Taylor Swift: Audience and Industries blog tasks

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?

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? 

 They do reflect the theory as Stan accounts are like roving reporters in that they comment on the action live and as it happens. Stans don’t just root for their icons, they fiercely defend them.

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.

More than 3.5 million fans had registered to try to get a presale code – a number far exceeding the number of available tickets for the 52 shows.

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

The belief among fans (which has never been confirmed) is that being noticed on social media puts you a step closer to meeting Swift in person – something many of the participants in my research into her fandom described as the ultimate motivation behind their engagement.

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 applies to both Gen Z and millennials focusing on mostly white women. Her audience is between the younger age of 12 to a lot older like 50.

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

They can interact online and comment on her social media platforms as well as making fan accounts of Taylor and messaging her,  they can like her posts and share them as well. 

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

This is because it reflects capitalistic ideologies 

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 Swift is seen to endorse Kamal Harris, supporting her campaign in the election. Doing this makes her fans want to follow in her footsteps when it comes to these political issues. This leads to a lot of favouritism and usage as not only is Kamala using Taylor to her advantage but the same is happening in reverse.

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

The preferred reading could be about her feminist movement and her being a strong figure for women to look up to especially as a popular artist. The oppositional could be how she used this idea of feminism and leadership for her fans but instead is subverting this all in her album as she sexualises herself and shows a lot of capitalistic ideologies as she mostly cares about the money and the fans who mostly spend of herself. 

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? 

• Social media companies like Meta (formerly Facebook) and X Corp. (formerly Twitter Inc.), primarily make money through selling advertising.
• Television, newspapers, and media companies have been making money via advertising long before social media.
• Meta has 2.96 billion monthly active users worldwide and estimates the average revenue per user (ARPU) was $32.03 in 2020.
• Meta's ARPU comes primarily through profits earned from advertisers who use the platform to reach customers.

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

It stands for 'Average Revenue Per User'.

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

It has spend a lot as WhatsApp has over 2 billion monthly active users, which makes a even greater  stock of susceptible minds to sell as a unit to companies looking to, for instance, move a few more smartphones this quarter. 

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

Theres some thing like subscribing to X Premium. X Premium subscribers receive benefits including editable posts, fewer ads, longer posts, and more robust security measures. This service costs $8 per month or $84 per year.

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? 

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower 

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? 

Its when there is misleading information put online to deceive audiences. I believe that there are things that are objectively true or false such as an opinion which can rely on the audience perspective to see if they follow it.

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

He says that an oil company would say: "We do not profit from pollution" where it is a by-product - and a harmful by-product. He shows that Facebook is similar, regardless if it profits from hate, its 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 writes how platforms that monitor user engagement have a minimum effort of actually preventing harm coming to them. There are less safety considerations for an online social media platform that has proven to negatively impact someone's mental health.

7) What has Instagram been criticised for?

In the report, we talk about a "cooling-off period". You could require algorithms to have a trigger that results in a cooling-off period for a certain type of content.

If it has just spent the past week showing you body-building ads, it could then hold off for the next two weeks. If you want to promote body building, you can.

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? 

yes we can apply them to Taylor swift from her unclear paid promotions.