The self—harmed, visualized, and reblogged: Remaking of self-injury narratives on Tumblr

Abstract

Images featuring self-injury (SI) have been proliferating on social media. This article reports the findings of a visual narrative analysis of 294 photo-based posts on Tumblr, exploring how SI is narrated through the interplay between image content, photographic composition, associated texts and tags, and reblogging. Findings reveal a shift in the iconography of SI from direct depictions of self-injured bodies to re-appropriations of popular media content that figuratively represent emotional struggles. Images of self-inflicted wounds received 10 times less reblogs than images without wounds, and media memes conveying hopeless moods were the most widely distributed. These memes represent SI as a form of life struggle virtually anyone can face while complicating conventional readings of SI as an individual pathologic experience. We discuss these findings in the context of an emergent online curation culture and how Tumblr’s unique affordances may both offer and limit possibilities for narrating SI.