Taylor Swift - Audience + Industries

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?

Julia Fox and Alexander Wang

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

Fans were angry and were harassing people over her concert tickets.

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

More or less - this is because media companies/producers don't control the audience as much as they did before. Stan accounts are more of a closed minded community of people that talk to each other about their favourite artist.

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? 

Concert tickets

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

She handpicks fans for "secret-sessions" and hosts post-show meet and greets

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

The Taylor Nation account - they try to get noticed by this account via reply or retweet

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

Fandom is described as a hierarchy as it groups fans based on how committed they are. For Taylor Swift fans, this hierarchy is based on how much fans spend money.

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

It suggests that Taylor's model is largely based on how much her fans want to see her.


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?

While I'm not sure about a particular gender, I believe Taylor Swift's website is made to appeal to young people with the general design of it and how modern everything feels.

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

There are several opportunities, most commonly on Twitter. Taylor frequently replies and retweets her fans' tweets, encouraging audience interaction.

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

Her online presence reflects Clay Shirky's "End of Audience" theory seeing as her fans have their own community as opposed to Taylor directly controlling her audience. It represents the fact that the idea of a central audience is over as audiences can create and share with others.

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? 

Both, in a way. Her songs and online presence motivate audiences to inherit her values but it's also a way to promote her work. Sometimes she interacts with fans or speaks her mind, other times she advertises her work.

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

A preferred reading of Taylor Swift's online presence is simply that she wants to encourage interaction with her fans and also build a relationship with some. An oppositional reading would be that she only does this to promote her songs and make more money.

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?

Facebook - 2.96B monthly active users

X - 330M in 2019

LinkedIn - 900M in 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 for social media companies as they want to maximise this number as much as they possibly can

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

So they can grow their user base and advertise to more people.

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

Premium subscription services, data selling, shopping services.

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. 

- "statutory building code"

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

- limiting the use of micro-targeting advertising messages

2) Who is Christopher Wylie? 

A Cambridge Analytica whistleblower

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

"These platforms are not neutral environments. Algorithms make decisions about what people see or do not see. Nothing in this report restricts your ability to say what you want. What we're talking about is the platform's function of artificially amplifying false and manipulative information on a wide scale."

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

Disinformation is false/untrue information. I agree that there are some things that are objectively true or false, mainly scientific things, but not everything is.

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

He compares Facebook to an oil company because there's harmful by-products of the current design of it and there are social harms that come from their business model.

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

The loss of free speech

7) What has Instagram been criticised for?

Instagram has been criticised for pushing and promoting unrealistic beauty standards

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? 

We probably could, since Taylor tends to blur the line between advertisement and statement.

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