question of “What is a social game and what distinguishes it from others?”, here are some examples which shows the difference between them.

Multiplayer – Obviously, it needs to be Multiplayer for player to interact with each other.

Based on social platforms – I believe that the component of "social games" is that social platforms are built around them. Social platforms offer users an identity in social gaming and it will also provide the functions for basic types of communication such as notifications (O'Neill, 2008).

Casual gaming - Most of the social media games you find can normally be seen as casual games. Whereby you don't need a lot of knowledge or an extraordinary skill or high IQ to get the hang out of it ("What exactly are social games and what makes them different?", 2018).

Tetris Battle

Tetris Battle is a remake of a classic video game in Facebook and it was launched in 2010. Within a short period of time, it had become one of the largest games in Facebook. As already reported by the AppData traffic tracking service in 2012, Tetris Battle ranked in the top 10 of the most popular Facebook games. In that period Tetris Battle enjoyed around 3.1 million active users a day, with 2 million of those coming to play for the last 2 months alone (Au, 2012). The reason why this game is so successful is because it has a sense of competition. Players will get to challenge with either AI, real player online or play with their friends on Facebook. There is also a levelling system inside this game. Ultimately, it encourages the players to keep engaging in this game.

Reference:

Au, J. (2012). Inside Tetris Battle, Facebook's top multiplayer arcade game. Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/digital/inside-tetris-battle-facebooks-top-multiplayer-arcade-game/

O'Neill, N. (2008). What Exactly are Social Games?. Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/digital/social-games/

What exactly are social games and what makes them different?. (2018). Retrieved from https://medium.com/buff-game/what-exactly-are-social-games-and-what-makes-them-different-e24623382558

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Fandom and Fan Activism

The word fandom is referring to a subculture composed of a lot of fans who share a sense of compassion and sense of community with other people. Take, for example, Tv shows, bands, sports, idol, and the list goes on, these are the most common and popular culture in this modern world. Most of the fans will spend a good amount of time and effort with the things that they are concerned.  In general, they are even keen in every relatively trivial information of their fandom artifacts which in this scenario, it is extremely common for them.

Where does the word Fandom came from?

A very ancient term begins the history of the term "fandom" – "fanatic." "fanatic". It is a Latin word "fānāticus," meaning "temple," or "shrine," that was derived from the word 'fanum' in turn. Nonetheless, the term “fandom” had already been around for over a century. Fandom can appear in many forms to be a very contemporary internet-based occurrence. However, millennials have not really been the first people to be excited about their favorite things. Fan organizations had published fan journals, attended counterparts, wrote fanfare and made fanvids long before from the Internet existed. However, It did not take much time for people to shorten 'fanatic' to 'fan' as soon as 1682 variants of ' fan ' were printed (Rutherford-Morrison, 2016).

K-pop Fandom

The connection K-pop artists have with their fans is a defining feature of the K-pop entertainment industry. The status of fandom lies in a group's achievement, and K-pop artists always recognize the existence of their fans as an artist along the way. These have led K-Pop fans from around the world to forge powerful connections with their favorite artists who exceed their love of music (Gogoi, 2018) In 2017, a K-pop group called BTS shook the world and managed to become the first K-pop group to make it into the top ten in the Billboard 200 chart. The BTS army ended Justin Bieber’s six years winning streak with more than 300 million votes worldwide (Blake, 2018). Some of the fanbases are even willing to spend a lot of money to take ads at New York Times Square and BTS army is also one of them (Gogoi, 2018).

Harry Potter Alliance

Andrew Slack is the founder of Harry Potter Alliance. According to him, “this is not about just simply can we get Warner Brothers to make change, this is about encouraging other groups to embrace the books, the TV shows, the stories they love to make change. If we don’t utilise stories then we are making a grave mistake, we are missing the boat in terms of the role that symbolism can play in terms of deep impact. We’re interested in changing the nature of activism.” ("Fan Activism - The Young Foundation", 2014). Aside from Harry Potter Alliance, there are also Racebending, Nerdfighters, and Imagine Better. All of these are pursuing the same approaches and methods to promote social justice activities. Apart from that, encouraging their supporters to change their involvement in participatory culture to political life (Jenkins & Shreshtova, 2012).

References:

Blake, E. (2018). The Strength Of K-Pop Fandom, By The Numbers. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilyblake1/2018/04/04/k-pop-numbers/#7d424fdb48ab

Fan Activism - The Young Foundation. (2014). Retrieved from https://youngfoundation.org/research/fan-activism/

Gogoi, M. (2018). A different kind of love: A look at K-pop fandom through fanbases, fansites. Retrieved from https://www.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/a-different-kind-of-love-a-look-at-k-pop-fandom-through-fanbases-fansites/story-Csnfpz7MFELemtHpbijpDM.html

Jenkins, H., & Shreshtova, S. (2012). Up, Up and Away!: The Power and Potential of Fan Activism. Retrieved from http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2012/07/fandom_is_built_on_psychologic.html 

Rutherford-Morrison, L. (2016). Where Did The World "Fandom" Come From?. Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/articles/144396-where-did-the-word-fandom-come-from-behind-the-term-that-changed-the-internet-forever

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Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a term used to describe the way a large group of people get works or funds in an online platform. The fundamental concept of this term is to assemble a wide group of people to create content or to help create content or products with their skills, ideas and participation (Goodrich, 2013). Take, for example, when a “crowdsourcer” posted an advertisement of a problem or project, the general public, as known as the crowd or subject matter experts will suggest a solution to that particular matter. In addition to that, individual who solved the problem will get paid and rewarded which is a win-win situation for both parties ("What is Crowdsourcing? - Definition from Techopedia", n.d.).

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is when companies, organizations or people fund a project or a small project with many people’s donations. In short, rather than a single or two big investors, a "crowd" finances a project or business through internet platforms (Conlin, 2019).

Crowdfunding website

Although there are a lot of crowdfunding website, they still have the same concept even though they might have a different purpose or approach. Whereby the concept is very straightforward, a large group of crowd or potential investors will fund the projects which they are interested in (Falcon, 2017).

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is one of the most remarkable and proven crowdfunding resources (Conlin, 2019). This website had successfully launched 61,000 projects so far and raised a total of $220 million from it. Although Kickstarter accepts all major kinds of projects, they did not accept awareness campaign or charity (Falcon, 2017). Kickstarter earns money by collecting 5% of the total amount of money funded on the website to make a profit that pays for the cost of running the site, including publicity and payments to employees ("How Does a Kickstarter Make Money?", 2018).

GoFundMe

GoFundMe is also one of the most well-known crowdfunding websites and this website is focusing more on charity. Therefore, GoFundMe is the best way to raise funds (Falcon, 2017). Yes, that's right. GoFundMe is also a for-profit company. 5% of the donations collected on its platform will be taken by it. A 2.9% payment-processing fee is also charged for each donation and 30 cents for each donation (Anglen, 2017).

Problem

With the rapid growth of these platforms, it will be a hairy situation where there might be a lot of illegal campaigns going on. In the majority of cases, the terms and conditions listed by the websites of a campaign are usually sufficient. However, at times the rules are not strictly or clearly enforced sufficiently, which causes public outrage (Sikupela, 2015).

Reference:

Anglen, R. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/consumers/2017/11/14/gofundme-how-it-works-makes-money-pays-you-prevents-fraud/859211001/

Conlin, B. (2019). What Is Crowdfunding?. Retrieved from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4134-what-is-crowdfunding.html

Falcon, A. (2017). 10 Crowdfunding Sites To Fuel Your Dream Project - Hongkiat. Retrieved from https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/crowdfunding-sites/

Goodrich, R. (2013). What is Crowdsourcing?. Retrieved from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4025-what-is-crowdsourcing.html

How Does a Kickstarter Make Money?. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120214/how-does-kickstarter-make-money.asp

Sikupela, M. (2015). The ethics of crowdfunding: should sites just say no to some campaigns? - Memeburn. Retrieved from https://memeburn.com/2015/04/the-ethics-of-crowdfunding-should-sites-just-say-no-to-some-campaigns/

What is Crowdsourcing? - Definition from Techopedia. Retrieved from https://www.techopedia.com/definition/27816/crowdsourcing

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Trolling: Impact On Social Media

What Is Trolling?

The word "troll" is a slang for anyone who deliberately begins to argue online in order to provoke a person or group into a reaction (Griffiths, 2018). Essentially, in order to get a rise out of others, a social media troll will do everything it takes to achieve their primary objective which is really hilarious. Nowadays, most of us probably have experienced trolling before if we are active on social media. Trolling often happens on sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. When national or international events are taking place, Facebook will become particularly intense. Arguments are endless and comments on either side are often shown in threads in order to get a leap out of the other ("Trolls and Their Impact on Social Media | James Hanson", n.d.).

Internet Trolling

When we discuss about internet trolling, it had certainly become a common activity where most of the people are being part of it. However, this is just non-sense and not funny at all because people who trolled are getting enjoyment and hurting other people at the same time. This is unthoughtful and cruel because it can lead to severe consequences such as people who are mentally weak or having depression may commit to suicide due to the hurtful comments they received. To add insult to the injury, their family will have to live with the painful aftermath. Online trolling has a serious impact on young people and a recent research has shown that 1 out of 3 young people aged 14-18 have received provocative online comments and 1 out of 10 have done so (trolling) ("Online Trolling and the effects on Young People", n.d.).  

How to Respond to Trolls

It is important for young people on social media to know how to deal with internet trolls especially with the rise of internet trolling cases nowadays. The first time we encounter an internet troll, it can be an overwhelming and confusing experience. It may even be frightening if the comments are very hurtful or menacing, not only are we taken out of guard. In order to reduce the negative experience we might encounter online, we need to ignore or block someone who keeps on sending us inappropriate content or messages that will make us feel depressed. Twitter is one of the most frequently used social media platforms, so Twitter have developed many ways to combat keyboard warriors. Twitter added a new feature where users can mute and block unwanted notification (Griffiths, 2018). If a profile is suspicious for posting inappropriate content, users are able to report that profile so that Twitter can look into it.

Reference:

Griffiths, J. (2018). What is an internet troll and what are the laws protecting us from social media abuse?. Retrieved from https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3169348/internet-troll-twitter-online-celebrities-uk-nicola-roberts/

Online Trolling and the effects on Young People. Retrieved from https://www.waynedenner.com/blog/online-trolling-and-the-effects-on-young-people/

Trolls and Their Impact on Social Media | James Hanson. Retrieved from https://unlcms.unl.edu/engineering/james-hanson/trolls-and-their-impact-social-media

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Activism and Protest:Social Media

With the rise of social media and the way that we interact with it, it is undeniably that social media matters for activism and protest. Protests nowadays are relying more on a large number of common people on the internet instead of one captivating leader. It is due to the fact that progressive politics have moved in that direction. Long ago, the organization of a successful protest could take weeks of planning, or even longer than that. Not only that, newspaper ads and a convincing speaker are also very crucial for it to really happen. Now you can create a chaos with just a Facebook post or a series of tweets (Cohen, 2018).

#BlackLivesMatter

Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager was shot by George Zimmerman in 2012. Black Lives Matter is a leading of protests against police violence and fatal shooting of black men (Cohen 2018). The talks around this hashtag often focus on violence, race and law enforcement. The new Pew Research Center analysis of public tweets found that this hashtag had been used for almost 30,000,000-times, averaging 17,002 times a day, as of May 1, 2018. It had certainly become a typical example of modern social media protests (Anderson, Toor, Rainie & Smith, 2018).

In addition to that, there are other popular hashtag like #MeToo and #MAGA that led to a more comprehensive discussion on the efficiency and viability of using social media to engage both politically and socially. According to a survey, many people believe that all these can really make an impact in achieving several policy objectives. Take, for example, creating sustained social change movements and letting politicians to pay attention to the issues (Anderson, Toor, Rainie & Smith, 2018).

Rupert García and Andy Warhol created posters to provoke audiences and support for a certain purpose, just like many artists and activists ("Activism and Protest: Taking Creative Action", n.d.) These posters can really make people to identify the issues.

Rupert García, Down with the Whiteness, 1969.

Andy Warhol, Vote McGovern, 1972

Nevertheless, people still need to bear in mind that getting the right message from social media is crucial. Conservatives are most likely finding themselves in an echo chamber from a retweeting habits as shown in a statistical model.  Three separate studies on the basis of millions of tweets also showed that conservatives are much more likely to disseminate disinformation, to be exposed to pro-Russian disinformation, and to pursue conspiracy theories. According to two seperate studies, retweeting patterns may significantly impact protests’ success, because the retweeting by periphery activists can represent almost 50 percent of the reach of protest movements in social media (Oliver, 2018).

References:

Activism and Protest: Taking Creative Action. Retrieved from https://www.nga.gov/education/teachers/lessons-activities/uncovering-america/activism-and-protest/activism-and-protest-activity.html

Anderson, M., Toor, S., Rainie, L., & Smith, A. (2018). Activism in the Social Media Age. Retrieved from https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/07/11/activism-in-the-social-media-age/

Cohen, S. (2018). Social media is the new heart of political protests | WTOP. Retrieved from https://wtop.com/social-media/2018/06/todays-protests-many-voices-social-media-not-1-leader/

Oliver, P. (2018). According to the Data: How Social Media Matters for Protest and Activism. Retrieved from https://medium.com/center-for-data-science/according-to-the-data-how-social-media-matters-for-protest-and-activism-f88caa05b333

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Political Engagement

What is Political Engagement?

It is an act of involving in an activity that is related to political. There are numerous forms of political engagement and majority of us will be taking part in one of those engagement at different points of our life (White, n.d.). With that said, here are the most general forms of political engagement.

Voting

Contributing money to a political group

Volunteering for a campaign

Public protest

Importance of Political Engagement

It is utmost important to allow the voices of citizens to be heard. One of the best ways for the citizens to make a significant change to their community is political engagement. This is due to the fact that people will have a better understanding of where their government is going wrong once they engaged in their countries’ politics. In this context, the government could not ignore the issues of the people if they started to take action ("The importance of your political participation", 2017).

Impact of Social Media on Politics

The utilization of social media in politics including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has significantly changed the manner in which campaigns are run and how Americans correspond to their elected authorities. The prevalence of political social media has enhanced the accountability and accessibility of electors and public office candidates. 

The ability to publish and broadcast content to millions of people instantly allow campaigns to manage the images of their candidates carefully in real time and at almost no cost based on the extensive analysis. Political campaigns have become relatively common in producing advertising publications and publishing them free of charge on YouTube rather than paying time on TV or on radio (Murse, 2019).

Barack Obama won the US presidential election in 2008 by intelligently using Twitter to spread his message among the electorate. During the 2012 presidential election, Obama's campaign had much greater capacity to respond to unfolding commentary on political events in real time, which likely facilitated his victory (Dutta & Bhat, 2016).

It is obvious that Facebook's increasing political role has changed the way to participation. It’s certainly always seeing people organizing protest activities and “liking” political figure or a party on Facebook with political preferences. Facebook use thus has a significant influence on youth in online political engagement. Online political engagement means an individual who sends  political messages to politicians via Facebook, commenting on their posts, and the list goes on. This provides more ways for young people to be active in political affairs and all of these are impossible during the previous generations (Muda & Mohamad, 2017).

Reference

Dutta, N., & Bhat, A. (2016). Use of Social Media for Political Engagement: A Literature Review [Ebook]. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312468953_Use_of_Social_Media_for_Political_Engagement_A_Literature_Review

Muda, S., & Mohamad, B. (2017). Youth Online Political Participation: The Role of Facebook Use, Interactivity, Quality Information and Political Interest [Ebook] (p. 2). EDP Sciences. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313289214_Youth_Online_Political_Participation_The_Role_of_Facebook_Use_Interactivity_Quality_Information_and_Political_Interest

Murse, T. (2019). Social Media in Politics - Twitter and Facebook as Campaigns Tools. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/how-social-media-has-changed-politics-3367534

Political Polarization: Political Engagement and Activism. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-5-political-engagement-and-activism/

The importance of your political participation. (2017). Retrieved from https://rightforeducation.org/2017/10/political-participation/

White, D. What is Political Participation? - Definition, Forms & Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-political-participation-definition-forms-examples.html

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Is Tumblr a blog or social network site?

 Before we start the debate, let’s understand what is Tumblr.

Introduction to Tumblr

Tumblr is the hottest blogging and social networking platform launched by the famous entrepreneur David Karp and the designer Marco Arment in 2007. An adequate number of 75,000 people registered on Tumblr within two weeks’ time when it went live. According to a survey conducted on 2012, Tumblr hosted more than 64 million blogs. In addition to that, there are over 13 million people visited on Tumblr a month with majority of them having their own active blogs (Boone 2012).

Features of Tumblr

Tumblr allows users to post short-form blog with not only text, but also animated GIFs, videos, pictures, and links on it. Users on Tumblr are able to interact with other users by 'reblog’, ‘like’, and ‘comment’ on their particular post. Not only that, Tumblr also lets their users to subscribe to as many user’s pages as they want. Thus, there is no limit (Boone 2012). It also allows users to customize their blogs’ appearance. Take, for example, changing title color, background image, avatar or just using template themes that are provided.

What Exactly is a Blog?

A blog is like an online journal written on a website with text, animated GIFs, videos, etc. A blogger can set their own blog for public or private access depending on their own choice of needs (Spencer, J). 

What Exactly is a Social Network Site?

A social networking site is an online platform where users are able to create a public profile and connect with other people on the website ("What is a Social Networking Site (SNS)? - Definition from Techopedia", n.d.).

So is Tumblr a blog or social network site?

Tumblr fulfill the standards of both blogging platform and social networking site. You can use it only for blogging or only for social networking with others online, or you can do both to reach its full potential. There are actually a lot of similarities between Tumblr and other social networking sites that most of us are on now such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram if you had really dig deep into Tumblr (Moreau, 2019). 

For instance, if you have been following a blogger on Tumblr, you will get notified on the dashboard once they posted a blog. You can even like, comment, and share that particular post just like Facebook. In this regard, that makes it a lot like a social network (Gobry, 2010). On the contrary, Tumblr has the same objective as Twitter but seek for more than what Twitter can cover. To give an example, Twitter has a 140 character limit for their users per tweet, while Tumblr do not have such character limit (Joan, 2011).

All in all, to answer the question of either Tumblr is a blog or social network site,  it really just depends on how you use it.

References

Boone, B. (2012). How Tumblr Works. Retrieved from https://computer.howstuffworks.com/tumblr.htm

Gobry, P. (2010). Here's How Tumblr Is Better Than Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-tumblr-is-better-than-facebook-2010-12/?IR=T

Joan, B. (2011). Difference Between Twitter and Tumblr | Difference Between | Twitter vs Tumblr. Retrieved from http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/internet/difference-between-twitter-and-tumblr/

Spencer, J. What Is A Blog? - A Guide to Understanding The Concept Of Blogging - Make A Website Hub. Retrieved from https://makeawebsitehub.com/what-is-a-blog/

Moreau, E. (2019). The Complete Beginner's Guide to Using Tumblr. Retrieved from https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-tumblr-4049305

What is a Social Networking Site (SNS)? - Definition from Techopedia. Retrieved from https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4956/social-networking-site-sns