AANZCA 2024

Mapping Network Actions and Interactions of Fan and Anti-Fan Subreddit Responses to Taylor Swift at Peak Saturation

Samantha Vilkins, Sebastian F.K. Svegaard, Katherine M. FitzGerald, and Axel Bruns

• 27 Nov. 2024 – AANZCA 2024 conference, Melbourne

Presentation Slides

Abstract

The dynamics of an increasingly networked but fractured public sphere, as well as growing convergence of celebrity/fan culture with politics, has meant the same content may be shared rapidly across networks, but localised platform subcultures may interpret, respond to and rework it in vastly different ways.

This paper builds on previous research by the authors in issue-mapping rising conspiratorial thinking around Taylor Swift across social media platforms during her peak cultural saturation in 2023-2024. Swift’s purposeful public political ambiguity and encouragement of interpretational investment resulted in the rapid expansion of interest across platforms and new declared territories within them. On Reddit, these new groupings illustrate how rapidly traditional political and cultural associations can be remade in the face of shifting allegiances and underlying interpretational differences between fans, anti-fans, and complex novel subgroups across both.

Extending this previous work, this paper uses a practice mapping approach to differentiate networked behaviours and interactions at a larger scale. We present the results of practice-mapping responses to key news items regarding Swift through 2023-2024 from nine dedicated Swift subreddits and three general cultural ones. This work contributes to recent research on polarised communication dynamics, specifically the concept of sedimented polarisation, where users on political subreddits were observed performing disagreements with out-groups solely within in-group spaces. As such, this work both demonstrates the methodology of practice-mapping on a new platform, and provides new data extending theories of fan studies, perceived polarisation and group behaviour dynamics in cultural spaces rather than overtly political ones.