For those of you who are not already aware, my major project was a multimodal project that took screenshots of tweets from three different artists in the music industry and analyzed the rhetorical moves they used to create personal bonds, or parasocial relationships, with their followers. My project was inspired by McCulloch’s mention of the study that stated Twitter users who tagged people were talking to the individual, meanwhile, those who used hashtags were addressing the entire group. I make the connection in my project that this proposal is a bit different for celebrities; especially in the music industry where their income depends entirely on the interactions of their fans. The three artists I chose to look at were Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and BTS.
For this version of “remixing,” I will attempt to write small tweets that sum up the overall styles of each of the three artists I analyze in my major project (I also type the tweet in the same format that each artist is fond of using):
Taylor Swift likes formality and organization over intertwining tags and hashtags #BuisnessWoman @taylorswift13
@ladygaga likes to write based on her #mood. Sometimes her message contains either @tags or #hashtags or even both. No matter the message it is more than often long and her fans are mentioned by name: Little Monsters <3<3<3 (red heart emojis)
@BTS_twt write their messages in Korean and share their acc between the 7 members <3<3<3 they almost always use the #Purple heart emojis and call their fandom by name. Some variation of we <3 you ARMY!!!
Writing tweets in the style of the... twitter users? t...tweeters? Wait, I'm old, what do you call people who are tweeting? Is there a noun for that? Anyway, trying to mimic each individual's style is really cool. It's interesting to think about how we have a "speaking tone" online, but I know for the LONGEST time I kept up a much more bubbly and professional persona when speaking on my work-related social media. I'm not really big enough these days for that to be necessary, thank god, but I can imagine if you're #huge it becomes a necessity.
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting that both BTS and Lady Gaga always mention their fandoms by name! I guess it's a good shorthand way to "mention" people when there's too many for you to possibly pay any attention to, even if you wanted to.
Honestly, I struggled with coming up with a good noun myself, so in my paper I just label them as "Twitter users" or "users" for short. I think the biggest thing I realized while working on this project is just how much thought goes into a tweet, even if the tweet doesn't seem to be that deep on it's surface. It was really cool to study these three artists because they all were so different in how they tweeted, but I could see elements of their styles that were shared between them. It was truly fascinating.
DeleteThis is really smart, Ally! You do a great job translating the ideas from your paper in tweets. Just clever and meta as heck. Nicely done.
ReplyDeleteEven though I'm not on twitter, I get this because I read your paper. I like how you remixed your work and how it makes sense and flows nicely. And like Lee said, I like how Lady Gaga and BTS address their fans directly! That fact allows me to understand something about them that I just hadn't noticed before, I suppose.
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