Methods

Due to the vast sampling population and topics I knew I wanted to discuss I focused on boards featuring: a) future-building and inspiration b) actionable and non-actionable tasks c) mixed content types and multi-modal objects d) connectivity, provenance and further resources

I ended up with 32 boards that would be suitable for analysis, 7 of which fit maximal criteria for selection.

collected all Pins and metadata from these boards
conducted informal thematic analysis
- a mixture of inductive and deductive coding
- descriptive, then interpretative coding
selection of the most interesting/relevant/valuable codes and the best examples of each
characterisation of some through wireframe sketch

I selected the more valuable emergent themes to discuss and combined these with insights from literature to form the below characterisations. I’ll go on to apply them to selected Are.na channels to see where the different infrastructure and community ethos corresponds to a comparison, contradiction or extension to each themes below.

Themes

description	details
hyperconnected	instructional diagrammatic Pin linked to relevant resource, reasonably sourced historical claims, quotes directly linked to source
Tumblr thread of gold	Tumblr screenshot linked back to the post, which itself links resources
wrong format	image-first platform infrastructure hampering the usefulness of the item with irrelevant or secondary data as image or metadata. only here out of convenience of keeping everything together. book list as video and album as photo
citation needed	unlinked historical claims, protest signs without context, unlinked quotes
source link semantics	for screencaps, comic panels, posters, general media sources - context would be nice but isn’t necessarily instrumental. broken links. art is inconsistently linked to artist, sales platform or resources. ‘source’ link as a singular option doesn’t allow semantically useful connections or pluriversal knowledge lineage
reposts and syndication	source linked to another instance of the same content, shows need for content to live in multiple platforms but clogs up the only ‘source’ link avaliable and acts more as a bridge between social media audiences than between related content
image as data, image as gateway	image/link combo as a rich data object eg book covers and reading lists (data both in image and link). image as a façade, containing source links as text, or otherwise circumventing the image-first infrastructure, linking to a like-minded community
image assemblage	traditional collages, extensive meme edits or use of the newer ‘collages’ feature. frequently providing difficulties for users wanting to source individual elements. see ‘imagesnippets’? multiply-overwritten memes requiring something less like traditional sourcing and something more like asserting the chain of authorship of elements, knowledge lineage. extensive meme edits akin to collage often hold in-group references requiring extensive sourcing in other contexts, but are often unsourced
memes as formatting	use of very open meme format for extensive text resource or assertion, format as inessential general context. Image assemblage and remix is a wide topic of investigation just outside of the current scope, but I will highlight the prevalence on Pinterest in particular of a particular class of meme formats. The examples here both use a format for arbitrary blocks of text, where the text is the main content but the surrounding scene and/or character acts as a tonal indicator akin to facial expressions alongside spoken word. Each format under this class adds a slight nuance to the assertion or instruction made in the text. This is of particular interest as it is predictable and lightweight form easily expressed in text decoration akin to italics, whilst retaining both human and machine readability.
‘vagueposting’ revolution	ironic, threat softened, using screencaps/comics/fiction/humour to relate/retain denial/ambiguity of intent, signal directly and indirectly to multiple audiences at once
actionable utopias	creation, development, building, doing
actionable dystopias	destruction, dismantling, abolition, undoing
self-actualisation and self-transcendence	long-term capacity-building of individuals, groups and communities
making sense/making unsense	denaturalisation, carthartic, complexities and confusions, absurdism and existentialism
connecting past, present and future	directly compared utopia/dystopia, or: what we have now, what we shouldn’t have now, what we shouldn’t have later, what we could have later
pinning likely doesn’t signal intent	specific incendiary acts called for but likely not enacted, as in (Dolphin, Char, and Rogers, 2024) (just pinning is different from engaging with content to make change)
screenshot provenance	screenshotting can be from necessity, as the most feasible/comprehensive method of capture, even if it loses some info - some dialogues and continued threads link directly back, others are missing valuable data, others contain provenance in the image text. Twitter screenshots in particular (as the second most common source I found, after Tumblr) have gained more nuanced questions of reliability through the influence of Musk
collection, not curation	mass data loosely tied, unlikely reflection of elements and placement has taken place, possibly hoarding, performative aestheticisms, etc
strategies or tactics?	evidence of counter-strategy, counter-tactics, or a blurring of the two, as in (Smolicki, 2017)

Some Discussion

hyperconnected para-archives

Pinterest held more evidence of hyperconnected knowledge than I expected. I found instructional diagrams linked to relevant resources, historical claims and quotes connected to primary sources or secondary resources linked through Tumblr threads of gold. In descriptions, titles, watermarks and comments there were creative acts of resisting the site’s capital-oriented architecture through additional provenance, directly actionable pins and gateways to alternative communities. This appropriation of tools can be considered para-tactical assemblage of para-archives.

image-first infrastructure

A particularly interesting circumvention of the image-first infrastructure was the use of image as data in the form of visual book lists, book covers and spines. Research is ongoing within library sciences to connect metadata with images of shelves (Zhou et al., 2022) which could be extended over these networks to associate predictable image forms. Many pins contained fragments of text within them, raising the question of what counts as an atomic fragment. I found a strong presence of decorated text-blocks and slogans from which the primary content is easily ‘scraped’, but the formatting might provide important context. Screenshots particularly often hold metadata and provenance. Elsewhere I discuss the value of viewing these fragments both contextualised and decontextualised.

Additionally, many pins I’d describe as concept-mapping or otherwise diagrammatic. These textual forms would be more suited to alt-text or annotation than text-scraping as the visual elements hold more crucial information. Often these pins could make better use of hypertext in encoding semantic information visually in live code rather than as image, but this would necessitate manual translation of decades of digital image to reinterpret and replace commonly saved diagrams.

vagueposting revolution

A notable class of pins used irony, humour, vague language or appeal to in-group language to discuss incendiary political acts. Softened threats and speaking through others (screencap captions, gifs) dissociated posters from the acts described. Whilst catharcism like this is common and pinning doesn’t necessarily entail engaging with the content to make change (Dolphin, Char, and Rogers, 2024), this ambiguity enables a resistive counter-public that retains denial of intent or purpose. Signalling directly and indirectly to multiple audiences at once allows resistive unity without the specifics that individualise and identify authors - another benefit of decontextualisation.

Some Meta

thoughts on need for consent for public data analysis here ->
I contacted each user for explicit consent to analyse this data in anonymous form, through Pinterest’s messaging system, but didn’t receive any responses. I chose to include my analysis without any reference to the specific boards I analysed.

Minor notes

I did not rigidly structure my analysis nor combine it with quantitative frequency analysis as I was interested more in relative frequencies to my expectations and in interpreting the juxtaposition of particular ‘pins’.
The initial/additional codes I didn’t select can be read here ->
Details of procedure can be read here ->.
Tags aren’t included as they are not user generated, but created by user behaviour in the machine learning interests taxonomy and so are directed at business interest rather than the intentions and desires of the users.
In general observation, titles and descriptions are almost always redundant to alt text, errors/placeholders, not immediately relevant to the content or not adding much context (additional minor commentary)

Are.na meta-analysis

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 ‘more meta blocks’ for individual blocks. The full list of codes is here ->

sub-question: - how do Are.na users conceptualise a) the platform, b) its users, c) the content, d) its features and functions and e) the experience of using it?

possible additional questions: - what are their self-confessed a) likes b) dislikes c) habits? - what common methods do they use to workaround/adapt/adjust the platforms to their needs?

grouping	discusses these codes	discussion
a post-Tumblr Pinterest	like Pinterest but good, pinblr, post-Tumblr, good internet, friendly strangers	culturally Tumblr, structurally Pinterest
resistive fragment assemblages	fragments, assemblage, future-building, dreaming, speculative futures, connected pasts, sci-fi ref / utopias and dystopias, connectivity, cross-pollination, unfolding, trail, knowledge commons, future-building, long term, building, incubator,	lines of flight, shoulders of giants
porta(b)l(e) memory	commonplace books, hoarding, carrying, ambient context, cloud storage, data ownership, external memory, file explorer, wormhole, seeds, fragments / impermanence / multi-modal / canvas, index, external memory, flesh tunnel, refinding, screenshots	multi-purpose in one place, one gateway to everything, mass collection as a precursor to any curation as we can now carry more with us, always accessible, frequent access. external storage for the born-digital, the digitised, and the digitally recorded, all in one place. clipboard. interest in directly accessing things stored. temporality.
flexibly organized	multi-directional, flat ontology, playlist, rabbithole, tune-in, remix, categorisation / agency / semi-organised / deorganizing / bunch of stuff / loose structure	reconfigurable, arbitrarily sequential, extensible loose structures. some ways in which users conceptualise are.na (whether it is structurally accurate or not) give direct instruction on desired architectures
from self-actualisation to self-transcendence, as ritual	self-actualisation, tend to the self, self-transcendence
’selectivity’	funnel, tune-in, no noise, meaningful connections / semantic web / schema / wikipedia / lo-fi
brain prosthesis over brain replacement	mnemotechnique, mnemotechnology, second brain, ambient	second brains are just as faulty as first brains (just differently so) - “synergy versus substitution” - mnemotechnique over mnemotechnology.
(hyper)active exploratory agency	active discovery, agency, chasing a high, special interest, nerds and techies, alt-academia, the underground, open source process, open publishing, multi-modal, file explorer, better bookmark, flat ontology, mycelium, semantic, tab bloom, rabbitholes	strong preference against auto-curation, supports the literature’s insistence on the active, conscious curatorial input. control over your content - this supports calls for data soveriegnty and portability. this platform (either culturally, structurally, or both) supports extrainstitutional study. obsession supported. well-suited to self-built methods, following whims, etc, well-suited to many neurodivergent brains, accepting of alternative and subversive practise, full access to information in arbitrary file formats, multi-method processes of discovery. some ways in which users conceptualise are.na (whether it is structurally accurate or not) give direct instruction on desired architectures
interfacing public and private	public forum, digital intimacy, unique perspectives, intersubjectivity, safety, incubator, friendly strangers, no noise, unconscious patterns, wormhole	respectful consensual coveillance with fine-grained privacy. access to a topic both as an individual and through shared knowledges. your own safe place, with room to grow. reflectivity
embodied knowledge	inner monologue / tune-in / trail / intersubjectivity / mind atoms, esoteroticism, texture / liveness	experiential knowledge and vibrant media
slow labour	slow / mindful / over time / long term / evolving / wandering / legacy
pluriversality	multi-modal / multi-dimensional
what counts as an atomic fragment	mind atoms
un/pretentious	pretentious / elitist / unpretentious / anti-elitist / misogyny to pinterest users	Mixed opinions on whether it is elitist, elite, or anti-elitist. i don’t think it is inherently/structurally elitist/pretentious but the users of it might skew that way due to it remaining relatively obscure/being used as an active choice replacing other sites, meaning it was actively selected as best for ‘intellectual’ pursuit, and it is privileged to be able to select the best tool for the task for a number of reasons

Some Discussion

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

Are.na appears to be most commonly used in extra-institutional and creative research. Cobb (2010) describes learning as “becoming a curator for that area”; “In a sense, this is what academics have always done.” (Cobb, 2010, no pagination). Are.na emerges as alt-academia for those with interests too specific, creative or transdisciplinary to be encapsulated by traditional media and methods.

Some Meta

Whilst I only dealt with public data, I asked for consent to include blocks as quotes or embedded in the text/site.
I determined the culture of Are.na over Pinterest to be more willing to engage with my research and also to be directly connected due to the platform’s structure and ethos.
As Are.na includes authored text blocks I judged it fairer to allow intellectual credit to users (Walsh, 2023)

Notes

this analysis is to understand the sort of metaphors that are being used by Are.na users to describe Are.na, as I (and presumably the are.na team who posted this and users who contributed) believe metaphors are important in design - ensuring mental models of the infrastructure builders match the mental models of the users. Here I find what motivates the use of this platform, what sort of comparisons are made and how the users most concisely conceptualise their process, the platform, its users and its media content.
comments are a thing on are.na
- I’ve chosen not to include them as they’re deprioritised in the interface and not widely used
- The majority of these blocks do not have comments
descriptions and titles of blocks are also not used consistently or widely so I included them in the content for analysis
- I don’t believe them to be individually significant in this channel
- The majority of these blocks do not have titles or descriptions
images that consist only of text are transcribed directly here
a few image/link blocks with limited text were excluded
- there weren’t many and they were mostly references to other media
- I didn’t have the resources to assess the meaning/pertinence of these blocks
- meme and media analysis is beyond the scope of this work
I haven’t included timestamps, and some of these descriptions may be more or less accurate to particular platform changes according to their dates.
users adding blocks to the channel later had access to view previous blocks, which accounts for some similarity in format of answer, but may also have produced more unique answers for a time, and it is unlikely that users read the full channel prior to adding as it it got lengthier

Methods

Themes

Some Discussion

hyperconnected para-archives

image-first infrastructure

vagueposting revolution

Some Meta

Consent

Minor notes

Are.na meta-analysis

Some Discussion

Some Meta

Consent

Notes