The final speaker in this session at the AoIR 2025 conference is my QUT colleague Sebastian Svegaard, shifting our focus to Taylor Swift fandom on Reddit. The first Swiftie subreddit was created in 2010, but such fandom has evolved and diversified considerably over the years; several new subreddits emerged especially in 2023 in response to Swift’s romance with NFL star Travis Kelce. The present paper examines this for a period from September 2023 to October 2024.
/r/TaylorSwift remains the largest of these subreddits, but the anti-fandom subreddit /r/travisandtaylor was particularly active as the romance intensified in mid-2024. A smaller group of ultra-positive fans in /r/TrueSwifties also increased its activity during this time.
We analysed these data further using the practice mapping approach, examining similarities in which subreddits participating accounts posted submissions and comments to; which specific threads they contributed to, and dominated; which domains their submissions and comments contained; and what distinct language such submissions and comments contained. In the end, this produces a network of similarities between accounts which we can further analyse.
Practice clustering largely follows the subreddits that accounts predominantly participate in. The language they use for discussing Taylor Swift is broadly similar, however, which only minor variations between the different subreddits. And looking only at domain sharing practices, there are also clearly distinct practices that emerge, but these are not very closely related to specific subreddits they occur in.
This is a starting point for further analysis. There is a need to further examine the various practices that are represented here, and examine their change over time. It would also be interesting to correlate these patterns with similar communities on other platforms.
