The Taylor Swift Effect

     The topic I chose to do some research on is Taylor Swift’s media presence. Any celebrity as big as Taylor Swift is going to draw attention and cause commotion no matter where they go or what they do, but for her it’s a bit different. She’s crafted this formula for announcing music on social media to the point where everything she does is assumed to be calculated. Many sources I found have called this “The Taylor Swift Effect”. 

     To start off, I figured the best source would be from Taylor Swift herself. The Ms. Americana documentary on Netflix is about her life after taking a break from social media for a year and what moments in her career led to her making that decision. The documentary provides a rare point of view, since celebrities don’t often explain the nuances of every controversy they’re involved in. Swift offers insight on how the scope of her fame often feels like a magnifying glass, and that every move she makes is seen as calculated. I liked that the documentary showed clips of moments they were referencing, and had many interview style moments where someone was being directly asked a specific question. On the other hand, since this documentary was produced by Taylor and her team, the perspective we’re offered is obviously biased. 

     The blog post I read titled “Taylor’s A Tease: Swift’s Social Media Strategy” is about the way Taylor has used social media to launch music. The blog post broke the information down into categories with bulleted lists and quotes from outside sources, so I definitely found it extremely informational. There were many sections, however, that I felt a photo would have sufficed rather than describing in detail what something looked like. This would have made the post a bit less chunky. 

     The podcast I listened to on this topic titled The Taylor Swift effect Culips Everyday English was my favorite of all the media forms. It was very conversational and flowed nicely, as opposed to reading off a list of points or giving a presentation on the topic. Obviously, since the podcast was opinion based, I wouldn’t consider it a reliable source of any kind. 

     I chose a photo that I felt was currently relevant. The last line of the photo reads “Wherever she goes, the Swifties will follow”. Obviously a photo like this is not the best way to get information, as it has very limited content in it and you have to sort of form your own conclusions from it.

Photo from Instagram