Are.na analysis

import ArenaGrid from ’../../../../../components/ArenaGrid.astro’; import ArenaEmbed from ’../../../../../components/ArenaEmbed.astro’;

See the main body of my thesis for context and discussion of the most relevant themes, see below for the details of my analysis, or see ‘future-building on Are.na’ for individual blocks.

sub-question: - how do boards of the same variety/under the same topics as the Pinterest analysis a) compare b) contrast c) extend themes established on Pinterest?

started with descriptive codes established by the Pinterest analysis
then went through again with extra observations from Are.na specifically that didn’t come up in Pinterest analysis
refined the codes on combination

Themes

theme	details	builds on/extends (Pinterest theme)
rich linked data	title, description, image and source all useful and correct format. even more useful than the Pinterest equivalents	image as data, hyperconnected
org bookmark	much more common usage as bookmark to external org, but image tends to be less useful than Pinterest (auto-screenshot rather than diagram)	image as gateway
article bookmark	much more common usage as bookmark to external org, image usually just as secondary as Pinterest	image as gateway
pdf library	directly embedded pdfs with or without source. book cover provides image cover. occasionally pdfs are incomplete/preview only
knowledge lineage	direct quotes, directly sourced, cited by, cited in, secondary sources
quote or commentary?	unclear if excerpting, annotating or quoting source
elusive provenance	common to see unsourced quotes/similar but source is more easily findable through metadata details of provenance, source in image or at end of content	citation needed
reflective curation	more cohesively and specifically themed boards, thoughtful commentary and descriptions, study guides	just collection
a11y	(accessibility) - description has content warnings or alt text
desiring connection	links to google search for the keyword or to wikipedia page of main concept, book cover to WorldCat library search or to purchase	image as gateway
resource bookmark	databases, art collections, digital tools, lists as screenshots, indexes or resource hubs linked as bookmarks	image as gateway
multi-block spread	multiple quotes or screenshots or images from one source split across several blocks, whether related or not. flat ontology not always useful.
annotations baked in	screenshots of text used to add highlights/underlines/annotations along with content, or use of pdf embed highlights feature
embed me please	occasionally other specific kinds of entities are saved on Are.na as links, (you can’t save w/o an image on Pinterest). it’s possible these will be (or the user was hoping for) an upcoming embed. examples: podcasts, slides, events, interactive sites, maps
multi-modal	text authored directly by an Are.na user, directly embedded video or audio
screenshot cruft	cookie banners, ads, social buttons, large menus, donation banners etc take up the auto-screenshot space. these screenshots rarely useful, maybe to archival but not curation. - peripheral articles in screenshots maybe useful…
hopeful futures	a lot more common to have themes of futurist/hopeful/building	actionable utopias, actionable dystopias, connecting past, present and future
loosely threaded	less threaded dialogues overall. still commonly includes Twitter threads, and these more often has provenance/exact date included in image or linked to thread itself. reposts common from Instagram	screenshotting threads, Tumblr thread of gold, syndication or repost?
action in community	more action-focused, explicitly in community	self-actualisation, self-transcendence, strategies or tactics?
earnest exploration	less memes/edits/humour/etc than Pinterest, but still common. tends towards deliberately educational/serious/from academic texts than cathartic/fun/sarcastic. both casual and formal tones but more reflexive and more esoteric	image assemblage, memes as formatting, ‘vagueposting’ revolution, making sense/making unsense
transferring lint	wrong format is still common, despite more formats available. perhaps due to progressive rollout of features, transfer of old collections, or integration restrictions. a lot of useless or redundant data in titles and descriptions. perhaps even more text blocks as images from still not scraping it, or the desire to retain context	wrong format
source link semantics	some semantic links through titling of Source link. much fewer commercial links	source link semantics
context for collection	sometimes a screenshot of a site was more intentional as the design was the focus rather than the content.
temporal instrumentality	occasionally saw past events/call for submission/recurring events/to sign up for saved as if archival rather than temporal
ambient multi-modal use	eg music playlist or podcast to be listened to whilst browsing the channel
unsourced/unsourceable	sources you can’t find/don’t have time to find vs can’t be sourced (i heard it on tiktok/i overheard it)

Some Discussion

Are.na’s infrastructure echoes Tumblr’s multi-modality (Tiidenberg, Hendry, and Abidin, 2021). Text blocks precipitate additional patterns of use to Pinterest’s, such as excerpting and journaling. Saving PDFs is of huge microcultural and infrastructural significance as Are.na also now functions as a searchable textual archive. Allowing capture of a raw url is another benefit of this multi-modality. Both Are.na and Pinterest’s bookmarks insist on an image cover, an uncommon pattern in bookmarking which can be useful for refinding (Tyżlik-Carver, 2022), but in aggregate produces redundant visual clutter of auto-screenshots. I determined that Are.na’s bookmarks covered common categories: organisations, articles, resources and temporal bookmarks. Resource bookmarks would’ve often been more useful as embedded lists of links but sometimes included web tools or unusual formats. Temporal bookmarks were those with associated dates and deadlines: bookmarks never intended to persist.

an example of an organisation bookmark whose auto-captured screenshot cover includes useful information that could be captured as metadata

knowledge lineage and reflexive curation

Whilst Are.na stores only a single source link as Pinterest does, its culture encourages added provenance in the text body, title, descriptions or comments, to a greater degree than Pinterest. In text blocks, users often quote or take excerpts from longer articles, which act as general inspiration on Pinterest (CITE) but contain reflexive commentary on Are.na. Many channels are designed explicitly around a titular questions, as study guides or with embedded navigational instructions. Are.na’s culture of connectivity and methods of capture encourage citational justice.

In quoting an article reviewing another work, source lineage is preserved but obscured by displaying it as plain text without quotation - a minor interface choice that confuses the authorship and intent of individual fragments when assembled.

Some Meta

For each Are.na channel I analysed here I created a private channel with the author to invite them to participate.
As channels are private, asynchronous, conceptually less intimate than private messaging and allow embedding both text and PDF, they’re a good venue for this kind of research - they could in future be used to solicit further data. I see in particular that they could be useful for recruiting and engaging in research for some neurodivergent people who could now take their time and relate to prompts in multiple formats.
Whilst I asked for anonymous use of Pinterest boards I gave the option for Are.na users to be directly quoted, linked, or their blocks embedded in this project’s website. This is for multiple reasons:
- Are.na users seemed more likely to respond due to the private-channel structure that would surface as they browsed their own channels
- Are.na users are more likely to have authored blocks directly rather than saved them from elsewhere (as they often function as bookmarks or are directly written as text), that they deserve credit for
- I suspected and found that Are.na users value the connectivity of the platform, often discuss knowledge commons and research in general, so they would be willing to support and be directly linked with research on/in/around the platform

Minor notes

generally more explicitly political and more explicitly solutions oriented/actionable, more mention of specific movements and orgs, more sources linked, more advanced topics eg post-money economies. more likely to be cross-issue and intersectional
link rot takes more forms - broken links as on Pinterest, but also broken embeds or outdated frontpage screenshots, very slow-loading embeds, etc
a lot of meta content and content directly related to the tech/politics crossover, meta-meta to my own work, also research methods discourse, more specifically higher-academia-adjacent than vaguely referencing pedagogy as on Pinterest
both Pinterest boards and Are.na channels on these topics covered certain scholars more than others - commonly saw quotes from bell hooks, adrienne maree brown, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin
more deliberately square facades as article ‘covers’, possibly better than an auto-screenshot in many cases, or can be unnecessary, or another format view on metadata
direct YouTube embeds are on both Pinterest and Are.na, but more common on Are.na and often have extra commentary or direct quotes in the description on Are.na - room for reflexive engagement
Are.na has more gifs, less posters and slogans, equal amount of diagrams/mind maps/word clouds and real-world graffiti/similar
Are.na embeds sometimes do and sometimes don’t provide backups - pdfs are on their server but not eg instagram posts or website links
occasionally saw scanned-in book pages :)