Thesis advisor: Bonnie Jefferon / Kanye West is a musical artist whose shocking public statements often remain in the news for weeks on end. Throughout the past six years of his extremely successful career, at least three of these public acts have received tireless media coverage both for their perceived offensiveness, and for their direct connection to larger societal issues. This project examines three statements: (1) West’s 2005 claim during Hurricane Katrina that “[President] George Bush doesn’t care about Black people;” (2) the moment in 2009 when West stormed the MTV Video Music Awards stage during singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech and grabbed her microphone, stating that he would let her finish, “but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time;” and (3) West’s 2010 appearance on NBC’s Today Show and the series of angry messages he posted to his Twitter page claiming that the interviewer, Matt Lauer, tried to “force” his answers. These statements are analyzed to determine whether West may have unwittingly employed the rhetorical method Theodore Windt describes as the diatribe. The paper concludes that West’s statements in 2005 and 2010 meet the criteria for the diatribe, using a shocking act or message to catalyze important discussion of major problems existing in society. However, West’s 2009 incident fails to meet the criteria, and cannot be categorized as a diatribe, but instead as simply an offensive act that provided no greater benefit to society. The process of these analyses may serve as a way to examine future celebrity statements to determine whether certain individuals are striving to elevate society or, through their offenses, may be adding to a cultural downfall. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Communication Honors Program. / Discipline: Communication.

As a popular culture subject, Taylor Swift is an example of a widely circulated image that adheres to the guidelines for “appropriate” girlhood, innocence, and feminine performance. The proliferation of Swift’s identity as a virginal, delicate girl makes Swift the successful pop music figure that can “save” the troubled young girl of today. This thesis grapples with Swift’s image as an artist and addresses the ways that she often stands in as the example for imagined “appropriate” femininity. Swift’s image relies on ideas about innocence and normativity that are directly linked to markers of whiteness without ever having to explicitly name it. Swift’s specific performance of normativity and the success she has achieved because of it is one example of how we can begin to complicate understandings of agency and where it can be located.

People have organized around gender equality in modern America for the last century. However, with the advent of new technology, people largely organize in around social movements in online spaces. This thesis explores the ways in which new media expands a popular understanding of the Feminist movement.

This study explores how knowledge and reality is constructed within an online fandom’s communication, with a focus on LGBTQ+ discourse within Taylor Swift’s fans on Reddit. This is done through a qualitative digital ethnographic method and uses LGBTQ+ symbols and parasocial relationships as tools to analyse 75 posts and 850 comments total. The theoretical framework mainly consists of Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) theory on the social construction of reality and Couldry and Hepp’s (2017) reinterpretation of their work that considers the effects of digitalization and how our construction of reality has changed with it. The analysis showed that the group uses symbols to build a shared collection of facts and continuously follows an us-versus-them narrative to construct their community. Their foundational belief that Swift herself is secretly queer is not to be too closely questioned within the group and they often use the version of Swift that outsiders have built up to discuss hypothetical what-ifs. To participate in the community and be seen as “logical” it appears to require that you to some extent correctly consume the media in a way that aligns with pre- existing facts that the group shares. Meaning that the group has unspoken rules that dictate the knowledge hierarchies within it.

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Taylor Swifts turné ‘The Eras Tour’ har kommit att bli en av de mest omtalade turnéerna i nutid. Hysterin som uppstått kring Swift och ‘The Eras Tour’ väckte intresset att förstå vilka faktorer som gör att turnén blivit så stor som den har blivit. Sociala medier och det digitaliserade samhället vi lever i idag har lett till att innehåll sprids i en fart det aldrig tidigare gjort. Genom att ta del av innehåll från exempelvis konserter skapas en bild av hur konserten är utformad vilket kan leda till att fans får förväntningar. Att fans har förväntningar på ‘The Eras Tour’ är inget undantag och hur dessa ser ut och vilken roll sociala medier spelar för dessa är relativt outforskade. Tidigare forskning undersöker främst fankultur, publikens engagemang, och Taylor Swifts marknadsföringsstrategier (Baym, 2018; Bennet, 2014; Duffet, 2013; Fiske, 1992; Hills, 2003; Ryan Bengtsson & Edlom, 2022). Denna studie syftar därför till att undersöka om det finns något samband mellan Taylor Swifts fans, så kallade 'Swifties', konsumtion av sociala medier och förväntningarna som finns på ‘The Eras Tour’. Studien leds-av-frågeställningen: - Vilken relation har fans konsumtion av sociala medier och förväntningar på konsertkulturen på ‘The Eras Tour’? Utöver studiens frågeställning undersöks också fyra forskningsfrågor som tillsammans lägger en grund för att kunna besvara frågeställningen. Forskningsfrågorna ämnar undersöka fans användarmönster på sociala medier,deras förväntningar på ‘The Eras Tour’, vilka sociala interaktioner fansen har med varandra samt vilka samband som finns mellan användarmönster, grad av fan, förväntningar och engagemang. Studien förankras i betrodda teorier och tidigare forskning vilka bland annat omfattar sociala medier, engagemang, fandom och konsertkultur samt hur dessa samspelar med varandra. Genom en kvantitativ enkätstudie har data från 291 respondenter samlats in genom Survey & report och sedan lagts över i SPSS för att undersökas och analyseras. Enkäten publicerades på plattformarna Instagram, TikTok, Facebook och X. Resultatet av denna studie visar att det finns flera signifikanta samband, och ett av dem är mellan i vilken utsträckning fans har tagit del av videor från ‘The Eras Tour’ och om fans ska klä sig enligt en ‘Era’ samt ta med sig vänskapsarmband till konserten. Det kan antas att fans i och med detta agerar på ett visst sätt för att de på sociala medier har sett videor från konserten där de fått kunskap om hur de ska klä sig och vara. Ett annat resultat av denna studie visar att den största andelen respondenter har varit fans av Swift i 1-3 år, vilket vid studiens genomförande också är då ‘The Eras Tour’ har varit aktuell. Detta resultat visar att spridning på sociala medier också kan generera fler fans vilket kan bidra till den växande framgången som Swift haft under de senaste åren som hon varit aktiv med turnén ‘The Eras Tour’. Då turnén har blossat upp på sociala medier pekar detta resultat på att spridningen av innehåll från turnén har gjort att fans troligtvis därför har förväntningar på den och att det tillkommit nya fans under denna tid. Genom att vara en del av ‘Swiftie’-communityt samt att ta del av videor från konserterna på sociala medier, byggs förväntningar om konsertkulturen upp. Detta är troligtvis anledningen till att en stor majoritet fans känner sig så pass trygga att de kan tänka sig att gå på en konsert ensam vilket också är ett resultat som kommit fram under studiens gång. Slutsatsen som kan dras av denna studie är att det finns en relation mellan konsumtion av sociala medier och fans förväntningar på ‘The Eras Tour’. Den antagna relationen är att förväntningar troligtvis skapas ju mer innehåll från konserten som tas del av på sociala medier. / Taylor Swift's tour 'The Eras Tour' has become one of the most well-known tours in recent times. The hysteria about Swift and 'The Eras Tour' sparked interest in understanding the factors that have made the tour as big as it is. Social media and the digitalized society we live in today have led to content spreading at an unprecedented speed. By consuming content from concerts, for instance, an image of the concert is created, which can lead to fans having expectations. Fans having expectations regarding 'The Eras Tour' is no exception, and how these are formed and the role social media plays is relatively unexplored. Previous research mainly examines fan culture, audience engagement and Taylor Swifts marketing strategies (Baym, 2018; Bennet, 2014; Duffet, 2013; Fiske, 1992; Hills, 2003; Ryan Bengtsson & Edlom, 2022). Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether there is a correlation between Taylor Swift's fans, known as 'Swifties,' their consumption of social media, and the expectations for 'The Eras Tour.' The study is guided by the question: - What is the relationship between fans' social media consumption and expectations for the concert culture at 'The Eras Tour? In addition to the main question, the study examines four research questions that collectively provide a foundation to help answer the main question. The research questions aim to investigate fans' usage patterns on social media, their expectations regarding 'The Eras Tour,' the social interactions fans have with each other, and the correlations between usage patterns, level of fandom, expectations, and engagement. The study is based on trusted theories and previous research, which include social media, engagement, fandom, and concert culture, and how these interact with each other. Through a quantitative survey, data from 291 respondents have been collected through Survey & report and analyzed and examined in SPSS. The survey was published on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X. The results of this study show that there are several significant correlations, one of which is between the extent to which fans have watched videos from 'The Eras Tour' and whether fans plan to dress according to an 'Era' and bring friendship bracelets to the concerts. Consequently, it can be assumed that fans behave in a certain way because they have seen videos from the concert on social media, where they have learned how to dress and act. Another result of this study shows that the largest proportion of respondents have been fans of Swift for 1-3 years, which is also the period when 'The Eras Tour' has been relevant. This result shows that distribution on social media also can generate more fans which can contribute to the ongoing success that Swift have had in recent years since she has been active with the tour ‘The Eras Tour’. As the tour has exploded on social media, this result suggests that the spread of content from the tour has likely led to fans having expectations for it and that new fans have emerged during this time. By being part of the 'Swiftie' community and watching videos from the concerts on social media, expectations regarding the concert culture are made. This is likely why a large majority of fans feel comfortable enough to consider attending a concert alone which also is a result from the study. The conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that there is a relationship between social media consumption and fans' expectations for 'The Eras Tour.' The assumed relationship is that expectations more likely are created the more content fans consume from the concert on social media.

Fans and fandoms are ever more salient aspects of our everyday lives offline and linked to the Internet's growing influence also online, particularly on social media. While fans have generally been pathologized via mass media but also early academic representations especially prior to the founding of the interdisciplinary Fan Studies in the 1970s/1980s, which sought to actively counter negative fan representations and foreground fans' creative productivity, nowadays, even though many types of fans have been 'mainstreamed' and are generally accepted, specific fan types are still systematically discriminated against - even within Fan Studies - along the lines of socio-demographic variables. These marginalised fans are predominantly female, young, queer and non-white. Moreover, even though Fan Studies define fan identity as one of their focal concerns, linguistic research on fan identity, particularly regarding its narrative and interactive construction, has widely been neglected. However, as narrative interaction and specifically small stories (as propsed within the small story paradigm by Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2007/8) have been found to play a very important role in the construction of identity, the investigation of how fan identity is constructed via small stories and - given the centrality of collective fandoms for fans - specifically shared (group) stories can severely contribute to fan (identity) research. Thus, combining decidedly linguistic research on narrative fan identity construction and the inclusion of previously marginalised fan communities, this thesis focuses on the construction of fan identity of Taylor Swift fans (Swifties) - a predominantly female and young fandom that has been ridiculed by mass media and dominant discourses - via shared stories. More specifically this study analyses the construction of Swiftie fan identity via shared stories both online in nicknames on Tumblr and Twitter and face to face in the form of a positioning analysis investigating the interactions of a Zoom focus group made up of five German Swifties. This research finds that within Swiftie nicknames Swiftie fan identity is centrally constructed by means of variously highly condensed, combined and/or personalised references (to shared stories of the overarching Swiftie community). The focus group interactions then reveal various positioning practices that are strongly intertwined with (often) more elaborate shared stories, which are 'shared' by the Swiftie participants both with regards to experiences on the story level and their interactive co-construction on the level of interaction. Despite their diverging local manifestations both within the investigated Swiftie nicknames and focus group interactions shared stories are centrally utilised to construct and communicate Swiftie fan identity as a particularly collectively experienced and defined ingroup identity that confers belonging and further functions as a shield against outgroup discrimination. Further research should then enlarge the present investigative focus to include also other online platforms and fan communicative acts, supplementary and also offline implemented focus groups and field studies, more heterogenous participants with regard to often neglected socio-demographic variables (next to age and gender) as well as other (marginalised) fandoms outside of the Swiftie community.