thesis discussion

Methods and Formats

I’m aware that my research question itself is wide ranging. In full extrapolation I’d explore various options for decentralised web technologies. I focused instead on critique of centralised platforms as the need for an anti-capitalist approach to technology is well-documented in the general, but not the specific. In the case of resistive fragment assemblages (a deliberately loose definition) I aim to bridge the formal and the unstructured by applying the very-technical to emergent structures of knowledge online.

An issue I see with my work is in the uncritical acceptance of connectivity as desirable. I could go much further to show where the ‘right to be forgotten’ should exclude authors from knowledge lineage or how anonymity/multiple identities can protect the vulnerable. Favouring quantifiable ‘information’ over the sociability of sharing may exclude already precarious knowledges (e.g. inherently sociable oral transmissions) and encourage a “culture of connectivity instead of connection” (Tiidenberg, Hendry, and Abidin, 2021, pp. 12). The multi-view paradigm should extend further into relational knowledges. The radical extension of my premise would allow direct represent of experiential knowledges and interfacing with physical stores of data, questioning the applicability of anything digital to ethical data capture.

I could go much further to discuss what the decentralised web lacks, and what affects its adoption. In passing I blame the ‘nerdwall’ (@rosano, 2025) of technical infrastructure, poor usability and accessibility and lack of funding for developers. There’s also room to further discuss para-archival practise as tactical media.

Due to meta-interest in the mechanisms of academia and experimental publishing I found selection of methodology and format surprisingly difficult. I feel what my research lacks in methodological clarity it still makes valuable contribution to method in the explicit promotion of whim as direction. Practises I’m yet to solidify are a direct result of my autism and brain fog, which I choose to reclaim as an inherently neurodivergent practise. In following rabbit-holes I allow a wide breadth of interests to wrestle for priority but develop a more holistic view of my subjects and retain loose threads. The result of this enquiry is unashamedly messy as it extols the added value of messy, naturalistic, qualitative data that is inherently tied to its authorship and context.

Platform Analyses

Full case studies of individual platform users would’ve held additional insights on individual intentions. I didn’t necessarily establish that assemblage practises resulted in significant action offline. I may have fallen into the trap described by Smolicki (2017, pp.43), where social media platforms are framed as the only major forces in personal archiving. I’d propose browser bookmarks, ‘recent files’ and screenshots as highly significant forms of personal archiving less prone to market fluctuation.

In providing context for Are.na I pulled heavily from literature on Pinterest and Tumblr (or social media in general) due to lack of study into Are.na’s specifics. There are many remaining avenues of interest in Are.na’s community, discourses, development and company culture. I determined that Are.na would also be a good site for participatory research or elicitation from those who’d turn down traditional interviews - private channels can serve as a low-pressure, multi-modal, asynchronous communicative space.

It proved logistically difficult to analyse both Pinterest and Are.na with the resources available due to the wide scope of ‘resistance’. I opted for a loose qualitative analysis with selective sampling so I could exemplify themes I most wanted to address rather than evidence quantitative prevalence of particular patterns. Minor choices (e.g. omitting certain metadata) will have skewed my insight.

My findings offer a new angle of enquiry on Pinterest usage and extend previous findings to Are.na. I present resistive fragment assemblages as a flexible description of patterns found on Tumblr, Pinterest, Are.na and likely more.

Further Work

There are several directions in which I’d like to take this work. Most practically, to develop and iterate on the tool proposed. I intend to follow several connected threads in the near future and continue on the foundation I’ve laid here.

primary interests:

• more on annotations, highlights and marginalia
• more on refinding, context and thick screenshots
• direct capture and representation

digital humanities:

• porting the affordances of scrapbooks/collage/art resistance/posters/zines
• unrealised possibilities of hypertext
• expanding on digital commonplace books and PKM re-emergence
• more on web 1.0 patterns that could be/should be/are preserved/preservable
• physical media, tangible mediums and sensory needs
• embodied collective healing
• applications in memory studies, personal albums