OSP: Taylor Swift CSP - Audience and Industries

 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

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

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

Yes as these stan account go out of their own way to create their own content based on their specific idol, like blogs and videos about their passion for the talent.

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, albums and merch.

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

Handpicked fans - chosen select few who she meets with before announcing an album

For these events, she memorises facts about each fan in attendance, surprising them with comments about new haircuts, academic achievements and relationship milestones.

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

individuals often put the date and type of interaction in their bio to broadcast the attention they received to others within the fandom community. 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'? 

There are different levels of devotion top the artist you could say, depending on factors like how much they invest in things like tickets or albums or how willing they are to keep in touch with their every movement.

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

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?

Although it does not seem like T.S is targeting any one specific gender, I believe it can be argued that through the photoshoots on some of the websites pages, an argument for women as a spectacle can be made as even though it could be a sign of strength and empowerment to women

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

Taylor has created meet ups with specially selected fans

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

With how passionate her fanbase are about her, creating their own content based on her, this highlights Shirkys idea that people have the ability to create any content they want.

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? 

One factor could be how she has openly come out about her support for 

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

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

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

targeted adverts

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

Average revenue per user. This is important for social media companies as it determines how much money is made from each account created and used.

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

These sites have billions of users, and with ARPU that is a guaranteed profit from owning just one social media site.

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

Subscription services, removing adverts, highlighting adverts.

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. 

• limiting the use of micro-targeting advertising messages

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

• banning the use of so-called dark patterns - user interfaces designed to confuse or frustrate the user, such as making it hard to delete your account

2) Who is Christopher Wylie? 

Among those contributing to the report were Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower Christopher Wylie. Christopher Wylie is a British-Canadian data consultant.

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

Freedom of speech isnt an entitlement, its something your obliged to no matter how bad.

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

There are some objectively disprovable things spreading quite rapidly on Facebook right now. For example, that Covid does not exist and that the vaccine is actually to control the minds of people. These are all things that are manifestly untrue, and you can prove that. Our democratic institutions and public discourse are underpinned by an assumption that we can at least agree on things that are true.

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? 

If you have a platform that has the unique selling point of "we will allow you to promote hate speech, we will allow you to deceive and manipulate people", I do not think that business model should be allowed in its current form

7) What has Instagram been criticised for?

Making awful recommendations for people such as hate speech.

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? 

One criticism could be the idea of how quickly a rumour could spread in relation to Shirkys audience theory, and how social media will help advertise these rumours to other confused people.