Behind the Scenes

Technology is a huge component of Pinterest’s itinerary of user movement. However, it can be broken down into different parts:

Data: Personal profile information such as name, gender, date of birth, and email address. This is an integral part to the registration process, as it also is used to determine whether a user is of age to use Pinterest or not.

Metadata: While Van Dijck explains that metadata is, “structured information to describe, explain, and locate information resources or make it easier to retrieve, use, or manage them,” metadata is used within Pinterest as “tags,” (Van Dijck, 30). These tags are used within pins, people, and boards, and can be found by searching a tag within the search bar.

Algorithms: These are the rules that are followed that regulate and manage the flow of interaction. Because the regulation is created based upon the creators who govern the Pinterest’s platform, Van Dijck explains that they “impose a hegemonic logic” onto the platform that forces the user to use the platform in a very specific way (Van Dijck, 31). Algorithms hide behind the platform’s interface.

Interface: Pinterest’s interface allows new users to sign up using different social media platforms, such as Facebook or Google, which help to facilitate the registration process – data from other social networking sites can easily be transferred to Pinterest’s platform. Once registered, the new user is only able to see suggested topics in opposition to other users. The separation from new user from the rest of the platform allows the user to customize it according to their personal tastes rather than being influenced by other users.

Pinterest’s values are clearly embedded into the interface. The categorizations that they offer, such as education, health and fitness, and kids and parenting, encourages its users to look for content that is restricted to these positive values, as opposed to a category regarding sex and erotica, or guns and violence that is not representative of their values (Stanfill, 1060). Through these categorizations, Pinterest steers its users in a specific direction and attempts to impose their values onto the user while “embedding assumptions about their own purpose and appropriate use (Stanfill, 1062). Their hegemonic ideology is executed through the algorithms that are underneath the “pleasant” interface.

Works Cited

Stanfill, M. (2015). The interface as discourse: The production of norms through web design. New Media & Society, 17(7), 1059-1074.

Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

So, is Pinterest a Social Media Platform?

People do not tend to think of Pinterest as a social media platform, because it is an individual activity with minimal interaction - but interaction nonetheless. This contrasts with other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which focuses on more direct communication and feedback.

When relating back to CS235 - Communication Research Methods and the idioms of practice, everyone uses social media differently. We all have very different views and definitions of what social media means to us. By performing the Walkthrough Method and exploring Van Dijck's techno-cultural constructions and socio-economic structures, we have concluded that Pinterest is definitely a social media. There is a form of communication that occurs on the Pinterest app that can still be considered to be a way to network and connect with others with similar interests, such as liking, commenting, and re-pinning other users' pins to a user's own boards.

Pinterest is a site that allows for creativity, DIY culture, and communication on one of the fastest growing social media sites. Pinterest has everything you could think of - if you look hard enough.