From me to you: building relatability in a PhD students Tumblr blog

Résumé En

Tumblr is a “microblogging and a social networking site” that “enables users to post and share a variety of different types of media (text, photos, videos, GIFs) on their individual blogs” (Vasquez 2019: 87). It hosts popular blogs where users share their experience of academic and / or PhD life thanks to posts combining a caption and a GIF. In this paper, I explore how posters construct relatability in such posts. The data originates in one particular Tumblr blog, PhD in Gifs!, including all content posted since the opening of the blog in November of 2018 (264 posts). Building up on previous research about GIF use, social media posts and memes, particularly Giulia Giorgi 2022, the study examines how posters succeed in transforming personal experience into something shareable and relatable. It particulary focuses on genericity, in form and content, as a key feature in the blog’s posts, while also looking at other factors such as image choice, humour type and the type of situation the post is about. The study takes a broad “discourse approach” (Rodney Jones 2016) to the analysis of the posts, considering traditional linguistic material (linguistic markers used in the caption) and semiotic features (non-linguistic communication markers used in the GIFs) within the broader perspective of posting as a social practice.