Taylor Swift: Audience and Industries blog tasks

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?

t’s become a catchall term for people who base their entire online existence around a specific fandom: 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? 

When the presale for Taylor Swift’s tour turned into a battle royale for fans locked out of Ticketmaster’s system, frazzled Swifties voiced their disappointment. Ticketmaster and Swift quickly apologized, with the singer calling the process “excruciating”. Ticketmaster ended up testifying in Congress in a hearing about consolidation in the ticketing industry.

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

Yeah because people are creating fan accounts of celebrities and using their own voice to spread their opinion across the media/internet 

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? 

Taylor Swift fans are known for spending significant amounts of money on albums, merchandise and concert tickets

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

Taylor swift builds a connection by using social media and contacting fans personally and liking their comments and 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? 

To be noticed, however, fans must participate in particular, approved ways The Taylor Nation twitter account retweets and engages with fans who have shared screenshots of merchandise receipts (from increasingly frequent, themed merchandise releases), pictures of themselves with multiple copies of albums, or particularly over-the-top displays of emotion and creativity This sets a baseline of what it takes to get their – and Swift’s – attention.

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'? 

Swift’s business model is largely built on fan desire to meet her. How do you meet her? You prove you are the biggest fan – and you’ve made the sacrifices (and spent the money) to show it.

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?

It's constructed to appeal to her fan and loyal supporters as it advertises upcoming shows and merchandise which can be purchased to support Taylor swift

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

Retweets commenting on Instagram posts liking stories and tagging Taylor swifts @ in fan post.

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

Taylor Swift's online presence reflects Clay Shirky’s End of Audience theory by transforming her audience from passive consumers to active participants in her media ecosystem. Through direct engagement on platforms like Instagram Twitter and TikTok Taylor Swift interacts with fans shares their content and allows them to contribute to the cultural narrative surrounding her work. 

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? 

Taylor swifts online presence is a promotional tool and a platform for expressing her political and social views. Whilst advertising/promoting her own music and tours and merchandise

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

The preferred reading of Taylor swifts online presence is they want her to show her fans that she cares about them and spreads good advice to her fanbase. The oppositional reading of this can be that she controls her fan and has a toxic fanbase which targets people who disagree with Taylor Swifts points.

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? 

Advertisements sponsorships 

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

For social media, the importance of the number of viewers glued to their computer or smartphone screens is every bit as important (if not more so) as it is to commercial television.

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

Meta's ARPU at the end of 2022 was $39.63. Multiply that by the aforementioned estimated user base for Q4 2022 to get a total revenue approximation, and now you can understand why Meta had a market capitalization of over $1 trillion at its height.

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

Advertising isn’t just a way for Meta and other social media companies to perhaps earn a little bit of revenue in between hosting family photos and personal musings. It’s the very purpose of those sites.

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. 

• implementing "circuit breakers" so that newly viral content is temporarily stopped from spreading while it is fact-checked

• forcing social networks to disclose in the news feed why content has been recommended to a user

• limiting the use of micro-targeting advertising messages

2) Who is Christopher Wylie? 

Among those contributing to the report were Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie, and former Facebook investor Roger McNamee - a long-time critic of the social network.

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

In most Western democracies, you do have the freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is not an entitlement to reach. You are free to say what you want, within the confines of hate speech, libel law and so on. But you are not entitled to have your voice artificially amplified by technology.

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

There are very tangible harms that come from manipulating people. In the United States, the public health response to Covid-19 has been inhibited by widespread disinformation about the existence of the virus or false claims about different kinds of treatment that do not work. Do you have a right to believe what you want? Yes, of course. No-one that I know of is proposing any kind of sort of mind or mental regulation.

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? 

Risk of hate speech fraud cyber bullying cyber crime.

7) What has Instagram been criticised for?

Instagram can affect mental health and body image This is a product of a platform that is making recommendations to you. These algorithms work by picking up what you engage with and then they show you more and more of that.

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? 

Taylor Swift fanbase is young therefore when Taylor swift promotes products which portrays a negative outlook on body image this can in danger some of Taylor swifts fan making them think they don't have the stereotypical women's body.