The #tay4hottest100 new media event: discourse, publics and celebrity fandom as connective action

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn January 2015, there was a media-led fan campaign known by its hashtag #tay4hottest100 to vote Taylor Swift’s track ‘Shake it off’ into the Hottest 100 music poll. The campaign developed and cascaded across multiple personal networks into a larger new media event. As a result of this, the #tay4hottest100 campaign involved multiple publics that were separate because of fan-like investments in different social positions and the critical reflexivity afforded by these investments. A key gap exists in existing work in theories of publics, networks, and new media events: what is the relation between the personalised action frame of participatory practice in ‘connective action’ and the reflexive circulation of discourse that characterises networked publics? There is a mediated relation here between two overlapping contexts: the personal action frame in networked connective action and the participatory action of discourse publics that draws on larger discursive formations to make sense of the present. This article argues that there is an affective resonance, associated in this context with ‘Taylor Swift’ celebrity fandom, between the personalised action frames circulating in networked publics and the contextual affective contours of the broader new media event.