Taylor Swift: Audience and Industries blog tasks

 

Create a new blogpost called 'Taylor Swift: Audience and Industries blog tasks' and work through the following to complete your case study.

Audience

Background and audience wider reading

Read this Guardian feature on stan accounts and fandom. Answer the following questions:

1) What examples of fandom and celebrities are provided in the article?

Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters, Beyoncé’s Bey Hive, Taylor Swift’s Swifties, and Nicki Minaj’s Barbs.

2) Why did Taylor Swift run into trouble with her fanbase? 

Her fans couldn't access Trickmasters System

3) Do stan accounts reflect Clay Shirky's ideas regarding the 'end of audience'? How? 

It does. Anybody can create a fan account and make their online presence be around a specific celebrity.

Read this Conversation feature on the economics of Taylor Swift fandom. Answer the following questions: 

1) What do Taylor Swift fans spend their money on? 

Albums, merchandise and concert tickets.

2) How does Swift build the connection with her fans? Give examples from the article.

Fans frequently engage in parasocial relationships with their celebrity objects of fandom, where they feel as if they honestly “know” the celebrity. By handpicking fans for “secret sessions” before album releases (often held in her own home) and hosting post-show meet and greets, over the past 16 years she has carefully built the illusion of these relationships as reciprocated friendship

3) What have Swifties done to try and get Taylor Swift's attention online? 

By her products and post themselves online with them.

4) Why is fandom described as a 'hierarchy'? 

More realistically, they are hierarchical structures in which fans have their status elevated by participating in certain ways.

For Swift fans, these hierarchies are heavily tied to practices of consumption, including the purchasing of concert tickets.

5) What does the article suggest is Swift's 'business model'? 

It's heavily build on the fans desire to meet her in person.

Taylor Swift: audience questions and theories

Work through the following questions to apply media debates and theories to the Taylor Swift CSP. You may want to go back to your previous blogpost or your A3 annotated booklet for examples. 

1) Is Taylor Swift's website and social media constructed to appeal to a particular gender or audience?

Previously, I would have said that it's specialised for young woman, but after seeing that its roughly 50/50 when it comes to gender of her fans, so it's safe to say it gender neutral.

2) What opportunities are there for audience interaction in Taylor Swift's online presence and how controlled are these? 

She might respond to your tweet of interact with anything you post that might include her. She doesn't respond to everybody.

3) How does Taylor Swift's online presence reflect Clay Shirky’s ‘End of Audience’ theories? 

In order to stay relevant, she had to adapt to the times by allowing anybody to interact with her, not just professionals.

4) What effects might Taylor Swift's online presence have on audiences? Is it designed to influence the audience’s views on social or political issues or is this largely a vehicle to promote Swift's work? 

It creates a personal relation ship with her (User gratification) which allows her to have a loyal fan base that on the most of the part will agree with her and her political views.

5) Applying Hall’s Reception theory, what might be a preferred and oppositional reading of Taylor Swift's online presence? 

She is a caring and relatable person that cares for her fans and wants the best for them. The opposite reading might be she is just a capitalist machine that is trying to make as much money as possible.

Industries

How social media companies make money

Read this analysis of how social media companies make money and answer the following questions:

1) How many users do the major social media sites boast?

As of Q4 2022, Meta (META), formerly Facebook, had 2.96 billion monthly active users. Twitter (now X) stopped reporting monthly active users, but the last count in Q1 2019 was 330 million, while LinkedIn had about 900 million monthly active users as of Q1 2023.

2) What is the main way social media sites make money?

Advertising. 

3) What does ARPU stand for and why is it important for social media companies? 

Average revenue per user. It's important as they need to know this information to be able to market.

4) Why has Meta spent huge money acquiring other brands like Instagram and WhatsApp? 

So they own more of the market share as well as to reduce competition

5) What other methods do social media sites have to generate income e.g. Twitter Blue? 

Other social media companies are also exploring new ways to increase their revenue. For example, after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he rebranded the site X. Corp. and changed the site's blue "verified" checkmark system. These checkmarks were once given to prominent or important accounts (such as journalists, politicians, celebrities, and newspapers, and other media accounts) to show that their identities had been verified and could be trusted.

Regulation of social media

Read this BBC News article on a report recommending social media regulation. Answer the following questions:

1) What suggestions does the report make? Pick out three you think are particularly interesting. 

"The report also suggests social networks should display a correction to every single person who was exposed to misinformation, if independent fact-checkers identify a story as false."

"One of its suggestions is that social networks should be required to release details of their algorithms and core functions to trusted researchers, in order for the technology to be vetted."

"Labelling the accounts of state-controlled news organisations"

2) Who is Christopher Wylie? 

A contributor to the report were Cambridge Analytica and a whistle-blower 

3) What does Wylie say about the debate between media regulation and free speech? 

Regulation media puts free speech in danger.

4) What is ‘disinformation’ and do you agree that there are things that are objectively true or false? 

False information. I do agree with it as it has to be either true or false. Information can't be both. On the other hand, it does depend on peoples opinions. People interrupt things different.

5) Why does Wylie compare Facebook to an oil company? 

"An oil company would say: "We do not profit from pollution." Pollution is a by-product - and a harmful by-product. Regardless of whether Facebook profits from hate or not, it is a harmful by-product of the current design and there are social harms that come from this business model."

6) What does it suggest a consequence of regulating the big social networks might be? 

It might push people on to fringe free speech social networks.

7) What has Instagram been criticised for?

It creates "perfect images" that might affect peoples mental health and body image.

8) Can we apply any of these criticisms or suggestions to Taylor Swift? For example, should Taylor Swift have to explicitly make clear when she is being paid to promote a company or cause? 

I think all influencer/celebrities should make it clear when they are being sponsored and should think very carefully to what they are selling to fans. Somebody of her fame and fan loyalty should be even more careful about this as one of her charms is that she has a "personal relationship" with her fans.