Tumblr is a blogging website and app that has become synonymous with fandom and fan creation. The platform is one of the most text-based social media platforms available, with many people posting their fanfiction, short stories and, in some spaces, analyses. However, it is a multimedia platform and, therefore, has a lot of fan art and original content. Within the online platform Tumblr, users can filter the posts they see through hashtags; as users engage with these hashtags, the algorithm changes their For You page to suit their interests and creates echo chambers. Echo chambers are created when users can select what they actively avoid and what they do not want to see; they are clusters in which most of the users share the same views (Chueca Del Cerro, 2024).  

Communities are the basis of Tumblr, as when a user joins, they create their blog, start posting about their interests, such as fandom, politics or photography, etc, alternatively, they look for things they are interested in engaging with (Krutsch, 2022). A large community that has been on Tumblr for many years is the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, and within this community, there has been a large debate on the ending of the show, specifically who should have gotten into a relationship with whom. The Avatar fans on Tumblr have been very active in their debate, which increased in 2024 with the release of the live-action show. Through Tumblr’s algorithm, affordances and users’ hashtag hijacking behaviour, echo chambers are created within communities on the platform; the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom is an example of this.     

Algorithms

Algorithms are the standard for all social media platforms these days; they show recommendations for posts and media based on what users have liked in the past (Cakmak et. al, 2024). Many social media platforms have a page titled ‘For You’, the most famous one being TikTok’s, which is the most used channel for viewing content on TikTok and reacts every time a user ‘interacts’ with a post, whether that be liking, commenting or sharing by finding more content like the post (Blackburn & Hogg, 2024). Tumblr’s’ For You’ page works similarly to TikTok’s, where the’ For You’ page changes by interacting with platform posts. However, Tumblr is a little different to other platforms with hashtag culture as people will often start on Tumblr by viewing hashtags exclusively to view the topics they are interested in. Then, once the ‘For You’ page has changed to suit the users’ needs, they will start viewing it more often (Krutsch, 2022). However, with people having different purposes for being on Tumblr, the ‘For You’ page will change and create echo chambers; for example, the people who join Tumblr to interact with a certain Fandom will only encounter that fandom and maybe some of the fandoms that are linked to the Fandom (Martha, 2022).

In the Avatar: The Last Airbender Fandom, the shipping debate can and does create echo chambers for the people with a certain view; for example, those who only interact with the posts about Zutara in the Avatar fandom will exclusively get posts about Zutara on their ‘For You’ page, reinforcing their belief in the ship. The same goes for those who ship Kataang. Though, it also depends on what other tags a user has looked at; for example, if they look at the ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ tag, they could get anything from that tag, which may include ships that they do not look at, but if a user looks at enough of one ship they will get more of that ship. Some of the other tags that generate conversation within this specific fandom are the ‘Anti’ tags (‘antikataang’ and ‘antizutara’), which are used when users want to discuss the ship negatively. Usually, people who use the ‘Anti’ tags are people who like the other ship, but they are meant to generate conversation. Hashtags like this would be called a networked public, as its discussion is like the idea of passive activism, which is where people online talk and share posts about activism but do not do much (Ojala & Ripatti-Torniainen, 2024). In the case of these specific hashtags, no action needs to happen, as it is all about the discussion.  

Affordances

Users can use two affordances on Tumblr to create echo chambers: Hashtags and the Settings page. Hashtags are a large part of how Tumblr is used; every post has hashtags to categorise the post, and users may go into the tags and browse what is in them. Users can also follow tags, influencing their algorithm (Krutsch, 2022). Some tags are simple. For example, in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, a post may be tagged by the ships ‘Zutara’ and ‘Kataang’ or by the characters ‘Zuko’ and ‘Katara’. These tags are large, with many posts that they categorise. There are also more specific tags, which may only relate to one or two posts.

While echo chambers within tags are generally not too bad within fandom spaces, echo chambers can be dangerous in real-world contexts, such as political tags, as these tags discuss fundamental ideals and values. Within a user’s settings on Tumblr, they are filtering what tags they see when browsing. This can be a positive thing for people who have anxiety and triggers, as it means they can block out anything that can be potentially harmful to them, Krutsch (2022), but when it is just people not wanting to see what they do not like, it can cause problems and create echo chambers. In the context of the Avatar fandom, people blocking the ship tag that they disagree with, such as someone shipping ‘Zutara’ and blocking the ‘Kataang’ tag, can continue to go deeper into an echo chamber where they only see their own opinion. The act of blocking tags because of opinions can be dangerous in the same way that only always looking at one tag is; by blocking out things a person does not agree with, they risk the potential of never meeting opposing views and never thinking of different things, which can hurt a person’s critical thinking.    

Hashtag Hijacking

Within social media, there is a practice called Hashtag Hijacking, where posts are deliberately tagged with the ‘wrong’ tag to create an uproar for people who follow and look at the posts within the tag. Traditionally, hashtag hijacking has been mainly for political and social campaigns, but people also practice it within fandom spaces. Tumblr has a large history of hijacking hashtags, and tagging is an essential part of the platform. An example of this within the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom is when a post is discussing one ship, such as Zutara, but is tagged as Kataang as well. This post would appear in the Kataang tag, and the people reading it would get annoyed by it and comment and repost about it (Hagen, 2023). While small amounts of hashtag hijacking may seem like a positive idea at face value, when people are presented with the opposite opinion to their own in an unusual space, they are less likely to try to understand the opinion. This is because they feel as if they were attacked in their own space, and then they will double down on their own opinion and stay where they think it is safe. This again relates to the idea of networked publics, as hashtags are a networked public as they collectively behave similarly. When someone comes into the networked public and goes against the norm, the public feels attacked (Ojala & Ripatti-Torniainen, 2024). An example of this is it-will-pass (2025), this post is promoting ‘Anti-Zutara’ but is tagged and can be found within the ‘Zutara’ tag, and when looking at the comments, the first one is ‘Could you tag your shit correctly thanks’, this user is angry that this post is showing up on their feed cause it is tagged ‘Zutara’ when the contents are actually going against the idea of the ship. This user is probably less likely to be open to discussion about why the other side of the argument may be a good one, which creates even stronger echo chambers as people become so much more against the idea of change or true debate.    

Communities

A more recent addition to Tumblr is communities, where people with common interests can come together and share ideas, art, stories and anything else that Tumblr allows them to; as Tumblr has a large fandom presence, many fandom-based communities have been created. Within a community, users can post as if it were on their blog, but only those in the community can interact with the post, and all can see it. If a user is in a community that is about a strong opinion, one of the guidelines may include not bringing up the opposing view. Broadwaybalogna (2024) is an example of this. This page is a Zutara fan community, and one of the rules on the opening post is about the infamous ship wars in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, which asks to keep the ship wars away from the page. This is great for everyone in the community because this is a group of people who probably do not want to see much about the ship war, but this community is an echo chamber. After all, it does not allow that debate, though, as all echo chambers do, it can harm people’s critical thinking skills if all they are given is their own opinion. Hampton & Wellman (2018) discuss this concept of younger generations craving community more and more, which is why spaces such as these pop up, because younger people struggle to find communities in real life, so they make them online. Though the purpose of this community is an echo chamber, and users enter this space knowing that they will only encounter their own opinions, in this case, communities being examples of an echo chamber can be a positive thing if users know that only seeing and reading about their own opinion is the purpose.    

Conclusion

In conclusion, the social media platform Tumblr has echo chambers throughout the platform; they occur through different affordances. These affordances include the algorithm, which only shows users content similar to what they have interacted with before; the hashtags and settings, which allow users to browse through only one tag and allow users to block tags they do not want; hashtag hijacking, which is when a post is ‘wrongly’ tagged in an attempt to cause chaos and through the communities feature which allows users to post within a community with the same ideas. Echo Chambers can be harmful if users are unaware of the fact that they are in one, for example, algorithm, especially out of fandom spaces, but in some circumstances, echo chambers are not as harmful, such as within Tumblr communities, as users go into the community knowing that they will only get content within the topic of the community. Fandom echo chambers will always be less harmful than other echo chambers, especially with the political landscape that the world is facing in 2025. Fandom is treated as an escape from reality, but the same mentality should not be given to the real world.    

References  

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