I’m starting off the next session at the Social Media & Society conference in Glasgow, presenting our analysis of Taylor Swift fandom on Reddit on behalf of my team. Slides are below:

The final speaker at the Social Media Access Days at the German National Library today is Kristina Petzold, whose focus is on the question of whether music-related user-generated content can be seen as cultural heritage – this includes, for instance, some of the creative content generated and shared during the COVID-19 pandemic, and is part of post-digital everyday practice.

This includes content remixes, memes, and mashups, and is therefore highly referential; it is culturally relevant (and the cultural relevance of remix practices is now formally recognised under German law); but it is also highly ephemeral, especially where it exists in …

In the next session at the AoIR 2025 conference I was part of an excellent roundtable on data access organised by Fabio Giglietto and featuring Jessica Yarin Robinson, Josephine Lukito, Richard Rogers, and me, which of course I didn’t blog; for the first post-lunch session I’m in a session on strategies and tactics that starts with Leandro Augusto Borges Lima. His focus is on the Mexican band The Warning, which consists of three sisters from Monterrey; through playing the video game Rock Band they became interested in rock’n’roll and went viral when they posted a Metallica cover on YouTube in …

The final session for this first full day at the AoIR 2025 conference is on online communities, and begins with Nina Duque, whose focus is on K-Pop fandom on YouTube in Quebec. Local francophone Quebecois teenage fangirls have embraced K-Pop, much like other fan communities around the world; this is even though K-Pop is of course a highly mass-produced and industrialised entertainment product.

Much of this is consumed via YouTube, and teenagers see this as much better than television because of the instant accessibility of K-Pop content; this meets a local participatory culture, and K-Pop thereby becomes a networked cultural …

And the final speaker in this Social Media & Society 2024 panel is Steven Gamble, who begins by pointing the appropriation of Black American culture in contemporary music; his focus is especially on Ariana Grande as a multiply constructed pop persona who presents a racial ambiguity.

This racially ambiguous representation has been described as ‘blackfishing’, and there is considerable discussion online from both fans and detractors about her race and ethnicity, running even to long post that pretend to forensically retrace her ethnic heritage. Such discussions tend to combine a variety of perspectives on blackfishing in general, on Ariana Grande …

The second speaker in this Social Media & Society 2024 panel is Ed Katrak Spencer, whose focus is on the clickbait conspiracism surrounding Britney Spears. There is a continuous refuelling of speculative Spears discourse: music-related online controversy is a continuous rhythm rather than singular event, and online conspiracism is itself becoming a quasi-musical vibe.

Even after the end of Spears’s 13-year conservatorship, several prominent social media users refused to let go of the #FreeBritney conspiracy theory; there are even theories that the real Spears has been replaced by a body double or by AI. But Spears has always been described …

For the final Social Media & Society 2024 session today I’m in a panel on online music cultures, which starts with Jenessa Williams, whose interest is in how fans decide to continue or discontinue their fandom for artists accused of sexual misconduct, especially also in the context of changing music consumption habits. The focus here is on smaller, genre-specific cases rather than widely publicised allegations against superstars.

This identified three main modes of reaction, involving cancellation, confliction, and anti-cancellation: cancellation involved feminist-coded rage, disappointment, and betrayal, and was expressed in strong and absolutist phrasing and explicit actions of condemnation (binning …