RETWEETS AS A RESOURCE FOR

AUDIENCING: THE X FACTOR

DR RUTH PAGE

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

REP22@LE.AC.UK; @RUTHTWEETPAGE

AUDIENCING AND TWITTER

• Developing practices of social television (Buschow et al. 2014)

• Does this shift ‘power’ towards the audience?

• Harrington 2013, Stever et al, 2014

• Participatory fandoms (Wood and Baughman 2012, Bore and Hickman 2013)

• Or are audience responses primarily of value to the producers of mainstream content?

• Bober 2014, Bury et al. 2013

EXISTING WORK ON TWITTER AND AUDIENCING

• We need to know more about the diversity of audiencing practices

• Differences according to the type of television programme (Doughty et al. 2012)

• Differences according to national context (Highfield et al. 2013)

• Fandoms, anti-fans (Gray 2005) and Snark fandoms (Harman and Jones 2013)

• The X Factor franchise as a transnational example

THE DIVERSE X FACTOR AUDIENCES

• Show creates rival fandoms around contestants

• Judges make evaluations as well as the viewing public

• Exploits confrontainment (Blitvich et al. 2013)

• Franchise has been subject to controversy since the outset

• #xfactor threads as a collapsed context

• There are multiple series in the franchise

DATA AND METHODS

• Topical hashtag #xfactor

• Tweet archivist

• October-December 2013, UK series 10, USA series 3

• 1.6 million tweets (10 episodes)

• Sample of four episodes (3 weekly intervals)

• Start and end of live shows + 2 mid-points

• Mixed methods analysis derived from computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2007)

RETWEETS

• There were a lot of retweets in the data!

• 95,672 retweets in 159,680 posts (or 60% of the data)

• Different from other datasets (e.g. boyd et al. 2011, Page 2012, 2014)

• Why might retweets be so prevalent as a resource in audiencing?

THE IMPORTANCE OF RETWEETS

• Retweets increase visibility

• Retweets are ‘conversational’ and co-constructed

• The social meaning of retweeting is ambiguous (boyd et al. 2011)

• Here framed as entextualisations of affective response and affiliation

• RT @TheXFactor: They couldn't have given their #SaveMeSong more. RT to give @KingslandRd a deserved round of applause. #XFactor

GOFFMAN (1981) ON FOOTING

• The Figure

• Persons represented in the reported speech

• The Author

• The person who created the content of the reported speech

• The Animator

• The ‘voice box’ who reproduces the earlier content

ASYMMETRY IN THE PARTICIPATION ROLES

• Authors – create content

• Animators – redistribute the content

• Many more animators than authors

• 71,517 unique Animators

• 6,527 Authors

• Very little overlap between Animators and Authors (top Authors retweet in only 0.3% of the data)

• Emphasis on redistribution is higher in relation to The X Factor USA

• USA – 13 reduplications/RT

• UK - 5 reduplications/RT

AUTHORS IN THE TOP 200 RETWEETS

X Factor USA (series 3)• Series account, Judges, Contestants

• Personnel from the wider music industry

• Entertainment news and fan news accounts

• Fan

X Factor (UK) series 10• Series account, Judges, Contestants,

Guest performers

• Entertainment news and fan news accounts

• Personnel from the entertainment industry (not just music, but also sport, reality television, comedians)

• Parody and humorous accounts

• Commercial accounts

• Fans

IT’S A MATTER OF THE MATHS Follower list Percentage of

the retweets@ddlovato (Demi Lovato)

25 million 59%

@thexfactorusa 2.85 million 32%@thexfactor 5.28 million 55%@littlmixoffic 6.73 13%

The high rates of reduplication can be explained in part by the size of the follower lists of the most frequently retweeted Authors.

The retweets in response to The X Factor USA are dominated by the Twitter based fandom of Demi Lovato, whose Follower list is over four times the size of the next largest list, and who appeared in every episode as a Judge/Mentor.

Lovatic-derived usernames featured in 1963 of the accounts in the episode for the first USA Live Show (5% of all tweets).

Retweet rate taking into account the size of the Follower list shows a very different picture.

AUDIENCING STRATEGIES

Redistribute celebrity content

Interaction:Encouraging

audience engagement & Projecting

affiliation

Creating commentary

The verbal and visual content of the retweets suggests that there are four main strategies that occur in the audiencing.

These can be taken up by both performers (that is personnel related to the show such as judges and contestants) and viewers, but position the audience as variously ‘creative’ and rapport enahcing or threatening within a scale of produsage activities.

#1 REDISTRIBUTING (MICRO)-CELEBRITY CONTENT

• Fans redistributing celebrity content

• Breaking news

• RT @ddlovato: It's Motown night!!!! #xfactor

• Images reproduce stills from the show

• Backstage access

• RT @GaryBarlow: Morning all ! Off to routine my groups for this weekends show ! #Xfactor

• Images on set or in rehearsal spaces

• Micro-celebrity greetings to the fanbase

• RT @Andrew_Scholz: Merry Christmas to all from Restless Road #Christmas #xfactor #christmassweaters http://t.co/FuNw6qS93W

#2. ENCOURAGING AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

• RT @JASMINEVILLEGAS: EVERYONE! make sure to watch #XFactor tonight & VOTE as many times as you can for my boy @Carlitosway89 PLZ help keep …

• RT @GbArmy: call 09020 50 51 05 to vote @RoughCopyUK Make sure @GaryBarlow s last group are safe through to semi final #XFactor http://t.c…

Made by performers and members of the viewing public.

Seems to be ‘participatory’, but the interactions serve the economic interests of the television company

• Vote

• Retweet

• View in real time

• Join loyalty programmes

and so commodify audience response.

#3 (A) INTERACTION WITH THE PROGRAMME: FAN TO PERFORMER

• RT @fatherteebird: @TheXFactor Please can I get a #TXFSign from Tamera? My name is [deleted] and I love her so much please! #txfsigns #xfactor xx…

• RT @demilovatobr: @TheXFactorUSA Hey, we want @ddlovato next to @SimonCowell on #xfactor! Demi Lovato #popartist #PeoplesChoice

Like the performers on the televised show, the members of the audience can leverage the visibility afforded by retweeting.

These examples show how fandoms seek to influence the content of the show.

But in their requests, the fans are still positioned as audiences consuming the content (such as TXFsigns), thus perpetrating the commodification of celebrity

#3 (B) INTERACTION FROM PROGRAMME’S PERSONNEL TO OTHERS

Contestant > established celebrity

• Original tweet

• @TheXFactorUSA: That's right, THU night @selenagomez will be performing on the #xfactor stage! Details here: http://t.co/3qxNywRe25

• Modified retweet

• RT @sierradeaton: AHHH! RT @TheXFactorUSA: That's right, THU night @selenagomez will be performing on the #xfactor stage! Details here: htt…

Contestant > audience• Original tweet

• @imLucyWatson: Can Luke Friend just be a bit older #XFactor

• Quoted within a retweet

• @LukeFriendMusic: "@imLucyWatson: Can Luke Friend just be a bit older #XFactor" I know it's such a shame :)

#4. CREATING COMMENTARY

Positive fandoms• RT @rioferdy5: Roughy Copy did

their thing there with the R.Kelly hit!! #Xfactor

• RT @JulienMacdonald: The gorgeous @elliegoulding looked stunning wearing my dress on the #XFactor last night, amazing performance! http://t…

Snark fandoms• RT @MoreMon3yPlease: The way

Hannah tensed like she was in Gym tho #Xfactor http://t.co/S5mTIZq1oK

• Remediated image of the televised content

• RT @KatieWeasel: The final 12 #XFactor http://t.co/0lT07Bd6eH

• Macro recontextualising the televised content

RAPPORT IN THE COMMENTARY

Judges• Make face-threatening critiques

within the performance of the show as part of the confrontainment, but do not carry this critique into their social media comments

Viewers• Remediate and amplify

moments of confrontainment from the show

• Add their own critique as the ‘fifth judge’, including satirical mockery of the series as a whole

DISTRIBUTION OF STRATEGIES BY SERIES

53

26

12

4

USA Series Audiencing strategies

Amplifying celebrity Encouraging engagementInteraction Commentary

46

18

9

24

UK Series Audiencing strategies

Amplifying celebrity Encouraging engagementInteraction Commentary

CONCLUDING REMARKS AND QUESTIONS

Similarities• Fandoms at work in relation to both

series which primarily position the audience as consumers who redistribute celebrity content and shore up the interests of the franchise

• More exaggerated in The X Factor USA, where the sense of hierarchy between emerging and established celebrity is stronger

Differences• Creative commentary is present to a

greater extent in The X Factor (UK)

• The rapport-threatening snark fandom in parody accounts is absent from The X Factor USA series

• American norms for (im)politeness? Less threat to ‘The American Dream’?

• Performances of British humour?

LIMITATIONS AND NEXT STEPS

• Only looked at high frequency RTs

• Comparison of high and low frequency RTs

• Primarily verbal analysis here

• More to be said about the images and their interactional responses

• Analysis of the hashtags

• Analysis of the changes in audiencing behaviour in the opening, mid-point and close of the live shows