tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/taylor-swift-11412/articlesTaylor Swift – The Conversation2024-03-15T12:11:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2240352024-03-15T12:11:53Z2024-03-15T12:11:53ZDid Biden really steal the election? Students learn how to debunk conspiracy theories in this course<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582032/original/file-20240314-24-in072o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump supporters attend an election fraud rally in December 2020 in Washington, D.C.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-supporter-and-qanon-follower-jake-the-q-shaman-angeli-news-photo/1297805096?adppopup=true">Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Text saying: Uncommon Courses, from The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/uncommon-courses-130908">Uncommon Courses</a> is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.</em> </p>
<h2>Title of course:</h2>
<p>Debunking conspiracy theories </p>
<h2>What prompted the idea for the course?</h2>
<p>I am interested in how people internalize or learn about political beliefs they go on to adopt. This interest coincided with my concerns about the seeming ease with which some far-right conservatives and supporters of former President Donald Trump peddled patently bogus conspiracies about <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-2020-election-lies-debunked-4fc26546b07962fdbf9d66e739fbb50d">election fraud in 2020</a>.</p>
<p>One of the outcomes of these schemes was Trump supporters’ attack on the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/01/trump-indictment-jan-6-2020-election/">U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021</a>. Sadly, the belief that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, even in the face of overwhelming <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-fact-check-on-jan-6-anniversary-trump-sticks-to-election-falsehoods">evidence to the contrary</a>, has remained one core element of the Trump 2024 campaign. I remembered the work of historian Richard Hofstadter, who coined the term <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/">the “paranoid style” in politics</a> in a Harper’s Magazine essay in 1964. His main idea was that some politicians were using fear and a paranoid style of thinking to sway voters. They refused to accept the current state of society and wanted to make it appear that there was a looming threat to the country. </p>
<p>Hofstadter’s work was prompted by the actions of an extreme right-wing movement called the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/a-view-from-the-fringe">John Birch Society</a>. I had a feeling of déjà vu with Trump. </p>
<h2>What does the course explore?</h2>
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<span class="caption">A 1970 conspiracy theory handout lists the similarities with the killing of John F. Kennedy and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.</span>
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<p>What’s the real truth about the moon landing? Who <a href="https://time.com/6338396/jfk-assassination-conspiracy-culture/">really killed JFK?</a> These are just some of the questions we explore in this course. My goal is to balance the serious with the absurd. </p>
<p>I want students to identify the root causes of the conspiracy, use vetted sources and learn to be good consumers of online information.</p>
<p>I also want to train students in the practice of critical analysis. The American Psychological Association has shown that people who <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000392">practice conspiratorial thinking are more likely</a> to seek simple solutions to complex problems and experience feelings of fear and isolation. </p>
<p>We begin the course examining what we can learn from both political science and psychology. We look at the long history of hoaxes, frauds and deliberate conspiracies in American history, stretching back to the Illuminati, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/catholics-and-conspiracies">anti-Catholicism</a> <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/antisemitic-attitudes-america-conspiracy-theories-holocaust-education-and-other">and antisemitism</a>. </p>
<p>What is old is new again. The idea that a mysterious group <a href="https://theweek.com/62399/what-is-the-illuminati-and-what-does-it-control">like the Illuminati</a> is secretly in control of the world has not gone away. False beliefs about various groups such as Catholics and Jews are, sadly, recycled again and again.</p>
<p>The course also covers the current <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228373511/heres-why-conspiracy-theories-about-taylor-swift-and-the-super-bowl-are-spreadin">conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift</a>. This includes the false belief that the outcome of the February 2024 Super Bowl was predetermined so that the Kansas City Chiefs would win, and Swift, the girlfriend of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, would announce her support for President Joe Biden. </p>
<p>My course also explores much more serious threats, like QAnon – a dangerous movement that falsely believes secret government operatives are running child sex rings. </p>
<p>We also take a look at topics like UFOs, aliens, Bigfoot and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-loch-ness-monster-real-197338">Loch Ness monster</a>.</p>
<h2>Why is this course relevant now?</h2>
<p>In the current age of <a href="https://theconversation.com/republicans-and-democrats-consider-each-other-immoral-even-when-treated-fairly-and-kindly-by-the-opposition-220002">political polarization</a>, it is critical that I do all I can to equip future leaders and citizens with the tools they need to suss out fact from distraction and outright fiction. </p>
<h2>What’s a critical lesson from the course?</h2>
<p>My hope is that my students leave the course with the confidence that they need to not only recognize but to openly combat disinformation. We live in an age of oversaturation of information. My students are digital natives. They rarely receive information from traditional media outlets like newspapers. When one considers the wealth of disinformation on the internet, or the prospect <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/">that TikTok is their primary source of news,</a> it is critical that students are educated about how to evaluate information.</p>
<h2>What materials does the course feature?</h2>
<p>I use a <a href="https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/">number of resources</a> in this class, including <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-brainwashing-and-how-it-shaped-america-180963400/">magazine articles</a>, academic papers, books <a href="https://www.callingbullshit.org/tools.html">and websites</a> that give people tools to recognize false information. </p>
<p>Our reading list includes the books “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520276826/a-culture-of-conspiracy">A Culture of Conspiracy:</a> Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America,” “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/yale-scholarship-online/book/17546">Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America</a>” and “<a href="https://www.burnsiderarebooks.com/pages/books/140941664/richard-hofstadter/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics-and-other-essays">The Paranoid Style in American Politics and other essays”</a>.</p>
<h2>What will the course prepare students to do?</h2>
<p>My students will feel some discomfort at times confronting their own biases and preconceived notions.</p>
<p>The idea is that my course will prepare students to question and then determine the veracity of patently false information. My students will also be prepared to recognize that most conspiracies are born from conditions of stress and the fear of the other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Cason does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of history of education and American politics explains what is behind his course on conspiracy theories and how students learn to debunk fake ideas.David Cason, Associate Professor in Honors, University of North DakotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235062024-03-08T13:35:33Z2024-03-08T13:35:33ZCenturies after Christine de Pizan wrote a book railing against misogyny, Taylor Swift is building her own ‘City of Ladies’<p>In her work, Taylor Swift has taken inspiration from women of the past, including actress <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/lyrics/taylor-swift-tortured-poets-department-clara-bow-family-reacts-1235607902/">Clara Bow</a>, socialite <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/the-outrageous-life-of-rebekah-harkness-taylor-swifts-high-society-muse">Rebekah Harkness</a> and her grandmother <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-marjorie-song-video-evermore-album-sheffield-1103100/">Marjorie Finlay</a>, who was an opera singer. </p>
<p>But sometimes I wonder what the 34-year-old pop star would think of the life and work of Italian-born French writer <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/place_settings/christine_de_pisan">Christine de Pizan</a>. </p>
<p>Back in the 15th century, Christine – who scholars customarily refer to using her first name, because “de Pizan” simply reflects her place of birth, and she may not have had a last name – dealt with her share of “<a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article282745283.html">dads, Brads and Chads</a>,” just as Swift has in the 21st century. </p>
<p>Thought to be the first French woman to make a living as a writer, Christine compiled “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667679/">The Book of the City of Ladies</a>” in 1405 to challenge the negative stereotypes of women in the Middle Ages. In it, she offers dozens of examples of accomplished women found throughout history, including queens, saints, warriors and poets. </p>
<p>Christine’s writings continue to resonate – especially with women – and are used widely in college courses on women and gender. I recently used excerpts from “The Book of the City of Ladies” in my course on women and gender in early modern Europe.</p>
<p>In reflecting on Christine’s writings from over 600 years ago, I am struck by how she recognized the pernicious effects of attacks on women’s intellect and accomplishments – the ways in which they could be internalized and accepted if women did not challenge the stereotypes. </p>
<h2>Building the ‘City of Ladies’</h2>
<p>Christine de Pizan was born in Italy but spent much of her life in the royal court of France during the rule of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Valois-dynasty">the House of Valois</a>. </p>
<p>Her father, a court physician and astrologer, encouraged her education alongside her brothers. She had three children with her husband, a French royal secretary named Etienne de Castel, who died when Christine was just 25 years old.</p>
<p>Widowed and facing the prospect of raising and financially supporting children on her own, she turned to composing works that appealed to elites, resulting in commissions from patrons. She wrote on a variety of topics, including <a href="https://roseandchess.lib.uchicago.edu/rose.html">a poem celebrating Joan of Arc’s success on the battlefield</a>.</p>
<p>But her most ambitious and enduring work is “The Book of the City of Ladies.” </p>
<p>Discouraged by all the misogyny she had read, Christine whimsically claimed that she had received a vision from three ladies: Reason, Rectitude and Justice, who tasked her with the project.</p>
<p>By gathering stories about the accomplishments of women, Christine set out to build an allegorical city where women and their achievements would be safe from the insults and slander of men. </p>
<p>In “The City,” she specifically referenced “<a href="http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/matheol.html">The Lamentations of Matheolus</a>,” from 1295, a lengthy essay written in Latin by a cleric from Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Its French translation from the late 1300s would have been the version Christine read. </p>
<p>It is full of hateful views of women, but Matheolus saves most of his ire for wives.</p>
<p>“Anyone who wishes to immolate himself on the altar of marriage will have a lot to put up with,” he writes, adding that the torture of marriage “is worse than the torments of hell.” He derides women as “always quarrelsome … cruel, and shrewish” – “terribly perverse” individuals who have “deceived all the greatest men in the world.”</p>
<p>Matheolus was not alone in his low views of women. Other popular writings of the time included Jean de Meun’s “<a href="https://roseandchess.lib.uchicago.edu/rose.html">The Romance of the Rose</a>,” which portrayed women as untrustworthy and jealous, and an anonymous treatise, “<a href="https://pius.slu.edu/special-collections/?p=4037">On the Secrets of Women</a>,” which offered misinformation about the biology of women. </p>
<p>With so much misogyny coming from so many sources, Christine acknowledged how easy it was for women to believe what was said about them: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s no wonder that women have been the losers in the war against them since the envious slanderers and vicious traitors who criticize them have been allowed to aim all manner of weapons at their defenseless targets.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Christine recognized the reasons behind this widespread misogyny: Women who were smarter and kinder than men were seen as a threat and a challenge to <a href="https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/women-in-medieval-literature-and-society/">the established patriarchy</a> of Western society. </p>
<h2>Taylor Swift’s ‘big ole city’</h2>
<p>Like Christine, Swift is a gifted writer who began making a living with her pen when she was a teenager. </p>
<p>She has built her own city of sorts to protect her reputation, her music and her self-esteem.</p>
<p>In her 2020 documentary “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11388580/">Miss Americana</a>,” Swift opens up about her struggles with media scrutiny, which contributed to an eating disorder. In it, she describes herself as “trying to deprogram the misogyny in my own brain.”</p>
<p>She <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/arts/music/taylor-swift-trial-jury-verdict.html">sued a DJ that groped her and won</a>, leading to her being featured as one of the “silence breakers” <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/6/16742166/taylor-swift-time-magazine-person-year-2017-silence-breaker-me-too">on the cover</a> of Time magazine in 2017 at the dawn of the #MeToo movement. And in 2021, she began reclaiming her words and music <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/music/taylors-version-meaning-swift-rerecording-albums-rcna98513">by re-recording her older albums</a> as “Taylor’s Versions” after the original masters were sold by her first record label without her consent. </p>
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<img alt="Tattooed arms peruse vinyl records featuring a young woman on the cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580547/original/file-20240307-18-oq6pk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580547/original/file-20240307-18-oq6pk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580547/original/file-20240307-18-oq6pk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580547/original/file-20240307-18-oq6pk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580547/original/file-20240307-18-oq6pk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580547/original/file-20240307-18-oq6pk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580547/original/file-20240307-18-oq6pk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An employee of an Ohio record store stocks a shelf with copies of ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ in 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/OhioDailyLife/23ee9d50617546c092a62ec7a51c301f/photo?Query=taylor%27s%20version&mediaType=photo&sortBy=creationdatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=138&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Aaron Doster</a></span>
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<p>In her songs, Swift also repeatedly confronts the men who have discounted her talent and intellect. Her song “<a href="https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-mean-lyrics">Mean</a>” is widely believed to be about the critics who questioned her talent, such as <a href="https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2010/02/01/grammys/">Bob Lefsetz</a>, who wrote that Swift clearly couldn’t sing and had possibly destroyed her career after <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/taylor-swifts-out-of-tune-grammy-performance-defended-by-label-201042/">a shaky performance</a> at the 2010 Grammys.</p>
<p>“Someday, I’ll be livin’ in a big, ole city,” Swift retorts in the track, “And all you’re ever gonna be is mean.”</p>
<p>At the conclusion of “The Book of the City of Ladies,” her mission to record the achievements of women accomplished, Christine de Pizan invites her female readers to join her: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“All of you who love virtue, glory and a fine reputation can now be lodged in great splendour inside its walls, not just women of the past but also those of the present and the future, for this has been founded and built to accommodate all deserving women.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Though the City of Ladies was built centuries ago, I have a feeling that Taylor Swift would be right at home in that big, ole city.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jill R. Fehleison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By compiling stories about the accomplishments of women, Christine set out to build an allegorical city where women and their achievements would be safe from sexist insults and slander.Jill R. Fehleison, Professor of History and Interdisciplinary Studies, Quinnipiac UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2240492024-03-05T14:01:24Z2024-03-05T14:01:24ZPublishing Taylor Swift’s flight information: Is it stalking or protected free speech?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579690/original/file-20240304-51556-7v39u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Taylor Swift, flanked by security guards and Donna Kelce, mother of her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, appears at the Super Bowl in February 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://mapi.associatedpress.com/v2/items/528216703c8548edb732773004b4aed9/preview/AP24043163440642.jpg?wm=api&tag=app_id=1,user_id=904438,org_id=101781">Julio Cortez/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-sweeney/?sh=bc38f2170831">Jack Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida</a>, says the First Amendment gives him the right to <a href="https://twitter.com/Jxck_Sweeney">publish publicly available</a> information about the flight paths of private jets owned by the rich and famous – including Taylor Swift. </p>
<p>Swift’s legal team – and <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-jack-sweeney-elon-musk-private-jet-flights-1867604">many of her fans</a> – say that Sweeney posting the comings and goings of the singer’s private plane on social media is technological stalking.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/2024/02/07/jack-sweeney-taylor-swift-legal-track-private-jets/72505276007/">Sweeney also tracks the private planes</a> owned or used by Elon Musk, Ron DeSantis, Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, several Russian oligarchs and others, using public data from a global flight tracking website, TheAirTraffic.com. </p>
<p>I am an attorney and a <a href="https://lynngreenky.com/">scholar who has written</a> about the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/W/bo156864042.html">boundaries of the First Amendment</a>.</p>
<p>My advice to Mr. Sweeney: The First Amendment is a valuable ally, but its protections might not be available to you in this situation.</p>
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<img alt="A blonde woman wears a sequin bodysuit and holds a microphone in one hand. She raises her arm and shows off her muscles." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579688/original/file-20240304-26-axeg2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579688/original/file-20240304-26-axeg2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579688/original/file-20240304-26-axeg2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579688/original/file-20240304-26-axeg2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579688/original/file-20240304-26-axeg2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579688/original/file-20240304-26-axeg2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579688/original/file-20240304-26-axeg2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Taylor Swift performs in Inglewood, Calif., on the Eras Tour on Aug. 7, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1584249148/photo/taylor-swift-performs-during-the-eras-tour-concert-at-sofi-stadium.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=MB2QbNqs8F6MnRY6xXg_qWlfsqEoV2g8xP-iXFfo9cM=">Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The arguments, explained</h2>
<p>Since December 2023, Swift’s attorneys have sent Sweeney <a href="https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/2024/02/07/jack-sweeney-taylor-swift-legal-track-private-jets/72505276007/">multiple cease-and-desist</a> letters demanding that he stop sharing the real-time and precise information about Swift’s plane’s location. The most recent letter that has been made public accuses Sweeney of “<a href="https://time.com/6692227/taylor-swift-cease-desist-letter-jack-sweeney-jet-tracker-emissions/">intentional, offensive, and outrageous conduct</a>” that threatens her safety and well-being. </p>
<p>Swift’s attorneys warn Sweeney that if he continues to publish her private travel information, she will seek legal action against him. </p>
<p>Sweeney, who is 21 years old, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/college-student-tracks-elon-musk-jet-forbes-30-under-30-2023-11">has gained fame, and perhaps a fortune</a>, over the past few years with this work. He has several hundred thousand followers across multiple social media platforms, including Instagram, Mastodon, Discord, Telegram, X – formerly known as Twitter – and Threads.</p>
<p>Sweeney argues that he is merely reposting public information as a matter of public interest. Sweeney also believes the public has a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/6/24063220/taylor-swift-jet-public-data-social-media">right to know</a> that Swift and others are “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68248168">trying to hide the bad PR of (carbon) emissions</a>.” </p>
<p>Sweeney insists that his passion for the environment adds constitutional protection to his activities.</p>
<p>Sweeney is correct that the First Amendment offers robust protection to political speech. Over and over again, the Supreme Court has reminded Americans that protecting <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2010/09-751">political speech is necessary for a strong democracy</a> – but even the shield of political speech has its limits.</p>
<p>The First Amendment does not protect <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-1107">speech that could further a crime</a>. Speech that terrorizes another person, causing them to fear for their life, can be prosecuted. It is no defense that the speaker <a href="https://casetext.com/case/planned-parenthood-v-amer-coalition-of-life">was trying to make a political point</a>.</p>
<h2>The trail of digital data</h2>
<p>Technology makes the act of gathering information easier than ever before. </p>
<p>Corporations and tech-savvy private citizens like Sweeney can forage through the depths of the digital world, finding and publishing information that most people would rather keep confidential. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.whitecase.com/insight-our-thinking/us-data-privacy-guide">though there are some state and federal privacy protections in place</a>, anyone willing to pay for the data can usually learn about people’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/state-of-privacy-laws-in-us/">buying habits</a> or even where they live, work and play. </p>
<p>Dozens of unregulated companies collect this personal information and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html">log people’s movements via mobile phones</a>. They then store that information in large data files.</p>
<p>Sweeney claims his First Amendment right to publish information about others is as vast as his technological ability to gather personal information about celebrities and other high-profile people. </p>
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<h2>Tread carefully</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.justice.gov/ovw/stalking">The Department of Justice defines stalking</a> as “a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for his or her safety or the safety of others or suffer substantial emotional distress.” </p>
<p>If a court determines that Sweeney is stalking Swift – which legally is considered conduct, not speech – his assertion that he is exercising his First Amendment right will not transform his act of publishing flight information into protected speech.</p>
<p>Sometimes, an action or a certain behavior is intended to communicate a message. For example, people have <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/21">worn black armbands</a> in the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/documents/tinker-v-des-moines-landmark-supreme-court-ruling-behalf-student-expression">past to protest the Vietnam War</a>. People also have publicly <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1988/88-155">burned the American flag</a> to show their disapproval of different political decisions or policies.</p>
<p>Wearing an armband and burning the American flag are not illegal activities, so the First Amendment protects the messages attached to these behaviors. </p>
<p>But if someone’s behavior used to communicate a message is unlawful or harmful, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/232">the First Amendment will not protect the speaker</a>. In other words, a messenger can be held responsible for any conduct that causes harm, even if the behavior was intended as a form of speech.</p>
<p>Sweeney has not been prosecuted or sued for stalking anybody, so no court has determined if he has indeed engaged in that behavior. But if, as Swift contends, <a href="https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/2024/02/06/jet-tracker-taylor-swift-ucf-jack-sweeney-social-media-twitter-x-reddit-mastadon-bluesky/72491332007/">Sweeney’s actions are simply a more sophisticated form of stalking</a>, the First Amendment will not transform his behavior into protected speech. </p>
<p>So, Mr. Sweeney, back to my advice: Tread carefully. </p>
<p>Technology is powerful, but so is people’s right to be free from terror and harm. The First Amendment may not be available to you to defend your behavior even if you cloak it in political speech.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224049/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynn Greenky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A college junior who has gained a following by sharing high-profile people’s private flight information says that he is sharing public information. Others, like Taylor Swift, say that he is stalking.Lynn Greenky, Professor Emeritus of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Syracuse UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2240622024-02-22T19:20:43Z2024-02-22T19:20:43ZAre you ready for it? ‘Yeah-nah’ comes back stronger – with a little help from Taylor Swift<p>Much has been written about the power of Taylor Swift’s poetic lyrics to resonate deeply with her audiences. But forget poetry and literary allusions — their influence pales in comparison to the cultural impact of a resounding “yeah-nah”. </p>
<p>During last Friday evening’s concert, Swift’s dancer Kameron Saunders bellowed the cherished Australian phrase in response to Swift’s line “You know that we are never getting back together” — and 96,000 Swifties at the Melbourne Cricket Ground went wild.</p>
<h2>It was enchanting to meet you — introducing ‘yeah-nah’</h2>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0726860022000013166">first ever study</a> of this little Aussie icon, “yeah-nah” arrived on the linguistic scene probably around the late 1990s. But it didn’t really come to the attention of Australians until the early 2000s, much the same time as Swift and her guitar began to rise to fame in Nashville. And, just like Swift, it’s not always been plain sailing for “yeah-nah” — a rocky start and a career marked by continual change and innovation. </p>
<p>Condemned by many in the early 2000s, “yeah-nah” <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/too-much-speech-junk-yeah-no-20040619-gdy2ga.html">was branded with disparaging labels</a> such as “speech junk” — and lumped together with other “unnecessary words that clutter up our language”. “Yeah-no” was a symptom of Australia’s inarticulateness, they argued, and it should go. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yeah-nah-aussie-slang-hasnt-carked-it-but-we-do-want-to-know-more-about-it-165746">Yeah, nah: Aussie slang hasn't carked it, but we do want to know more about it</a>
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<p>But somehow “yeah-no” climbed out of the linguistic abyss — came back stronger than a nineties trend, as Swifties would put it — and won people’s hearts. When ABC radio stations around the country asked their listeners to send in their favourite Aussie slang expressions, “yeah-nah” came second out of more than a thousand unique phrases (<a href="https://theconversation.com/yeah-nah-aussie-slang-hasnt-carked-it-but-we-do-want-to-know-more-about-it-165746">it might even have come first</a> had “mate” not got that unfair boost from other favourites like “g’day mate”).</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="564" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1D8HauWeNC0" title="Taylor Swift We are Never Ever Getting Back Together " yeah,nah"eras="" tour="" melbourne="" #erastour="" #red"="" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Now a major protagonist in <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/william-mcinnes/yeah-nah-a-celebration-of-life-and-the-words-that-make-us-who-we-are">William McInnes’ book</a> Yeah, Nah!: A celebration of life and the words that make us who we are, this much loved linguistic celebrity also makes regular public appearances — popping up everywhere from car sales adverts to the branding initiatives of condom companies. It’s prominently adorned on earrings, signet rings, necklaces, T-shirts and even features in beautifully intricate needlework embroideries.</p>
<h2>What’s ‘yeah-nah’ anyway?</h2>
<p>“Yeah-nah” (or its more formal version “yeah-no”) is one of those highly idiosyncratic expressions dotted through our speech. Its functions have to do with hedging, politeness and solidarity, but they are complex and pinning them down is tricky. As you’d expect — it is after all the fall-out of the hidden thought processes of humans interacting with other humans. </p>
<p>Here are some examples to illustrate just some of its duties.</p>
<p>You might want to decline someone’s kind offer of assistance: “Do want a hand?” — “Yeah-nah, I’ll be fine.” To simply say “no” would be blunt. </p>
<p>You might want to agree with a negative question: “So you didn’t get the Taylor Swift tickets?” — “Yeah-nah, we were too slow.” A simple “yes” or “no” would be ambiguous.</p>
<p>You might want to indicate enthusiastic agreement: “So you enjoyed Taylor Swift?” — “Yeah-nah, she was fantastic.” The effect of “no” is to reinforce “yes” by knocking on the head any possibility of contradiction.</p>
<p>You start talking after a lull in the conversation: “Yeah-nah, I was hoping to go to the concert.” “Yeah-nah” strengthens rapport with your conversational partner; it suggests interest or support. </p>
<p>You’re under pressure to accept a compliment, but at the same time want to appear modest. “You played brilliantly today” — “Yeah-nah, I was lucky really.” “Yeah” acknowledges the compliment (not to would seem ungrateful), and the following “nah” effectively softens its impact.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/brekkies-barbies-mozzies-why-do-aussies-shorten-so-many-words-192616">Brekkies, barbies, mozzies: why do Aussies shorten so many words?</a>
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<h2>So which one did Taylor Swift’s dancer use?</h2>
<p>The “yeah-nah” starring in the Eras tour is one of the newest functions, sometimes dubbed the “shutdown” use: an intense, sarcastic form of disagreement, which effectively shuts down the topic altogether (“Would you give me your tickets for Saturday night’s concert?” “Yeah, nah”.) The “yeah” sarcastically feints at an agreement that is clearly not possible, before the crystal-cold clarity of the disagreement is issued: “nah”. Curiously, this use has earlier and stronger <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/005525.html">documentation in US English</a>, and only more recently has it been found in Australian English.</p>
<p>“Shutdown” uses have proliferated on <a href="https://commons.emich.edu/honors/607">Twitter</a> since at least 2018 (and, yes, that an intense form of disagreement should gain momentum on Twitter is perhaps the least surprising part of this story). The strong strand of internet language feeding the development of this function is perhaps why <a href="https://becauselanguage.com/63-mailbag-of-yeah-no/">newer studies</a> have found this form of “yeah-no” is used predominantly by younger people. </p>
<p>A little surprising, really — in most other functions, Baby Boomers have been documented to be the most prolific users of “yeah-no”. </p>
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<h2>You belong with me — language binds us</h2>
<p>Language is all about communicating (of course), but it’s also about defining the gang — and never underestimate the significance of this second function. Members of Swift’s fandom are known for weaving her song lyrics (“blank space, baby”, “red lip classic”) into their conversations. These fragments of lyrics become a kind of “clique”, or in-group recognition device — <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/taylor-swift-lyrics-senate-linguistics-fanilect/">“if you’re quoting Taylor Swift, that connects us”</a>. </p>
<p>Swift is certainly aware of the power of language when it comes to creating bonds, and not just through relatable lyrics and themes. She is brilliant at acknowledging local culture and using colloquial phrases to connect with her audiences. And she nailed it with “yeah-nah”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224062/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Burridge receives funding from ARC SR200200350
Metaphors and Identities in the Australian Vernacular. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isabelle Burke receives funding from ARC SR200200350 Metaphors and Identities in the Australian Vernacular. </span></em></p>For Australians, it’s a love story, so baby just say “yeah-nah”.Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash UniversityIsabelle Burke, Research fellow in Linguistics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2234432024-02-22T19:20:38Z2024-02-22T19:20:38ZTeam Taylor – why Swift’s brand works so well and how it could come under threat<p>There is no escaping Taylor Swift. Even if you try to ignore the star, she is currently everywhere. On the airwaves, on playlists, streaming services, social media, in the news, on the big screen and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/what-we-ve-learned-so-far-from-taylor-swift-s-australian-shows-and-what-to-expect-next-20240218-p5f5su.html">at a mega-stadium</a> near you.</p>
<p>Devoted “Swifties” around the globe have their own lore, with the 34-year-old’s appeal crossing sex, age, class and cultural groups. </p>
<p>The largest US newspaper chain, Garnett, even appointed a dedicated <a href="https://variety.com/2023/music/news/taylor-swift-reporter-usa-today-gannett-hire-1235781178/">Taylor Swift Reporter</a> to cover her every move.</p>
<p>Arguably, we haven’t seen fan love (or media coverage) for a musical act on the scale of Taylor Swift since <a href="https://themusicnetwork.com/taylor-swift-mania/">The Beatles</a>. </p>
<p>What is it about her that drives unrelenting attention and adoration on such a grand scale? And could her current ubiquity actually turn out to be a threat?</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-didnt-just-update-the-lyrics-for-better-than-revenge-she-updated-her-public-image-209684">Taylor Swift didn't just update the lyrics for Better Than Revenge – she updated her public image</a>
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<h2>What defines the Taylor Swift brand?</h2>
<p>Swift’s talent as a songwriter, singer and performer cemented her as a multi-award winning artist . She has been nominated for <a href="https://people.com/taylor-swift-grammy-award-wins-8557898#:%7E:text=And%20at%20the%202024%20Grammy,and%20taken%20home%2014%20wins">52 Grammys</a> and won 14, and recently made history as the only artist to win Album of the Year four times. </p>
<p>She is both the girl next door and a mega-star with <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-18/why-are-so-many-taylor-swift-fans-middle-aged/103457252">cross-generational appeal</a>. </p>
<p>And she is also a global brand.</p>
<p>Almost anything (or anyone) can become a <a href="https://www.ama.org/topics/branding/">brand</a>, with its own distinctive name, term, design or symbol. But a successful brand is more than an identity: it exists solidly in the public consciousness, like Nike, Apple and Google. </p>
<p>To occupy such a position, the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2021/03/09/five-components-of-a-strong-brand/?sh=fd06e0f2fb79">keys to success</a> for strong brands include: consistent messaging, differentiation and brand experience. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-taylor-swift-get-so-popular-she-never-goes-out-of-style-213871">How did Taylor Swift get so popular? She never goes out of style</a>
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<p>Taylor has crafted the all-American girl next door image by sharing consistent messaging about her personal experiences through her lyrics. </p>
<p>She also differentiates her brand from those of other artists by encouraging an organic fan community, complete with its own look and feel. </p>
<p>Fans wear album-themed colours or <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/50-000-rhinestones-and-a-year-in-the-making-the-swifties-diy-ing-outfits-from-scratch-20240122-p5ez7n.html">costumes</a> and trade <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/07/taylor-swift-eras-tour-australia-friendship-bracelets-inspiration-beads-explained">friendship bracelets</a>. </p>
<p>The brand experience manifests through social media, surprise announcements, hidden “<a href="https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-eras-tour-easter-eggs/">Easter eggs</a>”, concert tours, and even the Eras Tour film. Fans are never short of an opportunity to connect with the star.</p>
<p>The most successful brands form an emotional connection with consumers. </p>
<p>In this regard, Swift’s approach is pure genius. In the lead up to the release of her album 1989 she spent time scouring the internet and selecting 89 fans who were invited to her home for <a href="https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/oral-history-of-taylor-swifts-1989-secret-sessions">exclusive listening sessions</a> – now referred to as the 1989 Secret Sessions.</p>
<p>Taylor treats fans as friends with whom she shares secrets. Her lyrics, albums, videos and even her <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/taylor-swift-speaks-nyu-commencement">NYU honorary doctorate speech</a> are littered with hidden messages that fans can discover, decode and discuss. </p>
<p>This level of shared intimacy – albeit with millions of fans– keeps Swifties engaged in speculation and builds a community of “insiders”.</p>
<p>Brands are also susceptible to imminent threats and risks. </p>
<h2>The biggest threat is a moodshift</h2>
<p>One major risk for Swift is overexposure. Could her immense popularity start to work against her? </p>
<p>At present the answer is an unqualified “no”, as demand for show tickets <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/lucky-taylor-swift-fans-nab-first-tickets-as-demand-crashes-ticketing-site-20230626-p5djg3.html">exceed supply</a>, and local economies in concert cities enjoy <a href="https://www.forbes.com.au/life/entertainment/taylor-swift-australian-eras-tour-sparks-558m-economy-boost/">soaring expenditure</a> on everything from accommodation to nail salons and sequins to cowboy boots. </p>
<p>But in the long term, there is always the possibility the public’s mood could shift, leaving Swift behind. </p>
<p>She has already drawn criticism for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/06/taylor-swift-political-voting-election-influence">expressing political opinions</a>, for announcing the <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-album-backlash-poets-society-1867644">release of her new album</a> during the Grammys, and for her private jet’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2024/02/09/is-the-tide-turning-against-taylor-swift/?sh=227adcae2a74">carbon emissions</a>.</p>
<h2>Measuring Brand Taylor</h2>
<p>How valuable a brand is can be measured by marketers using “brand equity”. How well is it recognised? How do consumers perceive it? Is it trusted? </p>
<p>Brands with strong equity have much higher customer loyalty and market share. </p>
<p>Swift has incredibly strong brand equity as demonstrated by the <a href="https://www.indaily.com.au/business/economy/2024/02/20/taylor-swift-made-a-big-impact-on-victorias-economy">economic impact</a> on Eras Tour stops, and stores selling out of the things that Swifties use to <a href="https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/entertainment/2024/02/16/swift-goldrush">make their tour outfits</a> including <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-14/bead-shelves-bare-thanks-to-taylormania/103463692">beads</a>, sequins, cowboy hats and sparkly boots. </p>
<p>Not to mention the cost of concert tickets and merchandise, and (for many fans) flights and accommodation.</p>
<p>We can also get a hint of Swift’s brand equity through endorsements from others. In December 2023, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-most-powerful-woman-in-the-world-2023-list-1235534184/">Forbes</a> named Swift the world’s fifth most powerful woman, ranking her just after the European Commission President, the President of the European Central Bank and two politicians.</p>
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<img alt="Taylor Swift albums on shelves in music store" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576650/original/file-20240220-16-18y1pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=102%2C114%2C3923%2C2879&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576650/original/file-20240220-16-18y1pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576650/original/file-20240220-16-18y1pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576650/original/file-20240220-16-18y1pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576650/original/file-20240220-16-18y1pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576650/original/file-20240220-16-18y1pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576650/original/file-20240220-16-18y1pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Brand equity is a measure of a brand’s value.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/minnetonka-minnesota-october-27-2022-kiosk-2222750293">melissamn/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>Swift is currently riding sky high in popularity. She is well-known and well-liked, and she knows what she’s doing when it comes to marketing her brand. </p>
<p>The current Eras Tour and the announcement of her new album The Tortured Poets Department are continuing this momentum.</p>
<p>Many artists appeal to a specific generation and, as their fans age, their success and popularity usually wanes (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bros_(British_band)">Bros</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanson_(band)">Hanson</a> anyone?). </p>
<p>For the time being at least, Brand Taylor is going strong – though there is no doubt she is mindful of threats to her brand and will need to work hard to continue to bring her fans along with her.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-taylor-swift-tickets-so-hard-to-get-the-economics-are-complicated-208567">Why are Taylor Swift tickets so hard to get? The economics are complicated</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Grimmer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Taylor Swift is everywhere right now – but could that dent her popularity?Louise Grimmer, Senior Lecturer in Retail Marketing, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2217542024-02-21T19:12:35Z2024-02-21T19:12:35ZThe power and pleasure – and occasional backlash – of celebrity conspiracy theories<p><em>With Taylor Swift pulling in over half-a-million audience members on her Australian tour, we’ve been thinking a lot about fans. <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/fandom-series-152420">In this series</a>, our academics dive into fan cultures: how they developed, how they operate, and how they shape the world today.</em></p>
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<p>For years, people <a href="https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/ajpc.3.2.173_1">have claimed</a> Elvis Presley is alive and well. Theories that his death was faked to escape the pressures of fame were even <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Ordinary_Reactions_to_Extraordinary_Even/GAMl4GEW6-oC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=marilyn+monroe+conspiracy+theories&pg=PA21&printsec=frontcover">stoked by his record label</a>, who, two years after his death, debuted a performer who sounded like and resembled Presley, but performed wearing a mask. </p>
<p>Of course, it was all a publicity stunt.</p>
<p>In the digital age, conspiracy theorising does not require media or record label boosting. Social media acts as a platform and amplifier of fan-led conspiracy theorising. </p>
<p>Have you heard that the Canadian singer <a href="https://theconversation.com/halloween-avril-lavigne-and-the-conspiracy-theory-that-refuses-to-die-176495">Avril Lavigne is dead</a> and has been replaced by a body double called Melissa Vandella? Perhaps you’ve seen TikTok’s theorising that American actor Lea Michelle <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/larryfitzmaurice/lea-michele-cant-read-tiktok">can’t read</a>?</p>
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<p>For years, people who claimed Britney Spears was being held in her conservatorship against her will <a href="https://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/2871">were considered fringe conspiracy theorists</a>. However, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/12/entertainment/britney-spears-conservatorship-ends/index.html">legal events</a> demonstrated this was substantially true. In recent years, Taylor Swift has famously <a href="https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-eras-tour-easter-eggs/">mobilised cryptic clues</a> to tip off fans to upcoming album and tour announcements and so, in a sense, encouraging fans to make conspiracy theories about what she’s doing next.</p>
<p>This leads us to one of the more satisfying aspects of conspiracy theorising: sometimes, they might just be right. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shame-intimacy-and-community-fangirls-are-mocked-but-it-is-more-complex-than-you-might-think-213750">Shame, intimacy, and community: fangirls are mocked, but it is more complex than you might think</a>
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<h2>Decoding Taylor Swift</h2>
<p>When we think of conspiracy theories we tend to think of theories that have <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X22000823">resulted in societal harms</a>, such as QAnon or COVID-related conspiracies. However, conspiracy theories increasingly include many of the everyday practices of celebrity and fan culture. </p>
<p>Examining Swift’s engagement with her fans reveals that fans are not always “delulu” – <a href="https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/what-does-delulu-mean-on-tiktok-2276394/">a phrase popularised by fans</a> to playfully reference their “delusion” when it comes to conspiracy theorising. The release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was predicted by fans across social media through the <a href="https://www.indy100.com/celebrities/taylor-swift-fans-predict-1989-announcement">meticulous interpretation of clues</a> including colour-coded tour outfits, significant dates and social media traces left by the singer.</p>
<p>Another popular conspiracy theory within the Swift fandom is the “missing album”. </p>
<p>Prior to the release of 2017’s Reputation, Swift had been operating a clockwork schedule of album releases: one every two years. But there were a little over three years between 1989 and Reputation. The excess space between these release dates led to the theory about a “missing” album called Karma.</p>
<p>In one scene in her music video for her 2019 song The Man, the word “karma” is written in orange graffiti on a wall alongside Swift’s other albums, with adjacent text that says “MISSING: IF FOUND RETURN TO TAYLOR SWIFT”. </p>
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<p>Swift’s albums <a href="https://stylecaster.com/entertainment/music/1625095/1989-blue-taylor-swift/">are colour coded</a>, and orange is the colour fans have chosen to associate with the missing album. At the end of her Era’s tour show, Swift sings Karma, a song from her most recent album Midnights, and exits through an orange door. </p>
<p>The clues are all there, the fans say, that Karma is the missing album, and maybe, just maybe, Swift is telling her watchful fans that they were right all along: Karma is coming next.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-deadheads-on-bulletin-boards-to-taylor-swift-stans-a-short-history-of-how-fandoms-shaped-the-internet-210970">From Deadheads on bulletin boards to Taylor Swift 'stans': a short history of how fandoms shaped the internet</a>
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<h2>An internet archive</h2>
<p>Fan conspiracy theorising allows a sense of intimacy at scale. Swift frequently <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2014/10/taylor-swift-queen-of-celebrity-social-media.html">jokes</a> about “seeing everything” fans do and say online, creating a sense of a real dialogue: a call and response between fan theorising and Swift’s output.</p>
<p>Social media has substantially changed our relationship with celebrity, as expectations around access to and intimacy with celebrities <a href="https://sciendo.com/article/10.5334/csci.140?tab=referenzen">has been transformed</a>. </p>
<p>The social media presence of celebrities – necessary to sell themselves in a crowded marketplace – provides fans with access to more digital traces and data points of celebrity behaviour to analyse and dissect. The internet functions as a vast, collective archive, storing and producing a seemingly endless amount of “evidence”. </p>
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<p>But there is a trade off. Intense public discourse about Swift’s <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellendurney/taylor-swift-song-about-miscarriage-on-midnights">private</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/opinion/taylor-swift-queer.html">life</a> recently prompted her camp to push back against the “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/06/business/taylor-swift-new-york-times/index.html">invasive, untrue and inappropriate</a>” speculation around her sexuality.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shipping-slash-fic-and-gaylors-fans-can-find-community-through-queering-idols-but-is-it-ethical-210971">'Shipping', 'slash fic' and 'Gaylors': fans can find community through 'queering' idols – but is it ethical?</a>
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<h2>Community building</h2>
<p>Platforms create opportunities for fans to collectively analyse evidence, share their theories and gain recognition within the fandom for their “expertise”. The pleasures of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2023.2250662">feeling like an expert</a> have long been part of fandom, be that arts or sports.</p>
<p>Conspiracy theorising can activate many of the <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/girlhood-studies/12/1/ghs120106.xml">collective pleasures of fandom</a>, such as insider expertise, community building and a sense of discovery through close reading of key texts.</p>
<p>In understanding the pleasures of conspiracy theorising about celebrities, we can gain insight into the pull of more harmful conspiracies. While there is a world of difference between QAnon and celebrity conspiracy theorists, participants in both are seeking community, the satisfaction of “putting the pieces together” and a sense of expertise.</p>
<p>We know from research that conspiracies are almost <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/When_Prophecy_Fails.html?id=FTAxYAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">infinitely flexible</a>. If one aspect <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-25/qanon-keeps-changing-the-goal-posts/13184202">is disproven</a>, or fails, the <a href="https://thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/may-2022/belief/qanon-and-on/">boundaries shift and change</a> to encompass and explain the incongruous. </p>
<p>Fans failed to predict the announcement of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) many more times than they succeeded. Each failure meant a return to the clues, to re-read and reinterpret the signs. Even though fans eventually successfully “predicted” the announcement, in the absence of success, failure is simply folded into the expanding horizon of speculation. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-harry-potter-to-taylor-swift-how-millennial-women-grew-up-with-fandoms-and-became-a-force-211890">From Harry Potter to Taylor Swift: how millennial women grew up with fandoms, and became a force</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221754/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One of the more satisfying aspects of conspiracy theorising is, sometimes, they might just be right.Naomi Smith, Lecturer in Sociology, University of the Sunshine CoastClare Southerton, Lecturer, Digital Technology & Pedagogy, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109712024-02-20T19:56:55Z2024-02-20T19:56:55Z‘Shipping’, ‘slash fic’ and ‘Gaylors’: fans can find community through ‘queering’ idols – but is it ethical?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575852/original/file-20240215-22-u1givg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Conversation</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm9IBKQnqyY/?taken-by=karliekloss">Karlie Kloss/Instagram</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>With Taylor Swift pulling in over half-a-million audience members on her Australian tour, we’ve been thinking a lot about fans. <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/fandom-series-152420">In this series</a>, our academics dive into fan cultures: how they developed, how they operate, and how they shape the world today.</em></p>
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<p>Fandoms are their own universes of creativity, community, emotions and battles. A common aspect of fandom is fanfiction (or “fanfic”): when fans write stories about their favourite characters or celebrity idols. This work is self-published on <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/">dedicated fanfic sites</a>, and stories can get tens of thousands of reads. </p>
<p>Much fanfic involves “shipping”: imagining relationships (“ships”) between characters. When shipping involves two men this is called “slash”, and two women “femslash”. A notable example of slash is fanfic on <a href="https://shipping.fandom.com/wiki/Johnlock">Johnlock</a>, the ship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. </p>
<p>However, fandoms are often built around celebrities, not just characters. “Real Person Slash” imagines queer relationships between celebrities, and whole sub-fandoms emerge around queer ships of real people.</p>
<p>This genre is controversial within fandoms because it involves people with actual sexualities/identities. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than among the debates in the Taylor Swift fandom.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shame-intimacy-and-community-fangirls-are-mocked-but-it-is-more-complex-than-you-might-think-213750">Shame, intimacy, and community: fangirls are mocked, but it is more complex than you might think</a>
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<h2>Taylor Swift and ‘Kaylors’</h2>
<p>“Kaylors” believe Swift used to date model Karlie Kloss. They also believe several of Swift’s albums were inspired by Kloss as muse/heartbreaker, rather than Swift’s very public boyfriends. </p>
<p>The Kaylor fandom emerged as Swift and Kloss’ friendship <a href="https://twitter.com/karliekloss/status/159411826008924160?lang=en">developed</a> in the heyday of celebrity social media intimacy, beginning with a tweet from Kloss to Swift in 2012.</p>
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<p>Kloss and Swift’s public displays dimmed from public view over several years. Kloss married her long-time partner Joshua Kushner in 2018, and they have since had two children together. In light of this, most fans no longer believe Kaylor “is real”, aka, they believe that Kloss and Swift broke up at some point, or were never together. </p>
<p>It is unclear whether Kloss and Swift’s relationship was impacted by the fandom, and whether this changed their public behaviour. </p>
<h2>A shifting fandom</h2>
<p>Many Kaylors have now morphed into “Gaylors” who believe Swift is queer, or who simply enjoy undertaking queer readings of Swift’s lyrics. </p>
<p>Taylor’s music frequently expresses themes around yearning, secret desires, intolerant families, and fear of the judgement of others: experiences many queer people can relate to. There is even a whole annual fan retreat, called “<a href="https://www.gaylore.org/">Gaylore</a>”, dedicated to fans coming together to analyse Swift’s body of work through a queer lens. </p>
<p>Many within the Gaylor fandom are also queer, though importantly – and unlike other queer spaces in the real world – you do not have to identify or explain your own sexuality to be part of the fandom. </p>
<p>As my colleague <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/girlhood-studies/12/1/ghs120106.xml">Clare Southerton and I have argued previously</a>, queer shipping practices provide a unique space of queer belonging. These are communities where the collective focus is on celebrating and encouraging queer identification and pride, without having to individually identify – or even know – what your own sexuality is. </p>
<p>While no one is pressing Gaylors about their queer legitimacy, perhaps ironically, Kaylorism and Gaylorism is controversial because other fans claim this amounts to speculating on Swift’s sexuality. The heart of the issue with queer shipping and Real Person Slash is the “truth” becomes secondary to the output and desires of the fandom. </p>
<h2>Queer desires</h2>
<p>Kaylors and Gaylors “queer” their idol, or in other words, encourage queer narratives where there would otherwise be heteronormative assumptions made. </p>
<p>While for the mainstream, Swift is the canonical “All-American” straight woman, Kaylors/Gaylors suggest an alternative reality.</p>
<p>This is perhaps reminiscent of artist Zoe Leonard’s poem <a href="https://www.hauserwirth.com/ursula/28233-zoe-leonards-want-president/">I want a President</a>, released in 1992, which begins:</p>
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<p>I want a dyke for president. I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly to Leonard, the Kaylors/Gaylors have a desire for their “president” to represent counter-cultural existence. They express a longing for an alternative reality where it is possible that the most famous pop star in the world is a queer woman. </p>
<h2>But what about the ethics?</h2>
<p>There is some evidence that fan speculation about sexuality is genuinely taxing on celebrities. In his recent memoir <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/pageboy-9780857529282">Pageboy</a> Elliot Page reflects on the pain caused by conjecture about his sexuality in the public eye before he was ready to come out. </p>
<p>The Kaylor/Gaylor fandom has become so controversial that the main <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/wiki/index/rules/">Swift Reddit banned</a> “speculating about Taylor’s sexuality”. In practice, this amounts to any mention of Kaylor, Gaylor or related queer content. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/opinion/taylor-swift-queer.html">A recent opinion piece</a> in the New York Times about the Gaylor phenomenon also caused a huge debate on the Internet about the ethics of discussing celebrity sexuality. </p>
<p>As some Gaylors have pointed out, given Swift has never “come out” as straight, assuming she is straight because of her public boyfriends is also a form of speculation. </p>
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<p>As a result of this fraught debate, Gaylors are sometimes on the receiving end of homophobic sentiments from other fans.</p>
<p>Controversies over Real Person Slash and queer shipping ought to be approached with delicacy from those outside the fandoms. Fandoms are not homogenous groups. </p>
<p>The fights that emerge within these spaces can be intensely emotional, and deeply felt by those caught up. </p>
<p>An understanding of the significance of the community connections built around queer ships, and the subversive desires of these fans in a heteronormative world, must be balanced against the very real ethical concern about the impact of fan speculation, what counts as “speculation” and what causes harm. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-deadheads-on-bulletin-boards-to-taylor-swift-stans-a-short-history-of-how-fandoms-shaped-the-internet-210970">From Deadheads on bulletin boards to Taylor Swift 'stans': a short history of how fandoms shaped the internet</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210971/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah McCann is an "aca fan" (academic fan) within the Gaylor fandom </span></em></p>‘Real person Slash’ imagines queer relationships between celebrities, and whole sub-fandoms emerge around queer ships of real people.Hannah McCann, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2118902024-02-18T19:51:27Z2024-02-18T19:51:27ZFrom Harry Potter to Taylor Swift: how millennial women grew up with fandoms, and became a force<p><em>With Taylor Swift pulling in over half-a-million audience members on her Australian tour, we’ve been thinking a lot about fans. <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/fandom-series-152420">In this series</a>, our academics dive into fan cultures: how they developed, how they operate, and how they shape the world today.</em></p>
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<p>With the record-breaking success of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/28/barbie-broke-a-lot-of-records-but-not-all-of-them-here-are-the-movies-that-kept-their-titles/?sh=2f15eff31442">Barbie</a> and <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taylor-swifts-eras-tour-breaks-world-record-becomes-highest-grossing-tour-ever-4667626">Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour</a>, the economic power of women as fans is being stamped on the global entertainment industries. </p>
<p>Leading these events are millennial women. While women of all ages turned out to see Barbie, women aged 25 and older made up <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/barbie-oppenheimer-box-office-1235542025/">38% of the audience</a> by the second week of its release. Likewise, a significant chunk of Swifties <a href="https://pro.morningconsult.com/instant-intel/taylor-swift-fandom-demographic">belong to the millennial age group</a>, much like 34-year-old Taylor Swift herself. </p>
<p>Female fans followed Swift to the 2024 Super Bowl, and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240209-2024-super-bowl-commercials-target-women-because-taylor-swift">many advertisers targeted this female Gen Z and millennial audience</a>. The challenge to gender stereotypes around sport and fandom echoes the support for the Matildas during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia, which <a href="https://harpersbazaar.com.au/womens-world-cup-matildas-fandom/">opened up a new space of representation</a>. </p>
<p>Women’s fandom is increasingly a visible and powerful force in many spaces of pop culture, media and entertainment.</p>
<h2>Training fandoms</h2>
<p>Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, were taught to buy into their passions thanks to growing up in the golden age of franchises, from Harry Potter to Twilight to the Hunger Games. As these fandoms grew, millennial women increasingly found themselves playing a major role as <a href="https://entertainment.time.com/2012/09/12/introducing-the-new-face-of-fandom-women/">audiences</a> and consumers.</p>
<p>The first Harry Potter book was released in 1997, and the first film in 2001. </p>
<p>Today, there is no shortage of ways to buy into the Harry Potter world. From mugs to broomsticks, from clothes to limited-edition books, there is a constant range of objects to buy. Potter merchandise has existed since the early 2000s, with early merchandise including items like “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koka3znVDyc">secret boxes</a>” containing mystery trinkets. The Wizarding World brand launched in 2018. Encompassing things like bags, jewellery and cosmetics, the brand saw demand and merchandising formalised. </p>
<p>Specialised <a href="https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/4th-harry-potter-store-worldwide-opens-in-istanbul/news">Harry Potter stores</a> are still popping up around the globe, offering keen fans branded merchandise on just about every product imaginable. </p>
<p>Hannah Worthy is the business manager at Brisbane’s The Store of Requirement (a play on “The Room of Requirement” at Hogwarts, which provided anything a witch or wizard needed). The store opened in 2017 and is exclusively dedicated to stocking officially licensed Harry Potter merchandise.</p>
<p>Their biggest demographic, Worthy told me in an interview, is “women aged between 25 and 45”. </p>
<p>The first Twilight book was released in 2005, and the first film was released in 2008. Michael Inturrisi, the business development manager at Ikon Collectibles, tells me Twilight changed the landscape for Funko Pop! Vinyl figures, opening doors for selling collectables into major Australian bookstores. </p>
<p>These collectible plastic figurines partly found success because Twilight was popularised on both screen and film. The movies meant the franchise was a “big deal” with a large consumer base, Inturrisi says.</p>
<p>Ikon’s consumer base has since shifted over the years, moving away from its original male-dominated demographic. The company now caters more to women, with about 60% of its consumers being female.</p>
<p>The Hunger Games also contributed to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/hunger-games-ballad-songbirds-and-snakes-box-office-previews-1235648522/#:%7E:text=The%20four%20Hunger%20Games%20films,book%20of%20the%20same%20name.">franchise fever</a>, teaching fans that they could buy into their passions. Where Harry Potter featured a male lead character, The Hunger Games was led by a strong female protagonist. </p>
<p>These franchises changed the fandom landscape by building fans’ voracious appetites for all things franchised, leading to the fandom we see today.</p>
<h2>Online communities</h2>
<p>Female fans have built complex communities in digital places, empowered by social media to connect and to share their fandom. The power of these communities is becoming increasingly visible. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-booktok-and-how-is-it-influencing-what-australian-teenagers-read-182290">BookTok</a>” is a growing TikTok community where book lovers discuss and share their opinions on their reads. The platform has the power to make and break books and helps to catapult niche genres or self-published releases to the forefront of popular culture. It has driven the growth behind emerging genres, like “cosy fantasy” and “romantasy” – niche genres that focus on characters and their relationships, and romance in fantasy worlds respectively. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-booktok-and-how-is-it-influencing-what-australian-teenagers-read-182290">What is BookTok, and how is it influencing what Australian teenagers read?</a>
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<p>BookTok fans aren’t just market followers; they are also market-makers. Romantasy (a portmanteau of “romance” and “fantasy”) authors like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros have outsourced their merchandising to fans, taking a cut of the royalties. In my research I’ve found these authors have leveraged the popularity of unofficial merchandise on social media platforms to increase their official merchandise catalogues and revenue. </p>
<p>Fan cultures have a range of influences on everyday life, from <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a43948812/taylor-swift-friendship-bracelets-eras-tour-explained/">swapping friendship bracelets at Taylor Swift concerts</a> to <a href="https://www.celestialfestival.com.au">attending romantasy-inspired balls</a>. </p>
<p>Fandom might be shared online, but its effects are felt in person.</p>
<h2>The influence of millennial women in fandom</h2>
<p>Fans who were girls in the era of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Twilight are now the women who have powered the success of Barbie and the Eras Tour. The shift in fandom has been led by adult women who have been honing their fan skills since girlhood. </p>
<p>They, in turn, stand on the shoulders of the early female fans who read romance fiction back when it was even more stigmatised and wrote the earliest fan-fiction. Now they buy their daughters tickets to Taylor Swift and cheer them on as their own girls take on new fan roles. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-deadheads-on-bulletin-boards-to-taylor-swift-stans-a-short-history-of-how-fandoms-shaped-the-internet-210970">From Deadheads on bulletin boards to Taylor Swift 'stans': a short history of how fandoms shaped the internet</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211890/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Baulch is an Assistant Producer - Publishing at Ludo Studio.</span></em></p>Fans who were girls in the era of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Twilight are now the women who have powered the success of Barbie and the Eras Tour.Emily Baulch, PhD Candidate in Publishing Studies, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2233122024-02-15T19:04:36Z2024-02-15T19:04:36ZShould Taylor Swift be taught alongside Shakespeare? A professor of literature says yes<p>Does Taylor Swift’s music belong in the English classroom? No, obviously. We should teach the classics, like <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/">Shakespeare’s Sonnets</a>. After all, they have stood the test of time. It’s 2024 and he was born in 1564, and she’s only 34. What’s more, she is a pop singer, not a poet. Sliding her into the classroom would be yet another example of a dumbed-down curriculum. It’s ridiculous. It makes everyone look bad. </p>
<p>I’ve heard all that. And plenty more like it. But none of it is right. Well, the dates might be, but not the assumptions – about Shakespeare, about English, about teaching, and about Swift. </p>
<p>Swift is, by the way, a poet. She sees herself this way and her songs bear her out. In Sweet Nothing, on the <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/taylor-swift-midnights/">Midnights</a> album, she sings:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the way home<br>
I wrote a poem<br>
You say “What a mind”<br>
This happens all the time.<br> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m sure it does. Swift is relentlessly productive as a songwriter. With Midnights, she picked up <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/04/entertainment/taylor-swift-album-of-the-year-grammys/index.html">her fourth Grammy for Album of the Year</a>. And here we are, on the brink of another studio album, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tortured_Poets_Department">The Tortured Poets Department</a>, somehow written and produced amid the gargantuan success of Midnights and the Eras World Tour. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-taylor-swift-get-so-popular-she-never-goes-out-of-style-213871">How did Taylor Swift get so popular? She never goes out of style</a>
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<h2>An ally of literature</h2>
<p>Regardless of what The Tortured Poets Department ends up being about, Swift is already a firm ally of literature and reading. She is <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taylor-swift-donates-6000-books-to-library/">a donor of thousands of books</a> to public libraries in the United States, an advocate to schoolchildren of the importance of reading and songwriting, and a lover of the process of crafting lyrics. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnbCSboujF4">2016 Vogue interview</a>, Swift declared with glee that, if she were a teacher, she would teach English. The literary references in her songs are endlessly noted. “I love Shakespeare as much as the next girl,” she wrote in a <a href="https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a26546099/taylor-swift-pop-music/">2019 article for Elle</a>. </p>
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<p>Her interview Read Every Day gives a good sense of this. Swift speaks about her writing process in ways that make it accessible. She explains how songs come to her anywhere and everywhere, like an idea randomly appearing “on a cloud” that becomes the first piece in a “puzzle” that will be assembled into a song. She furtively whisper-sings song ideas into her phone when out with friends. </p>
<p>In her <a href="https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/read-taylor-swifts-full-nsai-songwriter-artist-of-the-decade-award-speech">acceptance speech for the Nashville Songwriter-Artist of the Decade Award</a> in 2022, Swift explained how she writes in three broad styles, imagining she is holding either a “quill”, a “fountain pen”, or a “glitter gel pen”. Songcraft is a joyous challenge for her. </p>
<p>If, as teachers of literature, we are too proud to credit Swift’s plainly expressed love of English (regardless of whether we like her songs or not), we are likely missing something. To bluntly rule her out of the English classroom feels more absurd than allowing her in. </p>
<p>Clio Doyle, a lecturer in early modern literature, has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-taylor-swift-belongs-on-english-literature-degree-courses-219660">summarised</a> Swift’s suitability for English in a recent article which concludes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The important thing isn’t whether or not Swift might be the new Shakespeare. It’s that the discipline of English literature is flexible, capacious and open-minded. A class on reading Swift’s work as literature is just another English class, because every English class requires grappling with the idea of reading anything as literature. Even Shakespeare. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Doyle reminds us Swift’s work has been taught at universities for a while now and, inevitably, the singer’s name keeps cropping up in relation to Shakespeare. This isn’t just a case of fandom gone wild or Shakespeare professors, like <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/why-taylor-swift-is-a-literary-giant-by-a-shakespeare-professor-20230518-p5d9cn.html">Jonathan Bate</a>, gone rogue. </p>
<p>The global interest in the world-first academic <a href="https://swiftposium2024.com/">Swiftposium</a> is a good measure of how things are trending. Moreover, it is wrong to think Swift’s songs are included in units of study purely to be adored. Her wide appeal is part of her appeal to educators, but that doesn’t mean her art is uncritically included. </p>
<p>The reverse is true. Claire Hansen <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/pop-star-philosopher-poet-taylor-swift-is-shaking-up-how-we-think-20240207-p5f342.html">taught Swift in one of her literature units at the Australian National University</a> last year precisely because this influential singer-songwriter prompts students to explore the boundaries of the canon.</p>
<p>I will be teaching Midnights and Shakespeare’s Sonnets together in a literature unit at the University of Sydney this semester. Why? Not because I think Swift is as good as Shakespeare, or because I think she is not as good as Shakespeare. These statements are fine as personal opinions, but unhelpful as blanket declarations without context. The nature of English as a discipline is far more complex, interesting and valuable than a labelling and ranking exercise. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-shakespeares-sonnets-an-honest-account-of-love-and-a-surprising-portal-to-the-man-himself-156964">Guide to the classics: Shakespeare’s sonnets — an honest account of love and a surprising portal to the man himself</a>
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<h2>Teaching Midnights and Shakespeare’s Sonnets</h2>
<p>I teach Shakespeare’s sonnets as exquisite poems, reflective of their time and culture. I also teach three modern artworks that shed contemporary light on the sonnets. </p>
<p>The first is Jen Bervin’s 2004 book <a href="https://www.jenbervin.com/projects/nets">Nets</a>. Bervin prints a selection of the sonnets, one per page, in grey text. In each of these grey sonnets, some of Shakespeare’s words and phrases are printed in black and thus stand out boldly. </p>
<p>The result is a <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/palimpsest">palimpsest</a>. The Shakespearean sonnet appears lying, like fertile soil, beneath the briefer poem that emerges from it. Bervin describes this technique as a stripping down of the sonnets to “nets” in order “to make the space of the poems open, porous, possible – a divergent elsewhere”. The creative relationship between the Shakespearean base and Bervin’s proverb-like poems proves that, as Bervin says, “when we write poems, the history of poetry is with us”. </p>
<p>The second text is Luke Kennard’s prizewinning 2021 collection <a href="https://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2021/04/notes-on-the-sonnets/">Notes on the Sonnets</a>. Kennard recasts the sonnets as a series of entertaining prose poems. Each poem responds to a specific Shakespearean sonnet, recasting it as the freewheeling thought bubble of a fictional attendee at an unappealing house party. In an interview with C.D. Rose, Kennard <a href="https://thequietus.com/articles/30078-luke-kennard-interview-the-answer-to-everything-notes-on-the-sonnets">explains</a> how his house party design puts the reader </p>
<blockquote>
<p>in between a public and private space, you’re at home and you’re out, you’re free, you’re enclosed. And that’s similar in the sonnets.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The third text is Swift’s Midnights. Unlike Bervin’s and Kennard’s collections, in which individual pieces relate to specific sonnets, there is no explicit adaptation. Instead, Midnights raises broader themes. </p>
<h2>Deep connection</h2>
<p>In her Elle article, Swift describes songwriting as akin to photography. She strives to capture moments of lived experience: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fun challenge of writing a pop song is squeezing those evocative details into the catchiest melody you can possibly think of. I thrive on the challenge of sprinkling personal mementos and shreds of reality into a genre of music that is universally known for being, well, universal.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her point is that the pop songs that “cut through the most are actually the most detailed” in their snippets of reality and biography. She says “people are reaching out for connection and comfort” and “music lovers want some biographical glimpse into the world of our narrator, a hole in the emotional walls people put up around themselves to survive”.</p>
<p>Midnights exemplifies this. It is a concept album built on the idea that midnight is a time for pursuit of and confrontation with the self – or better, the selves. Swift says the songs form “the full picture of the intensities of that mystifying, mad hour”. </p>
<p>The album, she says, is “a journey through terrors and sweet dreams” for those “who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching – hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve […] we’ll meet ourselves”.<br>
Swift claims that Midnights lets listeners in through her protective walls to enable deep connection: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I really don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before. I struggle with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized and […] I just struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Midnights is not a sonnet collection, but it has fascinating parallels. There is no firm narrative through-line. Nor is there a through-line in early modern sonnet collections such as Shakespeare’s. Instead, both gather songs and poems that let us see aspects of the singing or speaking persona’s thoughts, emotions and experiences. Shakespeare’s speaker is also troubled through the night in sonnets 27, 43 and 61.</p>
<p>The sonnets come in thematic clusters, pairs and mini-sequences. It can be interesting to ask students if they can see something similar in the order of songs on the Midnights album – or the “3am” edition with its seven extra tracks, or the “Til Dawn” edition with another three songs. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575766/original/file-20240215-16-akcmh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575766/original/file-20240215-16-akcmh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575766/original/file-20240215-16-akcmh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575766/original/file-20240215-16-akcmh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575766/original/file-20240215-16-akcmh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575766/original/file-20240215-16-akcmh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575766/original/file-20240215-16-akcmh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575766/original/file-20240215-16-akcmh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of William Shakespeare – John Taylor (1610).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare.jpg">Public domain.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, in their edition of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/all-the-sonnets-of-shakespeare/AE1912C43BE4F50391B25B83C0C03B1F">All the Sonnets of Shakespeare</a>, say Shakespeare’s collection is “the most idiosyncratic gathering of sonnets in the period” because he “uses the sonnet form to work out his intimate thoughts and feelings”. </p>
<p>This connects very well with the agenda of Midnights. Both collections are piecemeal psychic landscapes. The singing or speaking voice sometimes feels autobiographical – compare, for example, sonnets 23, 129, 135-6 and 145 to Swift’s songs Anti-hero, You’re On Your Own, Kid, Sweet Nothing, and Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve. At other times the voices feel less autobiographical. Often there is no way to distinguish one from the other. </p>
<p>Swift’s songs and Shakespeare’s Sonnets are meditations on deeply personal aspects of their narrators’ experiences. They present us with encounters, memories, relationships, values and claims. Swift’s persona is that of a self-reflective singer, just as Shakespeare’s is that of a self-reflective sonneteer. Both focus on love in all its shades. Both present themselves as vulnerable to industry rivals and pressures. Both dwell on issues of power. </p>
<h2>Close reading</h2>
<p>Shakespeare’s sonnets are rewarding texts for close reading because of their poetic intricacy. Students can look at end rhymes and internal rhymes, the way the argument progresses through <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/quatrain">quatrains</a>, the positioning of the “turn”, which is often in line 9 or 13, and the way the final couplet wraps things up (or doesn’t). </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575756/original/file-20240215-26-s2wemm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575756/original/file-20240215-26-s2wemm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575756/original/file-20240215-26-s2wemm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575756/original/file-20240215-26-s2wemm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575756/original/file-20240215-26-s2wemm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575756/original/file-20240215-26-s2wemm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575756/original/file-20240215-26-s2wemm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Title page of the first edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sonnets1609titlepage.jpg">Public domain</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>The songs on Midnights are also rewarding because Swift has a great vocabulary, a love of metaphor, terrific turns of phrase, and a strong sense of symmetry and balance in wording. More complex songs like Maroon and Question…? are great for detailed analysis. </p>
<p>Karma and Mastermind are simpler, yet contain plenty of metaphoric language to be unpacked for meaning and aesthetic effectiveness. Shakespeare’s controlled use of metaphor in Sonnet 73 makes for a telling contrast. </p>
<p>The Great War, Glitch and Snow on the Beach are good for exploring how well a single extended metaphor can function to carry the meaning of a song. Sonnets 8, 18, 143 and 147 can be explored in similar terms.</p>
<p>Just as students can analyse the “turn” or concluding couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet to see how it reshapes the poem, they can do the same with songs on Midnights. Swift is known for writing effective bridges that contribute fresh, important content towards the end of a song: Sweet Nothing, Mastermind and Dear Reader are excellent examples. </p>
<p>Such unexpected pairings are valuable because they require close attention and careful articulation of what is similar and what is not. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129, for example (the famous one on lust), and Swift’s Bigger than the Whole Sky (a powerful expression of loss) make for a gripping comparison of how intense feeling can be expressed poetically. </p>
<p>Or consider Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”) and Sweet Nothing: both celebrate intimacy as a defence against the pressures of the public world. How about High Infidelity and Sonnet 138 (where love and self-deception coexist), considered in terms of truth in relationships? </p>
<p>There is nothing to lose and plenty to gain in teaching Swift’s Midnights and Shakespeare’s Sonnets together. There’s no dumbing-down involved. And there’s no need for reductive assertions about who is “better”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223312/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam E Semler receives research funding from the Better Strangers project which is a collaborative education research project between the University of Sydney and Barker College. Better Strangers hosts the Shakespeare Reloaded website (<a href="https://shakespearereloaded.edu.au/">https://shakespearereloaded.edu.au/</a>) and explores innovative approaches to teaching and learning Shakespeare. </span></em></p>There is nothing to lose and plenty to gain in teaching Swift’s Midnights and Shakespeare’s Sonnets together. There’s no dumbing-down, and no need for reductive assertions about who is “better”.Liam E Semler, Professor of Early Modern Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109702024-02-15T19:04:33Z2024-02-15T19:04:33ZFrom Deadheads on bulletin boards to Taylor Swift ‘stans’: a short history of how fandoms shaped the internet<p><em>With Taylor Swift pulling in over half-a-million audience members on her Australian tour, we’ve been thinking a lot about fans. <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/fandom-series-152420">In this series</a>, our academics dive into fan cultures: how they developed, how they operate, and how they shape the world today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Fans and the internet have a symbiotic relationship. The digital era increased the productivity and visibility of fan culture, which in turn has largely influenced the ways that we all act online. </p>
<p>Fan communities existed long before the internet, but the proliferation of online platforms changed the ways in which they connect and participate. </p>
<p>Here is a brief history of how fan cultures shaped – and were shaped by – the internet.</p>
<h2>Early adopters</h2>
<p>As early as the 1970s, fans were participating in digital spaces. Some of the first email mailing lists and digital bulletin boards <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-playing-to-the-crowd/">were utilised by Grateful Dead fans</a>, or Deadheads, who came together to create an online archive of lyrics. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, science-fiction fans established online repositories, using <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=11ODBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA41&dq=info:xdfcml1Q-EwJ:scholar.google.com&ots=3AYiGA9QI6&sig=2pP_prtUw6SLLNrUBPmt02Y0M7U&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Usenet groups for fannish discussion and fan-fiction distribution</a>. </p>
<p>As the adoption of the internet became more widespread, so did fan culture. You could simply search for your favourite TV show or band and find a like-minded community online. This brought on an era of forums and blogs, where fans were quick to jump on sites like LiveJournal to write and build communities. </p>
<p>As social media platforms launched in the 2000s, fans co-opted them for their fan practices. MySpace fans helped launch many music careers; <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119237211.ch22">One Direction fans put Tumblr on the map</a>. </p>
<p>When Twitter took off, so too did “Stan Twitter”. As a verb, to stan is to <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stan">exhibit fandom to an excessive degree</a>. The public nature of Twitter (now X) allowed fans to come together in large groups to start trends and campaign. This collective power has been both <a href="https://www.insider.com/kpop-trump-tulsa-rally-hashtags-fancams-donations-activism-online-stan-2020-6">praised</a> for digital activism efforts, and <a href="https://junkee.com/stan-culture-toxic/259044">criticised</a> for harassment. </p>
<h2>The public and the private</h2>
<p>Fans move between private and public spaces online, negotiating different identities. </p>
<p>On platforms like Tumblr and LiveJournal, fans often choose a pseudonym, whereas Facebook <a href="https://www.protocol.com/policy/anonymity-real-names-jeff-kosseff">enforces a real-name policy</a>. </p>
<p>Different platforms offer different privacy settings, which also shapes fan behaviours. Private spaces allow for personal conversations, while fans embrace public channels for sharing fan works and campaigning, for example, for voting or fundraising.</p>
<p>Each platform has different social norms and functionality. Fans <a href="https://blogs.city.ac.uk/ludiprice/author/sbrm610/">adapt and develop their fan practices accordingly</a>. </p>
<p>In doing so, they have <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23166273/fandom-music-kaitlyn-tiffany-one-direction-harry-styles-k-pop-decoder-podcast-interview">shaped the social internet</a> as we know it today. </p>
<h2>Fan migrations</h2>
<p>The launch of a new platform introduces new ways to participate. Tumblr became the place for “<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/1669791/infographic-the-rise-of-tumblrs-fuck-yeah-movement">"fuckyeah” fansites</a>, sharing fan works and communicating via GIFs. Fans jumped on TikTok to create video edits, sounds and mashups. </p>
<p>Fans may also choose to leave a platform because it <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3392847">no longer satisfies their needs</a> or the platform goes through significant changes, as when Tumblr announced <a href="https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-adult-content-ban">a ban on adult content</a>, or <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-elon-musks-first-week-as-twitter-owner-has-users-flocking-elsewhere-193857">when Elon Musk bought Twitter</a>. </p>
<p>While the launch of Meta’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-metas-threads-app-is-the-biggest-threat-to-twitter-yet-209220">Threads</a> provided a possible replacement for stan participation, some fans were hesitant to migrate across. Users must log in to Threads via their Instagram account, a platform many use to stay connected with friends and family. </p>
<p>On Twitter/X, fans expressed they were weary of the new platform, because they did not want their fan activities to be connected to their “real life”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1676984609786011649"}"></div></p>
<p>In cases where existing platforms haven’t met the community’s needs, fans have created their own. <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/">Archive Of Our Own (AO3)</a> is a repository for fans to share works inspired by the objects of their fandom, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858409">created in response to</a> design and policy changes made on other fan-fiction sites.</p>
<h2>Transformations</h2>
<p>Fans are known for their creative productivity, transforming and remixing their favourite cultural objects in fan-art, fan-fiction, videos, zines and music remixes. </p>
<p>Technological advancements made creative production easier to master, and the public and networked nature of platforms has allowed fan works to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs.2.1.5_1">circulated to a much wider audience</a>. Audio from fan-edits often become trending TikTok sounds. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="TiktokEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.tiktok.com/@san.skywvker/video/7239692454629231898?_r=1\u0026_t=8faCLDsiNrl"}"></div></p>
<h2>How fans shape brands</h2>
<p>The mainstreaming of fandom across digital platforms has also led to changes in brand behaviour. </p>
<p>Some brands have started to act like fans online, learning from fans’ behaviours to form an affiliation with these engaged audiences. </p>
<p>On TikTok, brands are participating in fan-based trends, tapping into community-specific knowledge and jokes. </p>
<p>The Empire State Building has leaned into #swifttok, regularly creating content that demonstrates their love of Taylor. One of their most successful videos is a fan-edit professing their love for the Eiffel Tower, set to a sped-up version of Wildest Dreams. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="TiktokEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.tiktok.com/@empirestatebldg/video/7263189269131349290"}"></div></p>
<p>Brands are also adopting fan language and tone in their captions and comments. Take a look at the comments on one of Taylor Swift’s recent TikToks and you’ll find brands like DuoLingo, Spotify, The Natural History Museum and Peter’s Pasta using words like “blondie”, “mother” and “ICON”. </p>
<p>On Twitter/X, cookie brand Chips Ahoy! regularly posts about trending fan-culture moments, demonstrating insider knowledge. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1127613154203176964"}"></div></p>
<p>On Threads, the official Star Wars account is <a href="https://www.threads.net/@starwars/post/CukQXyuxxkQ">stanning favourite characters</a>, adopting a fannish persona. And on TikTok, Penguin Books Australia is “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11858680/fandom-glossary-fanfiction-explained">shipping</a>” Draco and Hermione to promote Tom Felton’s new book.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="TiktokEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.tiktok.com/@penguinbooksaus/video/7157953652232162561"}"></div></p>
<p>In my ongoing PhD research, I’ve found fans are working as social media managers for brands, leveraging their expertise to connect with fan audiences. </p>
<p>Given the widespread adoption of fan culture and practices across platforms, it makes sense that a fan’s digital literacy can be beneficial to brands. </p>
<p>As one Harry Styles fan that I interviewed explained: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think if you’re a brand who wants to be tapped into culture, you need to hire people who are engaging in it. If you’re wanting to jump on trends […] talking to people in their own language, in that social first native language, you need to be hiring people who were already speaking in that way.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Pattison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fan communities existed long before the internet, but the proliferation of online platforms changed the ways in which they connect and participate.Kate Pattison, PhD Candidate in Music Industry, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2234962024-02-15T11:59:06Z2024-02-15T11:59:06ZI’ve researched Clara Bow – it’s no wonder the actress inspired Taylor Swift’s new album<p>While on stage collecting the award for album of the year (her fourth to date) at the 2024 Grammys earlier this month, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI1l2_zss3k">Taylor Swift announced</a> her 11th album: The Tortured Poets Department. </p>
<p>Moments later, Swift uploaded full details of her new record <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C28vsIzO_bL/?hl=en&img_index=1">to Instagram</a>, including the album artwork and track list. One of the 17 newly revealed tracks is titled Clara Bow. Actress Clara Bow (1905-1965) was the original “It girl”. And she had plenty in common with Swift. Adored and villainised throughout her career, her love life was constantly under scrutiny.</p>
<p>While news outlets instantly set about reporting on the excitement of Swift’s latest album, unveiling her new collaborations and praising her record-setting evening, an opposing maelstrom of hate was already on its way. </p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/online-dating-fatigue-why-some-people-are-turning-to-face-to-face-apps-first-184910?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Online dating fatigue – why some people are turning to face-to-face apps first</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-what-the-show-can-teach-young-people-about-commitment-185459?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Love Island – what the show can teach young people about commitment</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Headlines branded Swift <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/us-celebrity-news/taylor-swift-branded-disrespectful-brutal-32047022">“disrespectful”</a> and <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/awards/grammys/taylor-swift-labelled-classless-over-celine-dion-snub-at-the-grammys/news-story/f2a601ccaf089249d41664f887f6d810">“classless”</a> for appearing to snub music legend Celine Dion. SZA fans accused Swift of <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13046323/drake-grammys-sza-fans-taylor-swift-slam-speech.html">robbing SZA’s</a> SOS of album of the year. Twitter users called her <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniesoteriou/lana-del-rey-clarifies-taylor-swift-grammys-backlash">“disgusting”</a> for bringing her friend and collaborator Lana Del Rey on stage, after she’d lost out on her own award. </p>
<p>The tempestuous response to Swift’s win and subsequent album announcement is a reminder of the constantly fluctuating <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/sep/08/how-taylor-swift-became-the-worlds-biggest-pop-star-again">love/hate relationship</a> with the media that has persisted throughout her career.</p>
<p>While their backgrounds could not be more different, there is a clear experience that both Bow and Swift have shared: unrelenting scrutiny overshadowing their hard work and success.</p>
<h2>Who was Clara Bow?</h2>
<p>Clara Bow was an American silent and early sound film actress, whose tumultuous career spanned from 1922 to 1933. Bow’s best-known film, the 1926 silent romantic comedy It, <a href="https://archive.org/details/filmstarshollywo0000unse/page/8/mode/2up">secured her status</a> as a cultural icon who embodied the youth and liberation of the 1920s’ flapper. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dxo_99eaEEA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Clips of Clara Bow’s hit movie It (1927) set to a song written about her in the same year, She’s Got It by Harry Reaser.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bow’s rise to stardom is often framed as a variation on the Cinderella tale. An unassuming girl, brought up in the poverty-stricken tenements of Brooklyn and longing for a chance in the limelight, wins a contest and is catapulted to screen stardom. But that’s not the full story. </p>
<p>This sequence of events, which kick-started the ongoing mythicisation of Bow’s star image, skips over the work Bow herself put in. It erases the labour involved in starting and maintaining her own career. In fact, Bow’s life is bound up with misinformation, speculation and tales of exploitation, abuse and illicit love affairs. </p>
<h2>How Clara Bow inspired Taylor Swift</h2>
<p>During the height of her career, Bow’s love life was a point of constant ridicule in popular film fan magazines. Headlines branding her <a href="https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/photoplay3637movi_0471">“empty hearted”</a> and asking <a href="https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/silverscreen01unse_0039">“why can’t the It Girl keep her men?”</a> sought to psychoanalyse her broken engagements. The press labelled Bow an <a href="https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/silverscreen01unse_0039">“idiot”</a>, and wondered why <a href="https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/silverscreen01unse_0039">“no man [had] led her to the altar”</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575420/original/file-20240213-18-7dkgxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Clara Bow in a black and white photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575420/original/file-20240213-18-7dkgxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575420/original/file-20240213-18-7dkgxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575420/original/file-20240213-18-7dkgxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575420/original/file-20240213-18-7dkgxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575420/original/file-20240213-18-7dkgxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575420/original/file-20240213-18-7dkgxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575420/original/file-20240213-18-7dkgxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Clara Bow in 1932.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ClaraBow2.1.jpg">D.D.Teoli Jr.</a></span>
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<p>Bow’s reputation as a <a href="https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/photoplay3133movi_0769">“girl who burns ‘em up and then leaves ‘em cold”</a> was exacerbated even further when in 1931, she found herself embroiled in scandal. </p>
<p><a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/star-studies-a-critical-guide/oclc/779873581">At the time</a>, information about the marriages and divorces of celebrities, as well as suggestions of extramarital affairs and sex scandals, were commonplace in the press. </p>
<p>Bow’s assistant and best friend, Daisy DeVoe, was accused of trying to embezzle money from her. A reporter colluded with DeVoe to <a href="https://www.betweenthecovers.com/pages/books/443014/devoe-daisy-as-told-to-frederic-h-girnau/secret-love-life-of-clara-as-told-by-daisy-to-frederic-h-girnau?soldItem=true">accuse Bow of</a>: “Promiscuity and exhibitionism, kinkiness and incest, lesbianism and bestiality, drug addiction and alcoholism, venereal disease and family insanity.” They then tried to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mm3gQqcl20UC&redir_esc=y">blackmail the actress</a>, asking for USD$25,000 (£19,839) to cease printing the stories.</p>
<p>Before the trial, <a href="https://archive.org/details/clarabowrunninwi0000sten">it was alleged</a> that DeVoe had warned Bow: “I’ve got some letters and telegrams that that won’t do you any good if I turn ‘em over to the papers”. The reporter responsible for the blackmail received an <a href="https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/motionpictureher104unse_0604">eight-year suspended sentence</a> and a fine for defaming her. But the trial had already done significant damage to Bow’s image.</p>
<p>In 2017, I visited the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, which holds Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archive. During my research trip, I was able to access the papers of Clara Bow, as well as those who knew her: including notable gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. </p>
<p>Within the archive, there is a letter from Bow to Hopper, revealing her desire to someday write the story of her life – a potential attempt to set the record straight and reclaim the narrative that other people had created. Unfortunately, Bow died before she was able to do so.</p>
<p>Perhaps Swift’s ode to Bow will offer some artistic justice for the often-misrepresented starlet. Or perhaps it will lament Swift’s own inability to control the media narrative. We will find out soon. But it’s not hard to see why Taylor Swift, a modern starlet whose every move is scrutinised and criticised, would find a rich seam of inspiration in the life of Clara Bow. </p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Voss receives funding from the AHRC-funded Midlands 4 Cities Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programme. </span></em></p>Bow and Swift have shared unrelenting scrutiny, overshadowing their hard work and success.Jennifer Voss, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Humanities and Performing Arts, De Montfort UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230972024-02-14T04:51:36Z2024-02-14T04:51:36ZJacqui Lambie Network could win balance of power at Tasmanian election; Labor lead steady in federal polls<p>Tasmanian Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-14/tasmania-jeremy-rockliff-calls-early-election/103420790">today announced</a> the Tasmanian election would be held on March 23, more than a year early. The election was called early <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-13/jeremy-rockliff-to-ask-for-an-early-election/103462354">owing to disagreements</a> between the Liberals and former Liberal MPs Lara Alexander and John Tucker. The Liberals had lost their parliamentary majority when these two MPs defected in May 2023.</p>
<p>Tasmania uses the proportional Hare Clark system for its lower house elections. At this election there will be <a href="https://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/resources/about-parliament/parliament#:%7E:text=In%202022%20the%20Expansion%20of,each%20of%20the%20five%20electorates.">35 members elected</a>, up from 25 previously. Tasmania uses the same five electorates for state and federal elections, with seven members to be elected per electorate, up from five previously. The quota for election will be one-eighth of the vote or 12.5%, down from one-sixth or 16.7%.</p>
<p>Tasmania’s upper house has elections every May for two or three of its 15 seats, with members serving six-year terms. The upper house will not be contested at this election.</p>
<p>The two most recent polls were an early January <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48296-the-tasmanian-state-liberal-vote-is-down-17-since-the-last-election">YouGov poll</a> and a late November <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/63435f017f0007502ab52a5d/t/6567dd27d6227f53ebff4ac0/1701305655222/EMRS+State+Voting+Intentions+Report+-+November+2023.pdf">EMRS poll</a>. The YouGov poll gave the Liberals 31%, Labor 27%, the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) 20%, the Greens 15% and independents 7%. If this poll were repeated at an election, the JLN would hold the balance of power.</p>
<p>The EMRS poll was far better for the Liberals, suggesting they had recovered from a slump in May. The Liberals had 39%, Labor 29%, the Greens 12% and all Others 19%. This poll did not ask for the JLN. The Liberals would still fall short of a majority if this poll were repeated at the election.</p>
<p>Tasmania is the only Australian jurisdiction that is currently governed by the conservative parties. However, the Liberal National Party is likely to win the October Queensland election, so even if Labor takes power in Tasmania, unified Labor government probably won’t last long.</p>
<h2>Federal YouGov poll: 69% support tax changes but Albanese’s ratings drop</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48586-69-of-australian-voters-favour-the-changes-to-the-stage-3-tax-cut-proposal">national YouGov poll</a>, conducted February 2–7 from a sample of 1,502, gave Labor a 52–48 lead, unchanged from the <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48430-labor-support-rises-to-52-two-party-preferred-vote">mid-January YouGov poll</a>. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (down one), 32% Labor (steady), 14% Greens (up one), 8% One Nation (up one) and 10% for all Others (down one).</p>
<p>Albanese’s net approval was down three points to -16, while Dutton’s net approval was up three points to -8. Albanese led Dutton by 45–38 as preferred PM, a narrowing from 45–35 in January.</p>
<p>On the changes to the stage three tax cuts, 69% supported the changes while 31% supported the original stage three proposal. Supporters of all parties favoured the changes, including 55% of Coalition voters.</p>
<h2>Labor gains in Essential poll</h2>
<p>In a national <a href="https://essentialreport.com.au/reports/federal-political-insights">Essential poll</a>, conducted February 7–11 from a sample of 1,148, Labor led by 50–46 including undecided (48–46 two weeks ago). This is Labor’s largest lead in Essential since early October.</p>
<p>Primary votes were 34% Coalition (steady), 31% Labor (down one), 14% Greens (up one), 7% One Nation (steady), 1% UAP (down one), 9% for all Others (up two) and 5% undecided (steady). Preference flows favoured Labor more than last fortnight.</p>
<p>Respondents were asked to rate <a href="https://essentialreport.com.au/reports/13-february-2024">Albanese and Dutton</a> from 0 to 10. Scores of 0–3 were counted as negative, 4–6 as neutral and 7–10 as positive. Albanese was at 35–33 negative (37–32 in December), while Dutton was at 33–32 negative (37–28 in December).</p>
<p>By 56–16, voters supported the revised stage three tax cuts when told there would be more benefits for lower and middle-income earners, and less to higher-income earners. However, by 53–47, they thought it is never acceptable to break an election promise over it being acceptable if circumstances change.</p>
<p>By 59–15, voters supported employees’ “right to disconnect”. On Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras Tour in Sydney and Melbourne, 76% said they weren’t interested in seeing her, 21% wished they were going to see her, 3% were seeing her and 3% didn’t know who she was.</p>
<h2>Labor down in a Redbridge poll</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://redbridgegroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/RedBridge-Federal-vote-intention-and-public-opinion-Feb-2024.pdf">national Redbridge</a> poll, conducted January 30 to February 7 from a sample of 2,040, gave Labor a 51.2–48.8 lead, a 1.6-point gain for the Coalition since the <a href="https://redbridgegroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Federal-vote-intention-and-public-opinion-Dec-2023.pdf">last Redbridge poll</a> in December. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (up three), 33% Labor (steady), 13% Greens (steady) and 16% for all Others (down three).</p>
<p>Despite the narrow Labor lead on voting intentions, Labor held a 32–28 lead on economic management, which is usually a relative strength for the Coalition.</p>
<p>On negative gearing, 39% said it should be left alone and 39% said it should be phased out or scrapped immediately. By 60–22, voters supported the changes to the stage three tax cuts, but by 51–33 voters agreed that if Labor breaks the promise to deliver the original cuts, I can’t trust them in the future.</p>
<h2>Morgan and Dunkley byelection polls</h2>
<p>I <a href="https://theconversation.com/labors-newspoll-lead-unchanged-since-december-as-62-support-stage-three-changes-222257">previously covered</a> a national Morgan poll that gave Labor a 50.5–49.5 lead. Labor’s lead increased to 53–47 in last week’s <a href="https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/9451-federal-voting-intention-february-5-2024">Morgan poll</a> that was conducted January 29 to February 4. </p>
<p>In this week’s <a href="https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/9453-federal-voting-intention-february-12-2024">Morgan poll</a>, conducted February 5–11 from a sample of 1,699, Labor led by 52–48. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (steady since last week), 34.5% Labor (up 1.5), 12% Greens (steady), 4.5% One Nation (down 0.5) and 12% for all Others (down one).</p>
<p>The federal byelection to replace the deceased Labor MP Peta Murphy will be held on March 2. A <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Polling-Dunkley-Byelection-and-Stage-3.pdf">uComms poll of Dunkley</a> for The Australia Institute, conducted February 5–6 from a sample of 626, gave Labor a 52–48 lead from primary votes of 40.1% Labor, 39.3% Liberal, 8.2% Greens, 1.6% Libertarian and 10.8% for all Others.</p>
<p>Preferences were respondent-allocated, and Labor would be higher if the previous election preferences were used. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/dunkley-by-election-2024">Labor won Dunkley</a> by 56.3–46.7 at the 2022 election, so this poll suggests a 4% swing to the Liberals. Seat polls are unreliable. Eight candidates will contest the Dunkley byelection.</p>
<p>In other byelection news, the South Australian state byelection in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-08/dunstan-by-election-march-23-south-australia/103429880">Dunstan</a> to replace former Liberal premier Steven Marshall will be held March 23. Marshall won Dunstan at the 2022 election by 50.5–49.5 against Labor.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/02/12/monday-miscellany-redbridge-poll-dunkley-and-teal-seat-polls-preselection-latest-open-thread/">Poll Bludger</a> reported Monday that uComms polls for The Australia Institute in the teal independent held seats of Kooyong, Mackellar and Wentworth, conducted February 5 from samples of 602 to 647. In Kooyong, teal MP Monique Ryan led the Liberals by 56–44, in Mackellar teal MP Sophie Scamps led by 54–46 and in Wentworth teal MP Allegra Spender led by 57–43.</p>
<h2>US Democrats gain federal House seat at byelection</h2>
<p>I covered the United States federal byelection for New York’s third congressional district for <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/02/14/us-new-yorks-third-by-election-and-indonesian-election-live/">The Poll Bludger</a>. Democrats easily gained from the Republicans. I also covered the latest presidential primaries that show both Donald Trump and Joe Biden cruising to their parties’ nominations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Tasmanian Liberal government has called an early election, but some recent polling suggests a rise in the popularity of Jacqui Lambie’s party.Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2229982024-02-12T19:10:39Z2024-02-12T19:10:39Z6 tips to maximise your concert experience, from a live music expert<p>Stadium concert attendance is on the rise in Australia. This month, more than one million people are expected see P!NK and Taylor Swift on their Australian tours, which quickly sold out the country’s biggest stadiums. Both artists <a href="https://celebrity.nine.com.au/latest/pink-announces-new-australian-shows-and-tones-and-i-as-support-act/b7fb5635-5dff-49d7-b178-669d651dceaf">added extra dates</a> to meet demand, following extended runs by Ed Sheeran and Foo Fighters in 2023.</p>
<p>What’s drawing such massive crowds to these events? And how can you maximise your fun (in a safe way) when sharing a space with 100,000 other people?</p>
<h2>What’s behind the concert boom?</h2>
<p>State governments have begun to lift decades-old limits on large stadium concerts. Event caps have gone from six to 12 events <a href="https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/96688">per year at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium</a>, and from four to 20 events <a href="https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/sydney-lifts-its-cap-on-fun">per year at the Sydney Cricket Ground precinct</a>. The press releases from both of these announcements trumpeted the benefits for tourism and local economies. </p>
<p>Australia’s live music <a href="https://reports.liveperformance.com.au/ticket-survey-2022/index.html#/">attendance and revenue doubled</a> in the decade prior to the COVID pandemic, attracting about half the <a href="https://theconversation.com/creative-country-98-of-australians-engage-with-the-arts-80145">country’s adult population</a>. Large international events contributed significantly to this. </p>
<p>This popularity continues, with ticket prices rising amid a cost-of-living crisis. <a href="https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2023/05/cost-of-living-commbank-iq.html">Consumer research</a> shows people under age 35, and the one-third of Australians who rent their homes, have made the biggest reductions in discretionary spending. But the overall trend is towards saving week-to-week and “splurging” on big events <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/16/cost-of-living-crisis-australia-spending-habits-relief">such as concerts</a>.</p>
<h2>The ‘peak music experience’</h2>
<p>Live music is a space where extraordinary things happen. We can celebrate who we are and what’s important to us, individually and collectively. We can have intense feelings and express them in uncommon ways, exploring different – or “more real” – versions of ourselves. </p>
<p>All of this creates memorable experiences that resonate deeply with us and keep us coming back time and again. I call these “peak music experiences”. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Peak-Music-Experiences-A-New-Perspective-on-Popular-music-Identity-and/Green/p/book/9780367553852">My research</a> drawing on in-depth interviews with music lovers, media analysis, and participant observation identifies common elements of the peak live music experience. </p>
<p>With that in mind, here are six things to help you get the most out of your next concert.</p>
<p>1. <strong>Company</strong></p>
<p>A crucial factor in any concert experience is whom we share it with. The heightened feeling and expression that live music enables can create powerful moments that sociologists call “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038038514565835?journalCode=soca">epiphanies</a>”. Epiphanies reveal and encapsulate what specific people mean to each other. </p>
<p>So when tickets go on sale, and you’re considering whom to call, remember your choice can elevate your concert experience – and your relationship with that person or group.</p>
<p>2. <strong>Venue</strong> </p>
<p>Music is inseparable from its setting. In live music, this is a feature. Concert halls and dive bars are perfect settings for certain types of experience. But if you’re seeing one of the world’s biggest acts, where better to do so than a giant cauldron of humanity under the stars? </p>
<p>Stadiums have drawbacks, mostly related to their sheer scale and associated logistics. But the journey, the waiting, the challenges, and especially the fellow travellers, often contribute to the unpredictable magic of live music. So plan ahead and leave plenty of time, but also enjoy the whole ride! </p>
<p>3. <strong>Sound</strong> </p>
<p>Live music doesn’t just sound different than music in your loungeroom; it <em>feels</em> different. High volume, as much as the mass movement of bodies, makes live music a physical experience. <a href="https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2019/04/the-best-place-to-stand-at-a-concert-according-to-a-sound-engineer/">Experts suggest</a> the best sonics are in front of the mixing desk, off-centre and not too close to the stage – but this must be balanced with the view! It’s a good idea to pack ear plugs in case your <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5187664/">ears need a rest</a>.</p>
<p>4. <strong>Presence</strong></p>
<p>A good live show requires the performer to be present, not just physically but also emotionally. This is where we judge their authenticity or “realness”. This isn’t an objective quality, but a reflection of our personal tastes and values. Do you prefer flawless virtuosity or relatable vulnerability? </p>
<p>Such notions are deeply ingrained in us. So when choosing a concert, consider how it might confirm or challenge your ideals. Both can be good! And don’t forget to <a href="https://time.com/6282468/taylor-swift-concert-memory/">be present yourself</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574817/original/file-20240212-18-j6wpk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574817/original/file-20240212-18-j6wpk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574817/original/file-20240212-18-j6wpk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574817/original/file-20240212-18-j6wpk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574817/original/file-20240212-18-j6wpk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574817/original/file-20240212-18-j6wpk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574817/original/file-20240212-18-j6wpk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574817/original/file-20240212-18-j6wpk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A good performer ensures they have strong presence throughout their show.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>5. <strong>Fandom</strong> </p>
<p>Concerts aren’t just about enjoying and judging the performer(s); they’re also about us. The costly pilgrimage and elaborate ritual to celebrate <em>this very specific thing you love</em>, surrounded by people who love it too, helps join the dots of our fragmented lives. </p>
<p>Just getting to see a favourite artist or song is the source of many people’s peak music experiences. The moral: if it’s an act you really love, always go if you can.</p>
<p>6. <strong>Collective feeling</strong></p>
<p>Have you noticed the moment when a roaring crowd becomes aware of itself and roars a bit louder? Live music is about more than just the artist, their performance, or even us. It’s also about other people. <br></p>
<p>Music synchronises not only our actions but our subjective experience. We <em>feel together</em>, whether in rapt silence or wild abandon. We become a part of something greater – especially at massive concerts with crowds in the tens of thousands. So my tip: join in.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="TiktokEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.tiktok.com/@coldplayaccess/video/7260241090488421638?is_from_webapp=1\u0026sender_device=pc\u0026web_id=7247360749801375234"}"></div></p>
<h2>Safety and sustainability</h2>
<p>Finally, don’t forget to keep safe. Australia’s love of outdoor events exposes us to extremes, which are a <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-transforming-australias-cultural-life-so-why-isnt-it-mentioned-in-the-new-national-cultural-policy-198881">growing reality</a>. Taylor Swift’s recent Brazilian concerts coincided <a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-swifts-brazil-concert-was-hammered-by-extreme-heat-how-to-protect-crowds-at-the-next-sweltering-gig-218341">with a heat wave</a> with tragic consequences, highlighting the responsibility of event organisers. </p>
<p>You can manage risks by making plans in advance, knowing your limits, and considering important information such as the availability of water, food, safe spaces and venue exits. Event organisers should provide this information. </p>
<p>The music industry and governments are also beginning to address issues of <a href="https://theconversation.com/60-of-women-and-non-binary-punters-and-artists-feel-unsafe-in-melbournes-music-spaces-205399">sexual harassment</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/theconversationhour/the-conversation-hour/102042402">accessibility</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/pill-testing-really-does-reduce-the-risk-of-harm-for-drug-users-181778">drug safety</a> and diverse representation, with a view to making the live music experience available and equitable for all. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/throwing-things-on-stage-is-bad-concert-etiquette-but-its-also-not-a-new-trend-210717">Throwing things on stage is bad concert etiquette – but it's also not a new trend</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Green receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australasian Performing Right Association.</span></em></p>With ticket prices rising alongside demand, live concerts can be a major investment.Ben Green, Research fellow, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230202024-02-09T16:17:56Z2024-02-09T16:17:56ZTaylor Swift-NFL conspiracy theories are the result of two sets of hardcore fans colliding<p>At Super Bowl LVIII, Taylor Swift will appear on the field at Allegiant Stadium after her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, wins the game. But she won’t be performing. Swift’s appearance will be a Pentagon-backed psy-op to turn the rigged game into a calculated political endorsement, to secure the 2024 presidential election for Joe Biden. </p>
<p>At least, this is what conspiracy theorists are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/american-football/68206676">predicting will happen</a>.</p>
<p>Swift, Kelce and the NFL have all been targets of conspiratorial thinking before. Swift has been accused of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07494467.2021.1956270">queerbaiting</a> (hinting at LGBTQ+ identity without coming out) and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19392397.2020.1704431">neo-Nazi allegiances</a> after far right websites made memes out of her lyrics.</p>
<p>Kelce fell victim to vaccine-sceptic theories about “killer injections” when he <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/pro-vaccination-ad-leaves-nfl-s-kelce-in-misinformation-crosshairs/ar-AA1htg9O">endorsed the COVID vaccine</a>. And some people have claimed that the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2024/02/06/viral-videos-capitalize-on-conspiracy-theory-that-nfl-games-are-rigged/">NFL is scripted</a> and rigged.</p>
<p>It is not unusual for conspiracy theories to emerge in response to political, media or entertainment events. And the convergence of two American institutions – Taylor Swift and the NFL – is a perfect storm. </p>
<h2>Why people believe conspiracy theories</h2>
<p>Belief in conspiracy theories is not necessarily tied to levels of intelligence or <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-liberal-conspiracy-theories-can-be-just-as-destructive-as-their-extremist-counterparts-215424">political affiliation</a>. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/intelligence-doesnt-make-you-immune-to-conspiracy-theories-its-more-about-thinking-style-220978">research</a> shows that these types of beliefs are more common in people who tend to use intuitive, rather than critical, thinking.</p>
<p>Linked to this is <a href="https://www.thebehavioralscientist.com/glossary/proportionality-bias">proportionality bias</a>, a tendency to correlate major events with major consequences. It is associated with conspiracy theories as people search for simple answers to make sense of complicated situations.</p>
<p>The Swift-NFL conspiracy theories are fuelled by the fact that highly publicised people and events are involved. I am currently researching the relationship between Swift, the press and public opinion for a forthcoming volume on Swift edited by <a href="https://music.uchicago.edu/people/paula-harper">Paula Harper</a>, <a href="https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Taylor-Swift-s-life-and-lyrics-topic-of-virtual-16319577.php">Kate Galloway</a> and <a href="https://news.uark.edu/articles/66447/musicologist-christa-bentley-discusses-singer-songwriter-and-mega-superstar-taylor-swift">Christa Bentley</a>.</p>
<p>I am examining the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1464884919845458">journalistic practice</a> of selecting contentious tweets as evidence of <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/music/a28067315/taylor-swift-you-need-to-calm-down-video-stereotypes/">public opinion</a> to support controversial narratives about Swift.</p>
<p>This builds on my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07494467.2021.1945225">previous research</a> exploring social media reactions to Swift’s LGBTQ+ allyship in “You Need to Calm Down”. I have found that, while online posts about Swift are mostly neutral about the artist, this is often downplayed in the press in favour of over-reporting on controversy.</p>
<h2>America’s sweetheart, or a target for sexism?</h2>
<p>The Super Bowl conspiracy theories also appear to be influenced by political and sexist attitudes. Swift has long been a symbol of “Americana”, but one that is increasingly outwardly liberal, and told through the point of view of a young woman. As researchers <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07494467.2021.1976586">Mary Fogarty and Gina Arnold</a> note: “Taylor may be a monument to an old, white America, but she’s also an avatar of a future that is female.”</p>
<p>As the world has watched conservative politicians <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-abortion-be-the-issue-that-swings-the-2024-us-presidential-election-219495">erode women’s rights</a> in the US, we cannot ignore the fact that Swift is a powerful, billionaire, woman whose fans are mostly <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/03/14/more-than-half-of-us-adults-say-theyre-taylor-swift-fans-survey-finds/">women</a>.</p>
<p>Swift has now entered another distinctly American space – the NFL – whose fans have historically <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2023/09/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-dating-relationship-conservative-backlash-fox-news.html">tended to be conservative</a>. In doing so, she complicates an “us v them” mentality defined by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/MAGA-movement">excessive nationalism</a>, as seen in far-right conservative spaces.</p>
<p>Swift has demonstrable power within the music industry, not only through her fan support, but also in how she has fought for better <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/24/taylor-swift-blow-fellow-artists-streaming-revenues-soar-universal-spotify">streaming service royalties</a> for artists and rerecorded her <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22278732/taylor-swift-re-recording-1989-speak-now-enchanted-mine-master-rights-scooter-braun">albums</a> in a battle over rights to her music.</p>
<p>She also has political power, contributing to a record-breaking <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1201183160/taylor-swift-instagram-voter-registration">voter registration day</a> with one Instagram post.</p>
<p>It is difficult not to see this new conspiracy theory as partly an attempt to downplay the success of a powerful woman, by implying that her increased popularity over the past two years is the result of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/jan/31/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-super-bowl-rightwing-conspiracy-biden">a government conspiracy</a>.</p>
<h2>Clashing fandoms: Swifties v NFL fans</h2>
<p>A vocal minority of NFL fans have complained that Swift is receiving <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/style/taylor-swift-nfl-broadcasts.html">too much airtime</a> during games. But it is not just Swift who is disrupting the NFL, it is also her fans: the “Swifties”. </p>
<p>I have <a href="https://www.intellectbooks.com/fan-phenomena-the-twilight-saga">previously published research</a> about the clashes that occur when young girls and women move into male-dominated fan spaces. New female fans are criticised for not being “true” fans or participating in the “correct” way.</p>
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<p>The Swift conspiracy theory seems also to have partly been influenced by Swifties’ practice of looking for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/09/how-taylor-swift-turned-pop-into-a-multiplayer-puzzle">“Easter eggs”</a> (hidden messages) in Swift’s lyrics. As this process has infiltrated wider audiences and the press, the search for deeper meaning is now being extended into Swift’s relationship with Kelce and the NFL.</p>
<p>Pentagon spokesperson <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/10/pentagon-taylor-swift-fox-00134866">Sabrina Singh</a> and NFL commissioner <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/american-football/68206676">Roger Goodell</a> have both made statements discrediting the conspiracy theories.</p>
<p>But if I were to trade one conspiracy for another, the situation could be setting the groundwork for a future theory. Should Donald Trump lose the 2024 election, it would be easy for those who believe these theories to blame Biden and Swift for voter manipulation, contributing to an undemocratic election.</p>
<p>Emotions run high around politics, fandom and football. This situation reveals some of the dangers of conspiratorial thinking: a loss of neutrality, a rise in ideological gaps and less reliance on critical thinking. In the words of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4TTgt4nb0&ab_channel=TaylorSwiftVEVO">Swift herself</a>, you can’t see facts through fury.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Avdeeff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This Super Bowl sees the convergence of two emotional fandoms: Swifties and NFL fans.Melissa Avdeeff, Lecturer in Digital Media, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225902024-02-09T13:33:14Z2024-02-09T13:33:14ZSome of the Renaissance’s most romantic love poems weren’t for lovers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574483/original/file-20240208-16-27mgyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C5%2C750%2C552&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sonnets still have a reputation for being about the unrequited love of a man for a woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Codex_Manesse_Bernger_von_Horheim.jpg">AndreasPraefcke/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As poets have demonstrated for centuries, a sonnet for your beloved never goes out of style. The gift of verse may carry extra cachet this Valentine’s Day, on the heels of Taylor Swift’s announcement that <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-tortured-poets-department-track-list-1234962007/">her next album is poetry-themed</a>. </p>
<p>But in carrying out <a href="https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463720274/petrarch-and-the-making-of-gender-in-renaissance-italy">my research on Renaissance literature and gender</a>, I’ve been struck by how many of that period’s love poems were not for lovers.</p>
<p>These sonnets, composed for friends and family, are not just beautiful; they’re also a reminder that love and Valentine’s Day aren’t exclusively for couples.</p>
<h2>The love sonnet is born</h2>
<p>The sonnet was invented in 12th century Italy as a 14-line poem with 11 beats per line and various rhyming patterns. Its originator, Giacomo da Lentini, was a poet in the Kingdom of Sicily who had been inspired by <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/the-heretical-origins-of-the-sonnet/">older Arabic and French poetry</a>.</p>
<p>But it was the Italian poet <a href="https://poets.org/poet/petrarch">Petrarch</a> who put the form on the map. In the 14th century, he wrote a collection of 366 poems, mostly sonnets. He penned the collection for a woman named Laura, whom he loved from afar in life and after her death.</p>
<p>Petrarch died in 1374, but his poetry became the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Petrarch/tkbVMQEACAAJ?hl=en">most widely published</a> literature of the Italian Renaissance. It was so popular that it inspired generations of poets, imitators known as “Petrarchists.” Petrarchism became a global phenomenon in the 16th and 17th centuries, spreading to Spain, France, England <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo3645653.html">and even the Americas</a>. </p>
<h2>Playing with sonneteering stereotypes</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-wyatt">Thomas Wyatt</a> is thought to have written the first English sonnets, in the early 16th century. His poems strongly relied on Petrarch; some of the best known, like “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/aug/10/poem-of-the-week-thomas-wyatt">Whoso list to hunt</a>,” are quasi-translations of the Italian poet’s work.</p>
<p>Writing <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-poems/#:%7E:text=While%20he%20may%20have%20experimented,writing%20sonnets%20seriously%20around%201592.">a half-century later</a>, Shakespeare changed the form, ending his sonnets with a rhyming couplet, giving birth to the “Shakespearean sonnet.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Title page of a collection of Shakespeare's sonnets featuring a colorful illustration of Shakespeare, flowers and two cherubs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of Shakespeare’s sonnets were addressed to an unnamed young man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/detail/FOLGERCM1~6~6~1189282~187533:-Songs--Songs-and-sonnets--manuscri?qvq=q:112125&mi=0&trs=1#">Folger Digital Image Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More than four centuries after the first printing of Shakepeare’s sonnets in 1609, his poems are still oft quoted. Many valentines will find themselves <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/18/">compared to a summer’s day</a> or swearing there can be no impediments between <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/116/">the marriage of true minds</a>.</p>
<p>Less well known, however, is the fact that half of Shakespeare’s poems were addressed to a young man, an unnamed “<a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/mysterious-identity-fair-youth/">Fair Youth</a>.” Depending on which Shakespeare scholar you ask, the gesture is either platonic, romantic or a little of both. In any case, it introduces an element of queerness, in that there’s homoeroticism and a <a href="https://huntington.org/verso/queerness-shakespeares-sonnets">challenge to what society deems natural</a>.</p>
<p>Yet today the Renaissance sonnet still has a reputation, even among scholars, for being about the unrequited love of a man for a woman. But even before Shakespeare, in Renaissance Italy, the sonnet was a lot more varied than that.</p>
<h2>For friends and lovers</h2>
<p>For starters, even Petrarch wrote about more than just his love for Laura. </p>
<p>A number of his poems were composed for friends, with several of them for the Florentine poet <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/petrarchs-plague/#p-3-0">Sennuccio del Bene</a>. In <a href="https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=113">poem 113</a>, Petrarch writes about returning to the region where Laura was born, but he opens by describing his love for his friend, saying he is only “half” himself without Sennuccio, and that both men would only be “whole” and “happy” if they were together.</p>
<p><a href="https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=287">Poem 287</a> is a sonnet on Sennuccio’s death, in which Petrarch’s mourning is only mitigated by the knowledge that his friend is in heaven with other great poets, like Dante, and the now-deceased Laura. The short poem mixes his love and grief for both people, his beloved and his friend.</p>
<p>Today’s “<a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a26052713/galentines-day/">Galentine’s Day</a>” – a celebration of female friendship – has yet to spawn a male-friendship-centered “<a href="https://theconversation.com/galentines-day-has-become-a-thing-why-hasnt-malentines-day-130862">Malentine’s Day</a>.” </p>
<p>But platonic love between men carried no stigma in the Renaissance. Take the verses of Venetian writers <a href="https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/orsatto-giustinian_(Dizionario-Biografico)/">Orsatto Giustinian</a> and <a href="https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/celio-magno/">Celio Magno</a>, who published their poetry in a single book in 1601. </p>
<p>Magno and Giustinian portray their friendship with the vocabulary of Petrarchan love. <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Rime_di_Celio_Magno_et_Orsatto_Giustinia/SI81w2hdFcMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA160&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22tu%20non%20viui%22">In one sonnet</a>, Magno describes how he hates being separated from his friend, which is almost like being severed from himself: “You do not live, I do not live; together we are far from ourselves in this bitter state.” </p>
<p>At the risk of being the <a href="https://archermagazine.com.au/2021/03/heteronormativity-popular-history/">“and-they-were-roommates” historian</a>, I’ll note that the book also contains passionate poems from Giustinian to his wife, Candiana Garzoni. </p>
<p>That doesn’t cancel out the homoerotic tension in the men’s poems to each other, but it does make classifying their sexuality challenging. And maybe this shouldn’t be the point. If anything, their <a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a46410977/broad-city-10th-anniversary-loving-your-best-friend/">romantic friendship</a> seems to skirt simple categories of sexual orientation. </p>
<h2>Sororal sentiment</h2>
<p>Most published writers in Renaissance Italy were men, but a not-insignificant number <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Five-Women-Shaped-Italian-Renaissance/dp/0367533995">were women</a>. Existing in a single copy in a library in Siena, Italy, is a joint poetry collection written by two sisters, Speranza Vittoria and Giulia di Bona. They lived with their mother and four other sisters.</p>
<p>Their sisters Lucrezia and Cassandra both died at a young age. The sonnets that Speranza and Giulia <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ahDhW3sAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=ahDhW3sAAAAJ:Zph67rFs4hoC">composed for them</a> take the sort of heartbreaking imagery used to describe a lost partner, but is repurposed to portray their grief: the swan song, the sun gone dark, the poet’s wish to die in order to be near the object of their love. </p>
<p>In one melancholic poem about Lucrezia’s death, Speranza weeps for the “strange place, dark earth, and bitter stone” that “possess” her sister, and thus her own happiness.</p>
<p>The poems traded between Speranza and Giulia are brighter, exhibiting an abundance of love and admiration. In one pair of sonnets, written playfully yet impressively with matching rhyme words, the two liken each other to white ermines, <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lady-with-an-ermine/HwHUpggDy_HxNQ?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A8.872019804523145%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.7206646564529637%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375000000000012%7D%7D">an animal considered a symbol of moral virtue</a>. </p>
<h2>Love is big</h2>
<p>There are so many other Renaissance Italian poems written for friends, parents, children and grandchildren – not to mention fiery love poems dedicated to Jesus and the saints, some by clerics, like <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv15d81vf?turn_away=true">Angelo Grillo</a>.</p>
<p>They serve as reminders of what the love poem can be. They push back against narratives that champion heterosexual relationships or that tout <a href="https://medium.com/the-sundial-acmrs/teaching-premodern-asexualities-and-aromanticisms-908cc375af12">romantic coupling and sexual attraction</a> of any orientation as the most important relationship in a person’s life, <a href="https://theconversation.com/single-on-valentines-day-and-happily-so-155191">minimizing the importance of other loving relationships</a>.</p>
<p>These poems also encourage everyone to think more expansively about their own love and home lives. As an unmarried mother of a 5-year-old – and as someone who has only ever lived with friends or siblings – I have benefited immensely from <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/01/1216043849/bringing-up-a-baby-can-be-a-tough-and-lonely-job-heres-a-solution-alloparents">alloparenting</a>, the care provided for my son by all of the nonparents in his life.</p>
<p>I ended up in these living situations in part because of the pandemic, which, in a way, was a form of luck: Sometimes it takes a disruptive event <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-rhaina-cohen.html">to break cultural expectations</a> for the nuclear family and childrearing.</p>
<p>If writers could describe different types of love during the Renaissance, why limit what we can envision for ourselves?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon McHugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>These moving poems are a reminder that on Valentine’s Day, it’s OK to celebrate a broader definition of love.Shannon McHugh, Associate Professor of French and Italian, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230862024-02-09T00:56:45Z2024-02-09T00:56:45ZDesperate for Taylor Swift tickets? Here are cybersecurity tips to stay safe from scams<p>The global superstar Taylor Swift is bringing her Eras tour to Australia later this month, with sold-out shows in Sydney and Melbourne. With Swifties numbering in the thousands, fans who didn’t initially secure tickets are understandably desperate to find some. </p>
<p>Enter the many fraudsters seizing this opportunity. Sadly, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) <a href="https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/swifties-beware-scammers-are-in-their-cruel-summer-era">has reported over A$135,000</a> already lost to ticket fraud for the Swift concerts. The actual losses are likely to be much higher. </p>
<p>Hackers are also targeting the accounts of ticket holders in order to steal and resell legitimate tickets.</p>
<p>So how can you protect yourself if you are looking to buy or sell Eras tickets, or just want to keep your Ticketek account safe?</p>
<h2>The problem is ticket fraud</h2>
<p>In recent years, there has been a shift to electronic ticketing for events. This uses a unique barcode (or QR code) which can be dynamic. In the case of Ticketek, electronic tickets are linked to the purchaser’s phone number to reduce fraud.</p>
<p>Electronic ticketing aims to overcome a range of problems, such as counterfeit tickets, duplicate tickets and ticket scalping. Unsurprisingly, scammers have updated their techniques, too. </p>
<p>When purchasing tickets, it can be difficult to know if it is an authentic website, a genuine ticket and a legitimate transaction. </p>
<p>For example, scammers are selling <a href="https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news-alerts/scam-alert-taylor-swift-tickets">non-existent tickets</a> across a range of social media platforms. They are also creating fake, legitimate-looking websites that lure in unsuspecting victims to hand over their personal details and money in return for heartache. </p>
<p>Many fraudsters are also tricking people with ticket sales on Facebook. Excited fans send the requested payment (usually a cash transfer), but will not receive their promised tickets and are not likely to recover the money.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574515/original/file-20240208-26-e030ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An example Facebook post advertising a " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574515/original/file-20240208-26-e030ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574515/original/file-20240208-26-e030ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574515/original/file-20240208-26-e030ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574515/original/file-20240208-26-e030ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574515/original/file-20240208-26-e030ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574515/original/file-20240208-26-e030ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574515/original/file-20240208-26-e030ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Facebook has many groups where Taylor Swift fans are on the lookout for tickets, making them vulnerable to scammers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facebook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hacked accounts</h2>
<p>The prevalence of hacking drives a lot of the ticket fraud. This is particularly evident through the only official reseller of Eras tickets (and many other events) – Ticketek Marketplace. </p>
<p>Some people have had their Ticketek accounts <a href="https://au.news.yahoo.com/taylor-swift-fans-see-tickets-disappear-ticketek-works-to-curb-scammers-203020815.html">hacked</a>, and offenders have been able to make transactions without the owner’s consent. By the time they realise, it is too late – the owner may have lost their tickets with nothing in return. </p>
<p>There are also many <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/taylor-swift-ticket-scammers-hunt-victims-on-facebook-for-australia-eras-tour/d1776810-154e-4f52-aa40-6375eb4285d8">reports</a> of victims whose known contacts (family or friends) message them on social media offering the chance to buy tickets. This approach reduces red flags or suspicions, as it uses existing trust and relationships to get a payment.</p>
<p>However, victims soon find their family member or friend has had their account hacked. Again, there is no ticket and no chance of recovering funds. </p>
<p>Hacking genuine accounts to perpetrate fraud is common. Recently, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-31/booking-com-scams-surge-phishing-australians-thousands-dollars/103390292">hackers gained unauthorised access</a> to hotel provider accounts on the popular accommodation website Booking.com. They then communicated with guests to gain direct payments and financial details. </p>
<h2>If I’d only played it safe</h2>
<p>There are no foolproof guarantees when trying to buy resold tickets. But you can look out for warning signs and take steps to reduce the risk of fraud or being hacked.</p>
<p><strong>Only buy tickets through the authorised seller website.</strong> In the case of Swift, that’s Ticketek Marketplace. While customers are reporting <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/look-what-you-made-me-do-desperate-swifties-abandon-ticketek-in-risky-hunt-for-tickets-20240118-p5ey6b.html">long wait times</a> and less than satisfactory user experiences right now, it is still the most likely place to have genuine tickets. </p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p><strong>Do not, under any circumstances, buy tickets on social media such as Facebook.</strong> This includes from known contacts. There is no guarantee that the ticket exists or the person is genuine. There is also no recourse for lost payment. </p>
<p><strong>Never provide or confirm your payment details outside of Ticketek.</strong> Do not transfer any cash via a bank transfer to a seller. There are no seller fees on Ticketek Marketplace, and no reason to pay outside of the regulated system. </p>
<p><strong>Ensure you have strong passwords on all your accounts.</strong> Do not use the same password on several accounts. This is vitally important to protect yourself against many types of harm, not just ticket fraud. </p>
<p><strong>Enable two-factor authentication on any accounts you can.</strong> This provides an additional layer of protection should your password be compromised.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-multi-factor-authentication-and-how-should-i-be-using-it-191591">What is multi-factor authentication, and how should I be using it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p><strong>Use a credit card where possible</strong> rather than debit card or cash transfers. You may be able to dispute a transaction or charge if you have used your credit card and may be able to recover any lost funds.</p>
<p><strong>Take screenshots of any communications and transactions</strong> when purchasing tickets online. While this will not prevent fraud, it does make it easier to report an incident or figure out what happened. </p>
<p><strong>Always confirm in person or over the phone with any known contacts</strong> who have messaged an offer or requested funds. With the prevalence of hacking into accounts, you may not be communicating with the person you think you are. </p>
<h2>No one teaches you what to do</h2>
<p>If you think you have been a victim of ticket fraud, contact your bank or financial institution immediately. The quicker you can do this, the better. </p>
<p>You should also contact the platform through which you made the transaction (such as Ticketek Marketplace). </p>
<p>You can report any financial losses to <a href="https://www.cyber.gov.au/report-and-recover/report">ReportCyber</a>, which is an online police reporting portal for cyber incidents, as well as <a href="https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/report-a-scam">Scamwatch</a>, to assist with education and awareness activities.</p>
<p>If you need support or assistance for any compromise of your identity, contact <a href="https://www.idcare.org/">iDcare</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223086/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cassandra Cross has previously received funding from the Australian Institute of Criminology and the Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre.</span></em></p>Australian fans who didn’t manage to snag Eras tickets are on the hunt – and scammers are capitalising on this. Here’s everything you need to know to protect yourself.Cassandra Cross, Associate Dean (Learning & Teaching) Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224372024-02-01T18:09:43Z2024-02-01T18:09:43ZWhy Taylor Swift is an antihero to the GOP − but Democrats should know all too well that her endorsement won’t mean it’s all over now<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572838/original/file-20240201-29-3iozq0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5973%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Travis Kelce celebrates with Taylor Swift on Jan. 28, 2024, after the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC championship game.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/travis-kelce-of-the-kansas-city-chiefs-celebrates-with-news-photo/1970250651?adppopup=true">Patrick Smith/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A pop <a href="https://people.com/travis-kelce-reveals-when-he-taylor-swift-romance-first-began-8557241">icon falling for one of the NFL’s preeminent superstars</a> may seem like a slice of Americana – a scene from a small-town high school magnified by a factor of 10 million. </p>
<p>But this is America in 2024 so, of course, nothing magical stays that way. </p>
<p>To be clear, public opinion data suggests that most Americans think Taylor Swift is <a href="https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/taylor-swift-the-nfl/">good for the NFL</a>. But with her beau Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs heading to a fourth Super Bowl in five years, and with Swift herself reportedly preparing for a journey <a href="https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/sports/nfl/taylor-swift-super-bowl-chiefs-tokyo-japan-concert-report/3435863/">across the globe</a> to cheer him on in the big game, the right-wing talk machine has gone into overdrive.</p>
<p>Fox News host <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/10/pentagon-taylor-swift-fox-00134866">Jesse Watters suggested</a> that Swift may be a Pentagon asset used to combat online misinformation. Former GOP presidential candidate <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/01/29/vivek-ramaswamy-says-super-bowl-could-be-rigged-to-boost-taylor-swift-and-biden/">Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted</a> that he thinks Swift and Kelce are being artificially propped up by the media pending an upcoming Swift endorsement of Joe Biden. OAN referred to the couple as a “<a href="https://www.mediaite.com/media/oan-host-rails-against-americas-love-for-football-in-tirade-over-travis-kelce-and-taylor-swift-psy-op/">Massive Super Bowl Psy-op</a>,” a brainwashing campaign designed to indoctrinate citizens to an elite agenda and away from religion.</p>
<p>The idea that the Swift-Kelce romance is some sort of deep-state plot is perhaps gaining some traction in far-right circles because it lines up with other right-wing conspiracy theories and the right’s broader agenda. </p>
<h2>Swift’s NFL fandom</h2>
<p>Swift has <a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-person-of-the-year-and-political-influencer-208631">endorsed Democrats</a> in the past, including Joe Biden in 2020. Kelce, while not politically outspoken, was featured in a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/10/02/travis-kelce-promotes-flu-covid-19-shots-pfizer/71033013007/">Pfizer ad</a> touting the COVID-19 vaccine. </p>
<p>Republicans are more likely than Democrats to believe, without evidence, that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/conspiratorial-thinking-polarization-america-united-kingdom/672726/">a secret group of rulers is controlling the world</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/23/gop-voters-vaccines-poll-00117125">that vaccines cause autism</a>. While there isn’t public opinion data yet on the theories from Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber that the Swift-Kelce romance is an elaborate left-wing scheme, it contains elements of similar conspiracies for which partisan splits exist.</p>
<p>And opinions on Swift herself are similarly polarized. The singer is viewed favorably among virtually all groups in America, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/taylor-swift-transcends-americas-political-divides-barely-rcna125908">although Republicans</a> are the only group in which as many members dislike Swift as like her.</p>
<p>Taylor Swift has brought a unique element to NFL fandom. I haven’t seen fans of my hometown Buffalo Bills <a href="https://twitter.com/LavenderKelce/status/1749147389728784475">make signs</a> denigrating a pop star since they thought Jon Bon Jovi wanted to buy the team and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/bills-to-toronto-concerns-raised-by-documents-is-buffalo-being-played/">move it to Toronto</a> in 2014.</p>
<p>Yet, <a href="https://library.park.edu/scholarsatwork/matthewharris">as a political scientist</a>, I know it’s an open question whether any of this matters politically.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572840/original/file-20240201-25-7rtsex.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a blue blazer, white shirt and rep tie gestures with open hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572840/original/file-20240201-25-7rtsex.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572840/original/file-20240201-25-7rtsex.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572840/original/file-20240201-25-7rtsex.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572840/original/file-20240201-25-7rtsex.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572840/original/file-20240201-25-7rtsex.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572840/original/file-20240201-25-7rtsex.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572840/original/file-20240201-25-7rtsex.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fox News host Jesse Watters has speculated, without evidence, that Swift may be a Pentagon asset.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/host-jesse-watters-as-jesse-watters-primetime-debuts-on-fox-news-photo/1552264944?adppopup=true">Roy Rochlin/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Oprah, Obama and celebrity endorsements</h2>
<p>In the background of these conspiracy theories is the possibility that Taylor Swift could <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/us/politics/biden-trump-election-taylor-swift.html">endorse Joe Biden</a>. The Trump campaign is reportedly thinking about such a possibility, with allies talking behind the scenes about a <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-more-popular-taylor-swift-maga-biden-1234956829/">“holy war”</a> against Swift, brainstorming ways of painting her as a left-wing celebrity advancing an elite Democratic agenda.</p>
<p>But how much would such an endorsement matter? </p>
<p>In political science literature, a hallmark case of the power of celebrity endorsements is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewr031">Oprah Winfrey’s 2008 backing of Barack Obama</a>. Winfrey’s endorsement occurred during a primary in which he was taking on a more well-known opponent, Hillary Clinton. </p>
<p>Winfrey’s endorsement, wrote the authors of a prominent study of the case, led participants in the study “to see Obama as more likely to win the nomination and to say that they would be more likely to vote for him.” In other words, it helped advance public perceptions of Obama’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161208321948">viability as a candidate</a>.</p>
<p>A Swift endorsement of Biden would be different. </p>
<p>Swifties are <a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-person-of-the-year-and-political-influencer-208631">largely suburban and young</a>. Almost <a href="https://pro.morningconsult.com/instant-intel/taylor-swift-fandom-demographic">half are millennials</a>, and over 10% belong to Gen Z. They represent a slice of the youth vote that candidates have attempted to court for decades, and the <a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017f-bcf4-d17b-a1ff-bef5e8a70000">suburbs are increasingly a battleground</a> in the country’s urban-rural divide. A Swift Instagram post in 2023 helped lead to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1201183160/taylor-swift-instagram-voter-registration">35,000 new voter registrations</a> – and her ability to generate funds could also be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/us/politics/biden-trump-election-taylor-swift.html">invaluable to Biden</a>. </p>
<p>But an Oprah-like effect is less likely for a Swift endorsement of Biden, who is running as an incumbent without a serious primary challenger and his status as the Democratic nominee is certain.</p>
<p>Further, polling demonstrates that the effect of a Swift endorsement could be essentially <a href="https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/18-of-voters-more-likely-to-back-taylor-swift-endorsed-presidential-candidate-poll-shows-2024-election-voting-ballot-biden-trump-white-house-politics-travis-kelce-kansas-city-chiefs">a net wash</a>, with 18% of the public saying they’d be more likely to support a Swift-backed candidate and 17% saying they would be less likely to support Swift’s favored choice. </p>
<p>Even those numbers might be affected by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-013-9238-0">partisan-motivated reasoning</a>, where a person’s party identification colors their perceptions of information. Swift’s prior backing of Democrats and perceived liberalism might cause her supporters and detractors to use polling questions asking about a potential Swift endorsement to express support or disfavor of her, regardless of how her endorsement would actually influence their choice. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572842/original/file-20240201-23-hzjgww.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a blue blazer, blue tie and white shirt in front of an American flag, holding his right hand in a fist." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572842/original/file-20240201-23-hzjgww.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572842/original/file-20240201-23-hzjgww.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572842/original/file-20240201-23-hzjgww.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572842/original/file-20240201-23-hzjgww.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572842/original/file-20240201-23-hzjgww.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572842/original/file-20240201-23-hzjgww.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572842/original/file-20240201-23-hzjgww.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Swift endorsement, if it comes, could be less important than Donald Trump’s response to that endorsement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/republican-presidential-candidate-and-former-u-s-president-news-photo/1965960388?adppopup=true">David Becker/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Not just a love story</h2>
<p>Essentially, a Swift endorsement might matter at the margins, but there are many, many other factors at play in a general election. That’s especially true in an election between two men who have both served as commander in chief, a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/16/few-former-presidents-have-run-for-their-old-jobs-or-anything-else-after-leaving-office/">rarity in American politics</a>.</p>
<p>A Swift endorsement, then, is perhaps less important in and of itself than Donald Trump’s response to a Swift endorsement of Biden. </p>
<p>Public opinion polling in the wake of Trump’s Access Hollywood remarks in 2016 showed that majorities of both women and men believed Trump had little or no <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/04/trump-respect-for-women/">respect for women</a>. But Trump actually improved his numbers among <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/">women voters in 2020</a>. </p>
<p>A Swift endorsement of Biden could bring out some of Trump’s worst impulses. Perhaps the effect of his response on how voters view him could be more important than her endorsement of Biden.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matt Harris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The idea that the Swift-Kelce romance is some sort of deep-state plot is perhaps gaining traction in far-right circles because it lines up with the political right’s broader agenda and beliefs.Matt Harris, Associate Professor of Political Science, Park UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222682024-02-01T02:36:29Z2024-02-01T02:36:29ZTaylor Swift deepfakes: new technologies have long been weaponised against women. The solution involves us all<p>Sexually graphic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/jan/28/taylor-swift-x-searches-blocked-fake-explicit-images">“deepfake” images of Taylor Swift</a> went viral on social media last week, fuelling widespread condemnation from Swifties, the general public and even the White House.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1751012521589313808"}"></div></p>
<p>This problem isn’t new. Swift is one of many celebrities and public figures, <a href="https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/08/deepfake_report.pdf">mainly women</a>, who have fallen victim to deepfake pornography in recent years. High-profile examples garner significant media attention, but the increasingly sophisticated nature of AI means <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-24/artificial-intelligence-fashion-industry-models-deepfake-porn-ai/102997036">anyone can now be targeted</a>.</p>
<p>While there are grave concerns about the broader implications of deepfakes, it’s important to remember the technology isn’t the <em>cause</em> of abuse. It’s just another tool <a href="https://theconversation.com/even-before-deepfakes-tech-was-a-tool-of-abuse-and-control-211795">used to enact it</a>.</p>
<h2>Deepfakes and other digitally manipulated media</h2>
<p>The sexually explicit deepfakes of Swift appeared on multiple social media platforms last week, including X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook and Reddit.</p>
<p>Most major platforms have bans on sharing synthetic and digitally manipulated media that cause harm, confusion or deception, including deepfake porn. This includes images created through simpler means such as photo-editing software. Nonetheless, one deepfake depicting Swift <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/29/x-blocks-taylor-swift-searches-what-to-know-about-the-viral-ai-deepfakes">was viewed</a> 47 million times over a 17-hour period before it was removed from X. </p>
<p>There’s a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447341?casa_token=wlgXXrQJAWAAAAAA:Z1aslY4q9gFZPUNqzUCzYL5wjslwF86Y0m2uHLTI9FXrHnzZ1pVVowACFTX3l2maVLTKPhYM5y8PXg">long history</a> of digital technologies, apps and services being used to facilitate gender-based violence, including sexual harassment, sexual assault, domestic or family violence, dating abuse, stalking and monitoring, and hate speech.</p>
<p>As such, our focus should also be on addressing the problematic gender norms and beliefs that often underpin these types of abuse. </p>
<h2>The emergence of deepfakes</h2>
<p>The origins of deepfakes can be traced to November 2017 <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjye8a/reddit-fake-porn-app-daisy-ridley?__twitter_impression=true">when a Reddit user called “deepfakes”</a> created a forum and video-editing software that allowed users to train their computers to swap the faces of porn actors with the faces of celebrities.</p>
<p>Since then, there’s been a massive expansion of dedicated deepfake websites and threads, as well as apps that can create customised deepfakes for free or for a fee. </p>
<p>In the past, creating a convincing deepfake often required extensive time and expertise, a powerful computer and access to multiple images of the person being targeted. Today, almost anyone can make a deepfake – sometimes in a matter of seconds.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-deepfakes-a-legal-case-from-the-singer-could-help-other-victims-of-ai-pornography-222113">Taylor Swift deepfakes: a legal case from the singer could help other victims of AI pornography</a>
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<h2>The harms of deepfake porn</h2>
<p>Not all applications of AI-generated imagery are harmful. You might have seen funny viral deepfakes such as the images of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/03/27/pope-francis-coat-puffy-white-ai-fake/">Pope Francis in a puffer jacket</a>. Or if you watch the latest Indiana Jones film, you’ll see <a href="https://theconversation.com/harrison-ford-is-back-as-an-80-year-old-indiana-jones-and-a-40-something-indy-the-highs-and-lows-of-returning-to-iconic-roles-202357">Harrison Ford “de-aged” by 40 years</a> thanks to AI. </p>
<p>That said, deepfakes are often created for malicious purposes, including disinformation, cyberbullying, child sexual abuse, sexual extortion and other forms of <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-can-now-create-fake-porn-making-revenge-porn-even-more-complicated-92267">image-based sexual abuse</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.homesecurityheroes.com/state-of-deepfakes/#key-findings">report published</a> by startup Home Security Heroes estimated there were 95,820 deepfake videos online in 2023, a 550% increase since 2019. </p>
<p>When it comes to deepfake porn, women in particular are disproportionately targeted. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/10/7/20902215/deepfakes-usage-youtube-2019-deeptrace-research-report">According to DeepTrace</a>, 96% of all deepfakes online <a href="https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/08/deepfake_report.pdf">are non-consensual fake videos of women</a>. These are mostly (but not exclusively) well-known actors and musicians. </p>
<p>This is concerning but not surprising. <a href="https://plan-international.org/publications/free-to-be-online/">Research</a> shows online abuse disproportionately affects women and girls, particularly Indigenous women, women from migrant backgrounds and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. </p>
<p>Public figures in particular face <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1329878X231225745">higher rates of online abuse</a>, especially women and gender-diverse people. One study found celebrities <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357262069_Beautiful_victims_How_the_halo_of_attractiveness_impacts_judgments_of_celebrity_and_lay_victims_of_online_abuse">are attributed more blame</a> than non-celebrities for the abuse they receive online, and this abuse is often viewed as less serious. </p>
<p>Research shows image-based abuse can result in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0964663920947791">significant harms</a> for victims, including anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, social isolation and reputational damage. For <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1329878X231225745">public figures</a>, deepfakes and other forms of online abuse can similarly result in diminished career prospects, withdrawal from public life and negative mental health outcomes.</p>
<p>In 2016, Australian activist and law reform campaigner <a href="https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/perth-womans-warning-after-facebook-photo-altered-and-posted-on-porn-sites-20161013-gs1xag.html">Noelle Martin’s</a> photos were taken from social media and superimposed onto pornographic images. Martin reported feeling “physically sick, disgusted, angry, degraded, dehumanised” as a result. Digitally altered and deepfake images of Martin continue to circulate online without her consent.</p>
<h2>Responding to deepfake porn</h2>
<p>Anyone can be targeted through deepfakes. All that’s needed is an image of someone’s face. Even professional work images can be used.</p>
<p>Although law reform alone won’t solve this socio-legal problem, it can signal the issue is being taken seriously. We need laws specifically targeting <a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-deepfakes-a-legal-case-from-the-singer-could-help-other-victims-of-ai-pornography-222113">non-consensual deepfake porn</a>. </p>
<p>In Australia, there are <a href="https://www.imagebasedabuse.com/the-laws-in-australia/">image-based sexual abuse offences</a> in every Australian state and territory except Tasmania, as well as at the federal level. However, only some laws specifically mention digitally altered images (including deepfakes). </p>
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<p>Technology companies could also do a lot more to proactively detect and moderate deepfake porn. They need to prioritise embedding “<a href="https://www.esafety.gov.au/industry/safety-by-design">safety by design</a>” approaches into their services from the outset. This could mean:</p>
<ul>
<li>designing and testing AI with potential misuses in mind</li>
<li>using watermarks and other indicators to label content as synthetic<br></li>
<li>“nudging” users to refrain from certain behaviours (such as using pop-ups to remind them about the importance of consent). </li>
</ul>
<p>Research shows there are gaps in public understanding of deepfakes and how to detect them. This further highlights <a href="https://theconversation.com/deepfakes-how-to-empower-youth-to-fight-the-threat-of-misinformation-and-disinformation-221171">a need for digital literacy</a> and education on the difference between consensual and non-consensual uses of intimate images, and the harms of non-consensual deepfake porn.</p>
<p>Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to address the underlying systemic inequalities that contribute to technology-facilitated abuse against women and gender-diverse people. This includes recognising deepfake porn for the often-gendered problem it is – for celebrities and non-celebrities alike.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/celebrity-deepfakes-are-all-over-tiktok-heres-why-theyre-becoming-common-and-how-you-can-spot-them-187079">Celebrity deepfakes are all over TikTok. Here's why they're becoming common – and how you can spot them</a>
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<p><em>If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit the <a href="https://www.esafety.gov.au/key-topics/image-based-abuse">eSafety Commissioner’s website</a> for help with image-based abuse. In immediate danger, call 000.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicola Henry receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), Google, and the Victorian Attorney General's Office. She is also a member of the Australian eSafety Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Witt receives funding from Google.</span></em></p>There’s nothing surprising about the fake explicit images going viral. It happens to women celebrities frequently – but anyone can be targeted.Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT UniversityAlice Witt, Research Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221132024-01-31T16:25:46Z2024-01-31T16:25:46ZTaylor Swift deepfakes: a legal case from the singer could help other victims of AI pornography<p>In between her record-shattering Eras tour and cheering on her NFL-star boyfriend Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift may be gearing up for a history-making legal battle over AI pornography. Swift is reportedly preparing to <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13006645/taylor-swift-furious-ai-pictures-porn-legal-action.html">take action</a> against distributors of “deepfake” images of her.</p>
<p>Obscene images of Swift began circulating on X (formerly Twitter) on January 25. The images, which fans describe as <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/taylor-swift-ai-nudes-twitter-x-1235806979/">“disgusting”</a>, reportedly originated in a <a href="https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-taylor-swift-porn-twitter/">Telegram group</a> dedicated to generating artificial pornographic content of women. They <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24050334/x-twitter-taylor-swift-ai-fake-images-trending">were live for around 17 hours</a> and viewed more than 45 million times before being taken down. X temporarily blocked searches of <a href="https://time.com/6589487/taylor-swift-searches-blocked-x-twitter-deepfakes-response/">Swift’s name</a> in an attempt to stop other users from sharing the images.</p>
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<p>In response, a group of US senators have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/30/taylor-swift-ai-deepfake-nonconsensual-sexual-images-bill">introduced a bill</a> to criminalise the distribution of AI-generated, non-consensual sexual images.</p>
<p>There is currently no federal law in the US against deepfake content. Such legislation <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bill-criminalize-extremely-harmful-online-deepfakes/story?id=103286802">has been discussed</a>, though mainly in response to the use of generative AI in political misinformation. </p>
<p>But until a law is passed, <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/26/was-deepfake-taylor-swift-pornography-illegal-can-she-sue/72359653007/">Swift’s options for recourse are limited</a>. She could sue the company responsible for the technology, or possibly bring a civil suit against the image creators or distributors. Microsoft, whose software was allegedly used to create the images, has already <a href="https://www.404media.co/microsoft-closes-loophole-that-created-ai-porn-of-taylor-swift/">applied restrictions</a> to prevent similar images being generated. </p>
<h2>The impact of image-based sexual abuse</h2>
<p>Swift’s case is high-profile due to her celebrity status, but AI-generated pornography and deepfakes are a rapidly growing problem as the tech becomes <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/emma-watson-deep-fake-scarlett-johansson-face-swap-app-rcna73624">more acessible</a>. It now <a href="https://www.homesecurityheroes.com/state-of-deepfakes/#key-findings">takes just 25 minutes</a> and costs nothing to create artificial pornography.</p>
<p>Almost all deepfake content is <a href="https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/08/deepfake_report.pdf">pornographic in nature</a>, and nearly always depicts women. While celebrities are often targeted, the reality is that <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001c1mt/deepfake-porn-could-you-be-next">anyone with your image</a> could easily create pornographic images using your likeness.</p>
<p>While the images may be fake, the harmful impact of this experience is very real. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0964663920947791">Studies</a> into the non-consensual sharing of pornographic or intimate images have documented the feelings of violation and shame felt by victims. Anxiety, depression and PTSD are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304338281_Revenge_Porn_and_Mental_Health_A_Qualitative_Analysis_of_the_Mental_Health_Effects_of_Revenge_Porn_on_Female_Survivors#:%7E:text=Bates%20(2017)%20found%20that%20victims,lives%20became%20public.%20...">common results</a> of this experience. </p>
<p>As victims frequently <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17482798.2020.1848892">blame themselves</a> or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7534260/">experience blame from others</a>, it can be difficult to move on. What’s more, the digital nature of sexual image sharing means that victims must live in constant fear of their photo being shared over and over again. </p>
<p>Actor <a href="https://graziadaily.co.uk/fashion/shopping/jennifer-lawrence-breaks-silence-naked-photo-hack/">Jennifer Lawrence</a> and television personality <a href="https://her.ie/celeb/georgia-harrison-issues-emotional-statement-stephen-bears-prison-sentencing-576302">Georgia Harrison</a>, both famous victims of image-based sexual abuse, have discussed how their celebrity status increased the scale and scope of their own experiences. </p>
<p>Deepfake porn and other forms of digital <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/taylor-swift-deepfake-ai-women-images-b2485492.html">sexual abuse</a> are sometimes dismissed as a “lesser” harm than physical sexual assault because of their online nature. A high profile case like Swift’s could help draw attention to the genuine impact of these images on victims.</p>
<p>The fact that it is not “really” her body does not diminish the seriousness. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/63/3/651/6628889">Research shows</a> that the “pornification” of non-risque photos using photoshop or AI can be just as harmful to the person depicted. The intent behind these images is not simply sexual – the degradation and humiliation of the victim is an equally desired outcome.</p>
<h2>What does the law in the UK say?</h2>
<p>Through the <a href="https://saferinternet.org.uk/blog/online-safety-bill-becomes-law">Online Safety Act</a>, UK law now criminalises the distribution (though not the creation) of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-to-better-protect-victims-from-abuse-of-intimate-images">digitally made or altered intimate images</a>.</p>
<p>While the change has been <a href="https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/online-safety-bill-becomes-law-with-guidance-to-protect-women-and-girls/">welcomed by campaigners</a>, there are still barriers preventing victims from seeking justice.</p>
<p>As with sexual violence more broadly, incidents of non-consensual sexual image sharing often go unreported. When they are reported, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17488958221146141?icid=int.sj-abstract.citing-articles.18">poor police response</a> can exacerbate the harms. </p>
<p>Prosecution rates are low, often due to lack of evidence or <a href="https://refuge.org.uk/news/intimate-image-abuse-despite-increased-reports-to-the-police-charging-rates-remain-low/">victims withdrawing their support</a>. A lack of guidance from officers, no <a href="https://lawcom.gov.uk/project/taking-making-and-sharing-intimate-images-without-consent/">guarantee of anonymity</a>, or a fear of repercussion from the perpetrator are just some of the factors that might lead to someone deciding not to see a case through.</p>
<h2>A record of fighting sexism</h2>
<p>This wouldn’t be the first time Swift took legal action against misogyny. In 2017, she <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/08/taylor-swift-s-sexual-assault-testimony-was-sharp-gutsy-and-satisfying.html">won her claim</a> against a former radio DJ who groped her at a meet-and-greet. She claimed just US$1 (79p) in damages, stating that she wanted to use the case to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-40937429">take a stand against sexual violence</a>. </p>
<p>While Swift’s celebrity status has made her a target, her fame brings advantages that many victims of sexual violence don’t have, as she <a href="https://people.com/music/taylor-swift-tears-tampa-concert-anniversary-sexual-assault-trial-verdict/">noted in the aftermath of her 2017 trial</a>. Her platform, wealth and influence gave her the means to speak out where others cannot. </p>
<p>The “Taylor Swift effect” has proven to be a powerful <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2023/11/21/the-taylor-swift-effect/">economic force</a>. If she does choose to take action against the creators of the images, it could be a landmark case against artificial pornography. Increasing public awareness might just embolden victims, and apply pressure to governing bodies around the world for better enforcement of the law. </p>
<p><em>If you have been affected by artificial pornography or other forms of image-based sexual abuse, there are number of places you can find help. The <a href="https://revengepornhelpline.org.uk/">Revenge Porn Helpline</a> and <a href="https://www.thecyberhelpline.com/">The Cyber Helpline</a> can provide guidance on removing these images, reporting to the police, and accessing additional support.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jade Gilbourne's PhD thesis is funded by the ESRC via the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership. </span></em></p>Image-based sexual abuse often goes unreported and under-prosecuted.Jade Gilbourne, PhD Candidate in Sociology, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2196602024-01-02T11:01:25Z2024-01-02T11:01:25ZWhy Taylor Swift belongs on English literature degree courses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565475/original/file-20231213-25-cnwmvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6038%2C4019&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Taylor Swift performs at Madison Square Garden in New York, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-ny-usa-december-13-2003958017">Brian Friedman/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When I started my podcast, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/studies-in-taylor-swift/id1560911222">Studies in Taylor Swift</a>, in the spring of 2021, I felt that I was simultaneously helping to invent, and trying to catch up to, the academic discipline of Taylor Swift studies. Though there wasn’t much published on reading Swift as literature, I had no trouble finding guests who had some kind of experience teaching Swift or thinking academically about her lyrics. </p>
<p>I went on to design a summer school course at Queen Mary University of London on <a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/summer-school/what-can-i-study/modules/taylor-swift-and-literature.html">Taylor Swift and Literature</a> in 2023. My course <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/taylor-swift-course-queen-mary-london-university-b1110058.html">made the news</a> – but only because a journalist writing about a <a href="https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/belgian-university-enters-new-era-with-taylor-swift-course-185634">similar class at Ghent University</a> in Belgium got in touch, asking me to confirm that my class had been taught first. In fact, a <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/news/ut-english-course-takes-a-swift-turn">class</a> at The University of Texas at Austin in 2022 was the first literature class on Swift to gain media attention.</p>
<h2>Dear reader</h2>
<p>Even before that, however, Swift had been in English departments for a while. For example, after her song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-a8s8OLBSE">cardigan</a> came out in 2020, I used it to teach students an introductory English class on the basics of close reading – a form of studying a text that examines specific details. </p>
<p>We talked about the line “You drew stars around my scars / But now I’m bleedin’”. The idea was to try to figure out how the “but” worked – whether the scars had reopened or new ones had been created. We discussed whether drawing stars around the speaker’s scars meant making art out of her pain, or drawing attention away from it, or fetishising it, or even planning future harm to her body.</p>
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<p>Beyond English literature, other departments such as media studies, fan studies and celebrity studies have already produced a fair amount of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gcmr20/40/1">published research</a> on Swift’s life and career. </p>
<p>But before she became the topic of lectures and seminars, Swift’s work was something that a lot of people – including our students – were already reading and discussing with the kind of attention often granted to texts in literature classrooms. </p>
<p>This is something Swift encourages with her elaborate system of interconnected references. For example, her 2022 song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvHZjvIyqsk">Maroon</a> is an older, more mature version of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_rUYuFtNO4">Red</a> – also the title of her 2012 album about a doomed love affair. This fits her tendency, as in cardigan, to use images of blood and rust to describe the sticky, difficult end of a relationship. </p>
<p>With this awareness of Swift’s larger body of work, Maroon becomes more than a song about one failed relationship. It is also a song about the speaker herself, someone who keeps getting “marooned” on the shores of the past.</p>
<h2>Hits different</h2>
<p>Swift’s work is by no means the first incursion of recent popular culture into academia. Many universities offer courses on Harry Potter, while the first thing I taught, as a guest seminar leader in another academic’s course, was Fifty Shades of Grey. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there is clearly something about the idea of classes on Taylor Swift as literature that catches the popular imagination. In media discussions, her name is sometimes juxtaposed with another one: Shakespeare.</p>
<p>When scholar Sir Jonathan Bate wrote an <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-taylor-swift-is-a-literary-giant-by-a-shakespeare-professor-3fmh269bt">article praising Swift’s work</a>, the fact he was a Shakespeare professor was dwelt on in the article’s headline and subhead (he is, in fact, currently a professor of environmental humanities). The Times published Bate’s article alongside <a href="https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1645115063882199042">a quiz</a> asking readers whether Swift or Shakespeare had written a particular line. </p>
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<p>When the medievalist Elizabeth Scala taught a class reading Swift alongside many other writers, the fact that Shakespeare was being taught next to Swift was again brought up in <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/taylor-swift-university-degree-texas-b2151492.html">media coverage</a>. Scala, despite being a professor of medieval romance, historiography and culture, was described as a “Shakespeare scholar” in <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-latest-addition-university-texas-course-offering-1735821">one headline</a>.</p>
<p>This emphasis on Swift’s new proximity, and potential similarity, to the most famous English language writer makes me think that the interest in classes on Taylor Swift and literature is led not so much by an interest in Swift being taught, but in her being an “author”. </p>
<p>The fact we are close-reading Swift’s words in a university setting is presented – whether this is bemoaned or celebrated – as a challenge to Shakespeare’s supremacy as the subject of literary study. But this is born from a popular misconception about what it is we do in literature classes – even Shakespeare classes.</p>
<p>Despite a shift in English literature since at least the 1960s away from thinking about authors as self-contained, important, authoritative figures, to thinking about texts that are formed by various societal and linguistic currents, we are still perceived as teaching not texts but particular authors – especially Shakespeare. </p>
<p>However, as someone who teaches the writings of both Shakespeare and Swift, I can say this: teaching each of them leads to the same conversations about how a popular form (whether dramatic writing or song lyrics) takes on literary value, and how hard it is to separate what we think and how we feel about a work from the value we are taught to give to it by its place in society. </p>
<p>The important thing isn’t whether or not Swift might be the new Shakespeare. It’s that the discipline of English literature is flexible, capacious and open-minded. A class on reading Swift’s work as literature is just another English class, because every English class requires grappling with the idea of reading anything as literature. Even Shakespeare.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clio Doyle teaches a class on Taylor Swift and Literature at the Queen Mary Summer School.</span></em></p>Miss Americana has been discussed in English literature classes for some years now – sometimes alongside Shakespeare.Clio Doyle, Lecturer in Early Modern Literature, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2183412023-11-24T00:20:59Z2023-11-24T00:20:59ZTaylor Swift’s Brazil concert was hammered by extreme heat. How to protect crowds at the next sweltering gig<p>Electrifying music concerts and other mass events are increasingly under threat from severe weather events, such as extreme heat.</p>
<p>The tragic <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-22/heatwave-humidity-warnings-follow-brazil-taylor-swift-fan-death/103132476">incident</a> at a Taylor Swift concert in Brazil recently, which resulted in the death of one fan, is a stark reminder of what can happen.</p>
<p>The concert took place in a stadium during a heatwave. Fans lined up for hours outside the Rio de Janeiro venue, with temperatures reportedly over 40°C. With the high humidity, this would have felt like almost 60°C, according to a measure known as the “<a href="https://www.weather.gov/ama/heatindex#:%7E:text=The%20heat%20index%2C%20also%20known,for%20the%20human%20body%27s%20comfort.">heat index</a>”.</p>
<p>As well as the fatality, fans <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/tours/taylor-swift-concert-goers-struck-with-seconddegree-burns/news-story/e1a597d52f642c46c1a8f45b5c816fdb">reported</a> burns after touching hot metal floors and railings.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/extreme-weather-is-landing-more-australians-in-hospital-and-heat-is-the-biggest-culprit-216440">Extreme weather is landing more Australians in hospital – and heat is the biggest culprit</a>
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<h2>There have been other similar events</h2>
<p>What happened at the Swift concert is the consequence of insufficient preparation for extreme weather conditions during a large-scale event. However, this is not an isolated case. There is a <a href="https://www.billboard.com/lists/concerts-affected-climate-change-2023-full-list/july-4/">long list</a> of mass gatherings and events affected by extreme weather in 2023. </p>
<p>In August, a <a href="https://variety.com/2023/music/news/beyonce-dc-metro-trains-weather-delays-renaissance-1235689650/">Beyoncé concert</a> in a Washington DC stadium took place during severe weather conditions. This time it was heavy rain and lightning. Attendees were ordered to shelter in place.</p>
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<p>Lightning posed a direct threat to their safety. Those inside the stadium were directed to shelter under covered areas and ramps. Afterwards, several fans were reportedly treated for <a href="https://wjla.com/news/local/fedex-field-shelter-in-place-beyonce-concert-renaissance-tour-weather-lightening-rain-cover-thunderstorms-sunday-performance#:%7E:text=After%20a%20shelter,Nov%202023%2011%3A50%3A08%20GMT">heat exhaustion</a>. </p>
<p>The directive to shelter in place could have led to overcrowding in covered areas, potentially increasing the risk of incidents, such as a crowd crush.</p>
<p>Another US example was <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/17-hospitalized-2-go-into-cardiac-arrest-at-ed-sheeran-concert-amid-extreme-heat/4497016/#:%7E:text=,working%20during%20the%20Ed">Ed Sheeran’s concert</a> at a Pittsburgh stadium during a July heatwave. </p>
<p>Some 17 people were hospitalised. Health emergencies included heat exhaustion and two cardiac arrests (when the heart stops beating).</p>
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<h2>We must prepare</h2>
<p>Climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and intense. So risk assessments should include detailed weather monitoring and structural assessments for outdoor set-ups to ensure shade structures, for instance, can cope with crowds.</p>
<p>Contingency plans for a rapid response are also needed. These need to include plans to supply water or protective equipment (such as plastic ponchos) and timely safety directions and information. </p>
<p>Such planning should encompass not just the likelihood of extreme weather but also its potential impact on infrastructure, crowd control and emergency medical responses.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-burning-man-to-woodstock-to-fyre-festival-what-turns-a-festival-into-a-disaster-212859">From Burning Man to Woodstock to Fyre Festival: what turns a festival into a disaster?</a>
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<h2>Artists play a role too</h2>
<p>While the primary onus of safety lies with event organisers and venues, artists can also play a significant role in public safety during extreme weather. So we need to keep them informed about identified potential risks and planned countermeasures.</p>
<p>For instance, artists can influence crowd behaviour positively and prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as a crowd crush. They can appeal for calm or can announce any planned evacuation procedures.</p>
<p>In the most recent incident, Swift <a href="https://www.insider.com/taylor-swift-crew-give-water-fans-during-hot-brazil-concert-2023-11">paused her show</a> to ask crew members to distribute water to fans.</p>
<h2>Be safety aware</h2>
<p>People who attend mass events also need to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753523002345">be aware</a> of the safety issues related to extreme weather and be prepared.</p>
<p>Public education campaigns can help, as can effectively disseminating safety information to empower attendees to make informed decisions.</p>
<p>For instance, an event organiser can send a text message to all attendees to warn of upcoming weather conditions and a reminder to bring water or wear sunscreen. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/astroworld-tragedy-heres-how-concert-organisers-can-prevent-big-crowds-turning-deadly-171397">Astroworld tragedy: here's how concert organisers can prevent big crowds turning deadly</a>
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<h2>We can expect more of these events</h2>
<p>The tragic incident at the Swift concert and similar examples are not isolated but indicate a broader trend. With climate change, extreme weather events will pose a more common risk at such mass gatherings. </p>
<p>So we need to recognise and integrate this into how we plan for, and assess the risk associated with, future events. This is vital to ensure these gatherings remain celebratory landmarks rather than avoidable disasters.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218341/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Milad Haghani receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Grant No. DE210100440). </span></em></p>One fan died and others reported burns at the Swift concert. And we’re going to see similar incidents at future concerns if we don’t start planning for extreme weather.Milad Haghani, Senior Lecturer of Public Safety, Disaster Resilience & Urban Mobility, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2148272023-11-17T13:28:35Z2023-11-17T13:28:35Z5 marketing lessons from the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce romance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558651/original/file-20231109-21-nq5bse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C28%2C4785%2C2529&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The stands at Kansas City Chiefs games look different than they used to.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fans-hold-up-placards-referring-to-taylor-swifts-boyfriend-news-photo/1764920016">Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What happens when you unite the biggest pop star in the world and a two-time Super Bowl champion? A whole lot of excitement, as the romance of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce has shown. But amid all the <a href="https://people.com/taylor-swift-supporting-travis-kelce-at-kansas-city-chiefs-games-pictures-8357398">cheering</a>, canoodling and <a href="https://people.com/taylor-swift-liked-people-instagram-post-about-travis-kelce-amid-romance-8387691">Instagram flirting</a>, the situation lends some useful insights into marketing – and as an <a href="https://www.clemson.edu/business/about/profiles/aschein">expert in sports marketing</a>, I know that this is a topic worth focusing on. Here are five lessons the NFL and other experiential marketers can consider to enhance their brands and reputation.</p>
<p><strong>1) “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ORhEE9VVg">Blank Space</a>”: Embrace audience expansion</strong></p>
<blockquote>“Cause you know I love the players … And you love the game!” – “Blank Space,” 2014</blockquote>
<p>Great entertainment marketers know how to fill a blank space. And Swift has given the NFL a unique opportunity to expand its appeal to a demographic – young women – that may not have been interested in football before. Swifties, as Swift’s fans are known, are eager to see the pop icon embrace being in love. So whenever she visits a stadium to cheer on her new lover, Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Kelce – which she has done four times in the past two months and <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article281904423.html">may well do again soon</a> – a media frenzy follows. </p>
<p>While serious football fans want the focus to stay on football, the NFL is smart to capitalize on this opportunity. After all, Swift is a mega-popular star: She has more charted songs (212), top-10 hits (42) and No. 1 song debuts (five) on the <a href="https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-hot-100-billboard-200-chart-records-broken/">Billboard Top 100</a> than any other female musician in history.</p>
<p>The Chiefs remain known for their winning ways and star power, and they’re still drawing – and satisfying – their traditional fans. Yet Swift’s presence has brought a more playful tone to the games. The ordinarily serious Chiefs coach Andy Reid has <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/andy-reid-setting-up-taylor-swift-travis-kelce-joke-1235447334/">taken to joking</a> about the pair (“I set them up”), while memes about Swift having to leave the stadium <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2023/09/25/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-popcorn-machine-suite-swifties-fan-theory/">in a popcorn machine</a> are a next-level combination of participatory pop culture, celebrity and sports.</p>
<p>Audience expansion is an effective tactic for businesses, as long as marketers don’t alienate old fans by opening up to new ones. And so far, this is paying off for the NFL: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-nfl-jersey-sales-game-fanatics-merchandise-2023-">Ratings soar</a> when Swift attends a game, and Kelce <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-nfl-jersey-sales-game-fanatics-merchandise-2023-9">jersey sales</a> have also skyrocketed. This new interest in the sport is welcome, especially since NFL television ratings among <a href="https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/nfl-tv-ratings-viewership-2023/">18- to 35-year-olds</a> had previously shown some declines.</p>
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<img alt="Taylor Swift and Donna Kelce both wear red in support of the Kansas City Chiefs as they watch the first half of an FNL game from a box seat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551553/original/file-20231002-16-eiap6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3518%2C2340&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551553/original/file-20231002-16-eiap6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551553/original/file-20231002-16-eiap6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551553/original/file-20231002-16-eiap6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551553/original/file-20231002-16-eiap6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551553/original/file-20231002-16-eiap6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551553/original/file-20231002-16-eiap6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Taylor Swift cheers from a suite with Travis Kelce’s mother, Donna Kelce, as the Kansas City Chiefs play the Chicago Bears on Sept. 24, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/taylor-swift-cheers-from-a-suite-with-donna-kelce-as-the-news-photo/1687517675">Cooper Neill/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><strong>2) “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdneKLhsWOQ">Wildest Dreams</a>”: Capitalize on the many motivations for fandom</strong></p>
<blockquote>“Say you’ll see me again/Even if it’s just in your wildest dreams.” – “Wildest Dreams,” 2014</blockquote>
<p>An entertainment or sports marketer’s wildest dream is to be able to bring in all sorts of fans and deliver on their personal reasons for being there. That’s why marketers are wise to think about “psychographics” in addition to demographic appeals. This means that instead of just segmenting audiences by demographic – such as younger women or college students – marketers tailor their appeals to lifestyles, interests, activities and the way consumers think. </p>
<p>My co-authored research shows that <a href="https://doi.org/10.2501/S0021849906060430">engaged sports fans</a> are motivated by psychological desires such as escape and building self-esteem – everyone wants to be associated with a winner – as well as social motives such as wanting to strengthen in-group bonds and participate in traditions and rituals. </p>
<p>Football is known for intense strategies, masculine bravado and violent hits. So the Swift crossover gives NFL sport marketers an opportunity to attract new fans with different motivations. A good example is when the NFL changed its X (formerly Twitter) bio to <a href="https://theathletic.com/4909874/2023/10/01/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-nfl-jets-chiefs/">“NFL (Taylor’s version)”</a> – a nod to Swiftie in-group identity and humor. New fans who are drawn in by such appeals may become more serious about the sport later.</p>
<p><strong>3) “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw">You Belong With Me</a>”: Let consumers feel like they belong</strong></p>
<blockquote>“If you could see that I’m the one who understands you, been here all along so, why can’t you see? You belong with me.” – “You Belong With Me,” 2008</blockquote>
<p>When it comes to sports, and especially football, some people think that the game isn’t for them. The NFL and the Chiefs now have a unique opportunity to leverage sudden interest from a group of people not known for being football superfans. But to convert them into regular viewers, they’ll need to make sure the newcomers feel a sense of belonging.</p>
<p>A subtle example of this sort of outreach happened when the Chiefs used social media to <a href="https://twitter.com/Chiefs/status/1706044628787462409?lang=en">welcome Swift</a> – and by extension, her loyal fans – to “Chiefs Kingdom.” Similarly, the league has made it abundantly clear that Swifties are <a href="https://theathletic.com/4909874/2023/10/01/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-nfl-jets-chiefs/">welcome in the stands</a>, even if a small yet loud cohort of NFL fans would <a href="https://theathletic.com/4924355/2023/10/03/nfl-taylor-swift-fans-chiefs/">rather they stay away</a>. This open-mindedness is good for business. </p>
<p><strong>4) “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xg3vE8Ie_E">Love Story</a>”: Leverage human co–branding and appeals to fun and fantasy</strong></p>
<blockquote>“You’ll be the prince, and I’ll be the princess/It’s a love story, baby, just say yes.” – “Love Story,” 2008 </blockquote>
<p>I study <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11747-010-0221-6">human brands</a> – the people, well known or emerging, who are the subject of marketing, interpersonal or interorganizational communications. In this age of social media, human branding has never been more important. Having a strong personal brand is associated with more endorsements, Google searches, merchandise sales and ticket sales. So Swift and Kelce are reaping the benefits of <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cobranding.asp">human co-branding</a>. </p>
<p>What makes these particular human brands so compelling? Many Swifties are invested in Taylor’s romantic life and are cheering for her to find love and one day pick out a white dress. This interest and fantasy takes the form of a parasocial – or one-sided – relationship, where one party invests emotional energy and time, while the other person is unaware of the first person’s existence. While these can potentially become harmful, in most cases <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2022.2066034">parasocial interactions</a> are a source of escape, fun and fantasy. </p>
<p>In an era of negative news and doomscrolling, a story that’s fun and entertaining can be powerful. And research in our advertising and branding book shows that sport marketers are eager to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Advertising-Integrated-Promotion-Angeline-Scheinbaum/dp/0357721403">capitalize on positive appeals</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559721/original/file-20231115-29-lderl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A football fan wearing a Chiefs jersey holds a handmade sign that says " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559721/original/file-20231115-29-lderl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559721/original/file-20231115-29-lderl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559721/original/file-20231115-29-lderl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559721/original/file-20231115-29-lderl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559721/original/file-20231115-29-lderl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559721/original/file-20231115-29-lderl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559721/original/file-20231115-29-lderl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A Taylor Swift fan holds a sign in the stands of the Chiefs-Minnesota Vikings game on Oct. 8, 2023. The game was held in Minneapolis, more than a thousand miles from Boston.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kansas-city-chiefs-fan-holds-up-a-sign-in-reference-to-news-photo/1724636637">Stephen Maturen/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>5) “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osdoLjUNFnA">Exile</a>”: Don’t just think locally</strong></p>
<blockquote>“You’re not my homeland anymore/So what am I defending now?” – “Exile,” 2020</blockquote>
<p>A final insight for brands and marketers is to not be constrained by geography. With digital commerce and social media, researchers have become increasingly interested in “faraway fans” who travel long distances to events. In a recent study about professional cycling fanship in sporting-event sponsorship, my colleagues and I found that sport event attendees that traveled from farther away <a href="https://doi.org/10.2501/JAR-2022-001">were more invested</a> in the event and more willing to buy merchandise. This has big implications for new fans who may travel to Kansas City to catch a glimpse of Taylor Swift. </p>
<p>The Swift/Kelce relationship and the NFL’s highlighting of it is one example of why it is important not to be hemmed in by geography. As one cardboard sign at a recent Chiefs game in Kansas City proclaimed, “I traveled here to see Taylor Swift!”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angeline Close Scheinbaum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Of course the NFL is embracing Taylor Swift.Angeline Close Scheinbaum, Dan Duncan Endowed Professor of Sports Marketing.Associate Professor of Marketing, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168782023-11-13T16:25:45Z2023-11-13T16:25:45ZA swift history of the concert film, from The Last Waltz to the Eras Tour<p>I felt I was missing something when I went on a Sunday night in late October to see Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour at my local independent cinema. I was: it was the audience. </p>
<p>I can’t remember the last time I sat alone in a cinema, but it was undoubtedly for fare far more obscure than this much-hyped event movie. But as I sat back in my seat and let the experience wash over me, it turned out to be an unexpectedly intimate encounter. Just me and Taylor.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KudedLV0tP0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for the Eras tour film.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s no surprise that the 33 year-old singer-songwriter, at the peak of her powers and cultural influence, should be the centre of attention in this 169-minute film.</p>
<p>The performances are combined from the first three of six shows staged in August at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Los Angeles. They are as seamlessly interwoven cinematically as they are orchestrated musically, in linked chapters featuring songs (and dance routines) from Swift’s ten studio albums to date. </p>
<p>Each section is announced on screen with the album title and defined visually by lavish costume changes and magical set transformations. This show is as much a piece of theatre as it is cinema. But where was the audience in all this?</p>
<p>Those closest to the stage, who flanked the catwalk pier, are submerged in an ocean of iPhone glow. The rest, stretching far away across and up to the stadium’s upper terrace, appear as small starlit circles. </p>
<p>There are occasional cutaways to devoted fans (mostly female, mostly dressed like Taylor Swift) singing along in word-perfect synchronicity. But the most intimate moment of communal theatre comes when a girl of five or six is offered up for a blessing. Swift bends and embraces the child, placing her black hat on her too small head. The crowd is overcome. This is a love-in on a global, stadium scale. </p>
<h2>The history of the concert film</h2>
<p>The concert film <a href="https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/dmu/reader.action?docID=1244766&ppg=193">came of age</a> in the 1970s. The format was all about capturing the essence of live performance and the skill and sinew of serious musicianship. </p>
<p>The booming music industry of the 1970s was irresistible to Hollywood’s wavering fortunes. Concert films were a shop window for record sales and often had direct tie-ins to live albums. The concept nature of these films (typically comprising multiple performances, overdubbing in post-production, multi-stereo or “quad” soundtracks and early videotape effects) didn’t dilute the liveness of their central performances. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Cream perform Sunshine Of Your Love in their Farewell Concert film.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The performances were generally shot with rudimentary camera set-ups by crews who came from television advertising and the music business rather than the film industry (not least because they were made by record labels rather than film studios). But this contributed to their authentic feel.</p>
<h2>The concert film evolves</h2>
<p>The concert film also took on another kind of life during the 1970s. It was characterised by the sort of retrospective musical resumé that Taylor Swift might recognise. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8037C25F71827BAD">Cream’s farewell concert</a> at the Royal Albert Hall on November 26 1968 had been filmed by Tony Palmer and a BBC crew and was later shown on television.</p>
<p>Then, Martin Scorsese directed <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077838/">The Last Waltz</a> (1978), a feature-length documentary for cinemas marking The Band’s disbanding in 1976. The film <a href="https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=d4248a63-1328-3f92-b7d6-9f40b11945b0">broke the established mould</a> by removing all signs of the on screen connection between audience and performers.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M63DTQc6WPE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Last Waltz.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Footage of the band performing their San Francisco Thanksgiving Day concert (including on-stage guest appearances from the rock and blues hall of fame) is interspersed with carefully structured interviews with band members. No flies on the wall here. Scorsese has subsequently reprised this retrospective mode with his documentaries on <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9577852/">Bob Dylan</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0893382/">the Rolling Stones</a>. </p>
<p>In effectively removing the concert hall audience from the The Last Waltz, Scorsese was crossing a line. The dynamic connection between stage and crowd that provides a key point of identification for the cinema audience <a href="https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=b2f98ad8-62bc-3a0c-8ce6-da2a6186d41">is lost</a>.</p>
<p>The originators of the concert film in the 1960s (filmmakers <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/da-pennebaker-5-essential-films">D.A. Pennebaker</a> and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-and-David-Maysles">Maysles brothers</a>) were acutely interested in that emotional connection. Pennebaker’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061589/">Don’t Look Back</a> (1967) followed Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of the UK, documenting fans’ reactions as the “folk singer” went electric. He inaugurated the rock festival film with <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064689/">Monterey Pop</a> (1967) capturing now iconic stage performances by Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix and The Who. His concert film of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrbNgOzcApo">David Bowie’s last performance as Ziggy Stardust</a> was released, belatedly, in 1979. </p>
<p>After their 1964 coverage of The Beatles first American tour (<a href="https://www.maysles.org/calendar/thebeatles#:%7E:text=A%20humorous%2C%20freewheeling%20and%20candid,in%20America%20in%20February%201964.">What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA</a>), the Maysles were lured back to the music scene by the Rolling Stones in 1969 to chart their US tour. This culminated in the fateful <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidchiu/2019/12/03/altamont-at-50-the-disastrous-concert-that-brought-the-60s-to-a-crashing-halt/">Altamont Speedway concert</a> at which an audience member was killed in front of the stage. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065780/">Gimme Shelter</a> (1970), co-directed by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/27/arts/charlotte-zwerin-72-maker-of-documentaries-on-artists.html">Charlotte Zwerin</a>, subverts the chronological narrative by filming band members’ reactions as the tensions rise and the gig descends into chaos and violence. Part concert film (featuring performances from Madison Square Garden early on the tour), Gimme Shelter’s musical pretext is taken over by an examination of the factors that led to its ultimate tragedy. </p>
<p>Gimme Shelter and Michael Wadleigh’s subsequent <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066580/">Woodstock</a> (1970) film are works of forensic anthropology. They weren’t made to sell records, but to record a sub-culture in all its doomed glory. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AqjPzq3uYXQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recent concert films, from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL63kFOCJ6A">Madonna: Truth or Dare</a> (1991) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3Mk8sNoug">Kylie’s Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour</a> (2005), to Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and the forthcoming <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqjPzq3uYXQ">Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé</a> demonstrate a more direct engagement with fans in cinemas by powerful female artists in total control of the medium of film. </p>
<p>These artists are using their films not only to boost recording sales but to promote their future tour dates. Furthermore, these films act as a consolation for those fans worldwide for whom a concert ticket is beyond reach. At £20 it was a pricy movie, but a cheap gig. </p>
<p>In this way, the concert film is enjoying a comeback in the age of event cinema, competing with a strike-beleagured Hollywood in the post-COVID box-office revival. Only not at my local on a Sunday night. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The concert film is enjoying a comeback in the age of event cinema.Justin Smith, Professor of Cinema and Television History, De Montfort UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168732023-11-08T13:58:09Z2023-11-08T13:58:09ZWith Slut! Taylor Swift joins a long history of women fighting slut-shaming in their writing<p>One track stands out on the <a href="https://taylor.lnk.to/1989taylorsversion">rereleased edition</a> of Taylor Swift’s iconic album, 1989. In Slut!, Swift addresses her encounters with <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-slut-shaming-5271893">slut-shaming</a> – behaviour that shames women who are judged to be promiscuous. “But if I’m all dressed up,” the singer muses, “they might as well be looking at us. And if they call me a slut, you know it might be worth it for once”. </p>
<p>“Slut-shaming” is a <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/slut-shame_v?tl=true#:%7E:text=The%20earliest%20known%20use%20of,is%20from%202007%2C%20in%20alt.">relatively modern phrase</a> – but the behaviour itself has scarcely evolved since the 1700s. Back then, the popular vernacular was rife with terms and phrases aimed at degrading women for their supposed sexual indiscretions, painting them as inherently untrustworthy beings ruled by carnal desires. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qrxsceexTBw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Taylor Swift’s Slut! from 1989 (Taylor’s Version).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dictionaries of the age marked women who accidentally exposed their breasts in public (“<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Lexicon_Balatronicum/iDsJAAAAQAAJ?q=pudenda&gbpv=1#f=false">sported blubber</a>”) as well sexually experienced women (<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Lexicon_Balatronicum/iDsJAAAAQAAJ?q=pudenda&gbpv=1#f=false">“mort wap-apaces”</a>) and “beastly, sluttish women” (“<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Dictionary_of_Buckish_Slang_University/gx9TAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">fusty luggs</a>”). </p>
<p>The role of the popular press in slut-shaming is also long-standing. Newspapers in the 1700s gladly printed letters judging women’s behaviour and fashion choices. Men often wrote under crude pseudonyms like “Bumfiddle”, which are not too dissimilar to those chosen by today’s internet trolls. They penned vehement letters about the way women dressed, slut-shaming them as “cork-rumped devils”. </p>
<h2>The scandalous Lady W</h2>
<p>Stories detailing the supposedly scandalous behaviour of women were regularly featured in newspapers across both urban and rural areas, catering to a societal appetite for salacious content. “Wanton” Lady Seymour Worsley – who was the subject of the 2015 BBC drama <a href="https://www.hallierubenhold.com/books/the-scandalous-lady-w-reprint-of-lady-worsleys-whim-to-accompany-the-bbc2-drama/">The Scandalous Lady W</a> – was a prime target. </p>
<p>In 1782, she drew outrage for her supposedly brazen sexuality. She was shamed for having multiple sexual partners and became the subject of smutty cartoons. James Gillray’s famous <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw63181/Sir-Richard-Worse-than-sly-exposing-his-wifes-bottom---o-fye">caricatures</a> are among of dozens of shaming images <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw63186/Seymour-Dorothy-Lady-Worsley-A-peep-into-Lady-Wys-seraglio">that sought to “expose” Lady Worsley</a>. They accompanied a vicious attempt by her husband to destroy her reputation in court.</p>
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<img alt="Cartoon mocking Lady W's supposed many lovers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557143/original/file-20231101-28-xb0et6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557143/original/file-20231101-28-xb0et6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557143/original/file-20231101-28-xb0et6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557143/original/file-20231101-28-xb0et6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557143/original/file-20231101-28-xb0et6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557143/original/file-20231101-28-xb0et6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557143/original/file-20231101-28-xb0et6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Peep Into Lady W!!!!!y’s Seraglio by James Gillray (1782).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Trustees of the British Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lady Worsley’s story shows the long history of slut-shaming. But it also showcases the long history of women fighting back. Instead of bowing to societal shame, Lady Worsley boldly boasted about her reputation in verse. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IQ0nCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT130&lpg=PT130&dq=%22An+Epistle+from+Lady+Worsley%22&source=bl&ots=Y4U_mf9KpQ&sig=ACfU3U0HNZwD_r26VjfxztK1KLjKXF_qqw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj1lojNwrGCAxWmVkEAHc_-DYQQ6AF6BAgiEAM#v=onepage&q=%22An%20Epistle%20from%20Lady%20Worsley%22&f=false">Her witty poem</a>, An Epistle from L–y W——y to S-r R—–d W—–y (1782), showed that she was unaffected by the public scrutiny and those who tried to slut-shame her. She confirmed she was not “chaste” and didn’t care what the world said about it. She proudly claimed her right to sexual freedom and autonomy – a significant act of defiance in an era that placed immense value on a woman’s chastity and reputation.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Taylor Swift discussing slut shaming in an interview with Zane Lowe.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the same period, playwright Sophia Lee electrified audiences with her “licentious” comedy <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Chapter_of_Accidents_A_comedy_in_fiv/iNdZAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+chapter+of+accidents+as+immoral&pg=PA29&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=the%20chapter%20of%20accidents%20as%20immoral&f=false">The Chapter of Accidents</a> (1780). It used the word “slut”, but had powerful strategies to support its women characters. Their personal and intimate lives were discussed and criticised by others, but in her story, they weren’t ostracised by society or made to become nuns.</p>
<p>Lee objected to the double standards of the day that allowed men to sleep around while bad-mouthing women for the same actions. As a result, her confident characters may get called “slut” for sleeping with their suitors before marriage, but they’re still granted a happy ever after when they reinvent themselves as eligible virgins at the end of the play.</p>
<p>With the release of Slut!, Swift is mirroring these acts of defiance. Like these women who went before her, Swift, too, has successfully rewritten her public persona by openly challenging sexist social attitudes in her work.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Men in the 1700s penned vehement letters about the way women dressed, slut-shaming them as “cork-rumped devils”.Lucy Thompson, Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2144412023-09-28T12:36:50Z2023-09-28T12:36:50ZTaylor Swift and the end of the Hollywood writers strike – a tale of two media narratives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550689/original/file-20230927-29-ed9vu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C3977%2C2632&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Taylor Swift cheers as the Kansas City Chiefs play the Chicago Bears on Sept. 24, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/taylor-swift-watches-during-a-regular-season-game-between-news-photo/1700723950?adppopup=true">David Eulitt/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This fall, I’ve been starting my sociology classes by asking my students to share some uplifting news they’ve come across. </p>
<p>On Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023, they were abuzz about <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-66919232">Taylor Swift’s appearance at the Kansas City Chiefs game on Sunday</a>. Swift and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce had left Arrowhead Stadium together in Kelce’s convertible, confirming dating rumors. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B2WlnYkAAAAJ&hl=en">As a scholar of the attention economy</a>, I wasn’t exactly surprised. Many of my students love Swift’s music, and the story had dominated major social media platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, as a trending topic. </p>
<p>But I was taken aback when I learned that not a single student had heard that the Writers Guild of America <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2023/09/24/writers-strike-agreement-wga-amptp/">had reached a deal</a> with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP, after a nearly 150-day strike. This <a href="https://www.wgacontract2023.org/WGAContract/files/Memorandum-of-Agreement-for-the-2023-WGA-Theatrical-and-Television-Basic-Agreement.pdf">historic deal</a> includes significant raises, improvements in health care and pension support, and – unique to our times – protections against the use of artificial intelligence to write screenplays. </p>
<p>Across online media platforms, the WGA announcement on Sept. 24, 2023, ended up buried under headlines and posts about the celebrity duo. To me, this disconnect felt like a microcosm of the entire online media ecosystem.</p>
<h2>Manufacturing consent online</h2>
<p>It almost goes without saying that news and social media platforms promote some stories and narratives over others. </p>
<p>This particular occurrence is fascinating, however, because the AMPTP represents some of the media conglomerates that directly disseminate news. For example, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/business/media/warner-bros-discovery-cnn-streaming-max.html">CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery</a>, a member of the AMPTP. </p>
<p>At the time of this writing, CNN.com has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/search?q=wga&from=0&size=10&page=1&sort=newest&types=all&section=">three headlines</a> about the WGA strike and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/search?q=taylor&from=0&size=10&page=1&sort=newest&types=all&section=">eight headlines</a> about Swift at the Chiefs game. </p>
<p>Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s 1988 book “<a href="https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/5537300/mod_resource/content/1/Noam%20Chomsky_%20Edward%20S.%20Herman%20-%20Manufacturing%20Consent_%20The%20Political%20Economy%20of%20the%20Mass%20Media-Bodley%20Head%20%282008%29.pdf">Manufacturing Consent</a>” outlines the problem of media ownership by conglomerates. According to this theory, powerful interests control narratives, in part, by owning news sources. </p>
<p>There’s a free press in the U.S. But Herman and Chomsky argue that the news that reaches everyday people tends to be framed by a set of assumptions that align with the ideological interests of the media corporations and their advertisers: maintaining the economic status quo and spurring consumerism. </p>
<p>In the U.S. today, <a href="https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/">six conglomerates own and control 90% of media outlets</a>.</p>
<p>Per Pew Research Center data, a majority of Americans <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/01/12/more-than-eight-in-ten-americans-get-news-from-digital-devices/">get their news from online sources</a>. Scholars have since adapted Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Demuyakor/publication/348404543_The_Propaganda_Model_in_the_Digital_Age_A_Review_of_Literature_on_the_Effects_of_Social_Media_on_News_Production/links/606f00b2a6fdcc5f778e81e2/The-Propaganda-Model-in-the-Digital-Age-A-Review-of-Literature-on-the-Effects-of-Social-Media-on-News-Production.pdf">to explain how social media ecosystems function</a>.</p>
<p>The role of <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/94d7/4593f66af3675f6bd1a8fb3abd4e89e0d7e2.pdf">algorithms is a key focus</a> of emergent research on manufacturing consent online. Sociologist Ruha Benjamin’s work consistently shows that <a href="https://aas.princeton.edu/publications/research/race-after-technology-abolitionist-tools-new-jim-code">algorithms are encoded with their developers’ biases</a>. Other studies show that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1994624">critiques about algorithmic biases are suppressed</a> by corporate digital media platforms through <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221077174">strategies like shadow-banning</a>, which refers to covertly banning users of concern without their knowledge. These algorithms determine what is trending on websites like X. This, in turn, influences trends on other platforms, like Google searches.</p>
<p>Google trend results show an enormous increase in search queries about Travis Kelce since Sept. 20, 2023, with the WGA strike victory receiving almost no interest in comparison. The massive gap in interest between these topics serves as an example of algorithms supporting trending topics over other newsworthy content. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550730/original/file-20230927-21-lwplc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graph showing a spike in searches for Swift and Kelce." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550730/original/file-20230927-21-lwplc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550730/original/file-20230927-21-lwplc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=206&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550730/original/file-20230927-21-lwplc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=206&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550730/original/file-20230927-21-lwplc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=206&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550730/original/file-20230927-21-lwplc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550730/original/file-20230927-21-lwplc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550730/original/file-20230927-21-lwplc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A Google Trends graph shows online searches since Sept. 20, 2023, for ‘Travis Kelce,’ represented by the blue line, and ‘WGA,’ represented by the red line.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aarushi Bhandari/Google Trends</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Another key focus of the propaganda model for social media is <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/25880/1/1004203.pdf">targeted advertising</a>. </p>
<p>Unlike their predecessors in television, social media companies use “big data” to know users intimately and present ads that are personalized to each user. This strategy includes guerrilla marketing techniques like the ones employed by several companies after Swift’s appearance.</p>
<p>For example, the National Football League <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/sports/football/nfl/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-nfl-jersey-sales-1.6978782">changed its X bio</a> to read “NFL (Taylor’s Version).” Sales of Kelce’s jersey <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38496220/taylor-swift-effect-travis-kelce-jersey-sales-spike-nearly-400">skyrocketed in the few days</a> after Swift’s appearance at the Chiefs game. Hidden Valley Ranch changed its X handle to “Seemingly Ranch” after a Swift fan account noted that during the game, Swift had dipped her chicken fingers in “<a href="https://twitter.com/tswifterastour/status/1706076507540767211">seemingly ranch</a>.”</p>
<h2>Corporate media coverage of labor issues</h2>
<p>The muted coverage of the writers strike fits into <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780875461854/through-jaundiced-eyes/#bookTabs=1">a longer historical pattern</a> of tension between labor movements and corporate media. </p>
<p>In many cases, corporate media has <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801488870/framed/#bookTabs=1">framed disproportionately negative narratives</a> about strikes and union activities. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0160449X9902300402">an analysis of media coverage</a> of tensions between the United Auto Workers and General Motors from 1991-93 found that major newspapers, including The New York Times, consistently framed GM’s position in a positive light, while crafting significantly more negative stories about the strike and autoworkers. <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801488870/framed/#bookTabs=1">Similar patterns are visible</a> in media reporting on the 1993 American Airlines flight attendant strike and the 1997 United Parcel Service strike. </p>
<p>When not covering labor issues in a negative light, corporate media has a track record of ignoring and minimizing these issues. Communications scholar Jon Bekken’s meta-analysis of media coverage discovered <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141222211416id_/http://javnost-thepublic.org:80/article/pdf/2005/1/5/">substantial drops in coverage of labor issues</a> by major outlets like the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and CBS throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century.</p>
<p>This historical dynamic is <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/labor/article/19/3/77/318130">beginning to change</a>. Increasing <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.aspx">public support for labor unions</a> and worker action have made it difficult to ignore the bubbling currents of organized labor across many industries, from <a href="https://sbworkersunited.org/strike-with-pride">Starbucks</a> to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/09/26/uaw-strike-big-three-reputation/">autoworkers</a>. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://perfectunion.us/americans-broadly-support-the-uaw-strike-regardless-of-party/">58% of Americans support the ongoing United Auto Workers strikes</a> against GM, Ford and Stellantis, the company that makes Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles.</p>
<p>Despite corporate ownership and biased algorithms, labor movements have managed to secure public support, demonstrating that Americans are increasingly aware of their own class interests. During such a fraught political climate for the economic status quo, the WGA victory is a major indicator that strikes work.</p>
<p>So, amid these tensions, a feel-good story about Taylor Swift and football is a gift to media executives – and one that helps sell more ranch dressing, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aarushi Bhandari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What does it say about the online media ecosystem when the end of a 146-day strike is buried under headlines and posts about Swift’s budding romance with NFL star Travis Kelce?Aarushi Bhandari, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Davidson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.