Blank canvases coloured
A cross-platform analysis of the discourse around semi-politicized figures online

Vikki Jones, Dieuwertje Luitse, Wiebke Denkena, Giovanni Lombardi, Camilla Holm, Erinne Paisley, Alexandra Elliott, Saskia Pouwels, Cilia Hulspas, Amanda Giacchetta

Contents

Summary of Key Findings

The analysis compared discussions of public figures Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie among pseudonymous and anonymous Internet subcultures both before and after each released some politicised and politicising statement online. We viewed these moments as symbolic turning points for the discourse around and memeification of these figures.

The research hypothesised that during the ‘pre-politicisation’ phases of our analysis, Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie would each present multiple repurposing opportunities for groups seeking to form collective political identities on 4chan/pol, Reddit and Tumblr. In contrast, after these moments of politicisation, we expected discussions on these platforms around these figures to change and crystallise around a collective political identity – are they in or out? Are they /ourgirl/ or /ourguy/ or not?

Our analysis confirmed our hypotheses. For example, by closely analysing the use of the memes /ourgirl/ and /ourguy/ to discuss Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie on 4chan/pol/, we found that the “political coming out” has a significant impact on a) the quantitative use of these memes and b) the way they are being used. Indeed, we found that the political ambiguity of a public figure leads to recurring discussions around them which are used to renegotiate the communities shared identity.

1. Introduction

This research project consists of a cross-platform analysis within the broader “Who is /ourguy/?” research project, led by Sal Hagen at the University of Amsterdam during the Digital Methods Initiative Winter School 2020. The “/ourguy/” project aims to better understand the different cultural practices for collective identification and the crystallization of politics and ideology on pseudonymous and anonymous Internet platforms like Reddit, Tumblr, or 4Chan – all seen as “cultural breeding grounds” of Internet culture and, thus, various political movements (Hagen 2020). Public figures play an important role in these otherwise “faceless” communities of strangers: as mainstream icons known by everyone, they “serve as cultural objects with which to negotiate what the subculture is about, instead of an unconditional acceptance of the public figure, like one might see in politically partisan or fan groups.” [1]

During the Winter 2020 Digital Methods Data Sprint, the group completed a cross-platform analysis of the public figures PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg) and Taylor Swift on Reddit, Tumblr, and 4Chan. These two public figures were chosen as case studies as they have been previously considered “unpolitical” and/or “apolitical” until their political affiliations were publicly “outed” surrounding a specific event (Taylor Swift) or series of events (PewDiePie) (Herrman 2017; Snapes 2019). For the purpose of our research, we called these events “political coming outs”.

2. Initial Data Sets

Taylor Swift

Symbolic turning point: 8th of October 2018 Instagram post stating that she will vote for a Democratic candidate at the US 2018 midterm elections.

Timeframe for analysis: 28th of September 2018 - 28th of October, 2018.

PewDiePie

Symbolic turning point: 11th of January 2017 posting of YouTube video including anti-semitic content

Timeframe for analysis: 1st of January 2017 - 31st of January, 2017

3. Research Questions

Our main research questions, formulated in relation to PewDiePie and Taylor Swift, were:

• How was each figure discussed on the various platforms before and after their identified “political coming out”?
• What do these differences indicate about the typical political affiliations of the users on each of the three online platforms?

In line with the broader project, we were asking more generally:

• How are politically ambiguous public figures used within online subcultures to negotiate their own collective identity and shared values?
• How does this change once they reveal their political affiliations?

We hypothesized that before each figure’s “political coming out”, both fairly ambiguous and “unpolitical” figures would actively be repurposed by different groups as part of their political identity formation, while after being more politicized public figures they will be discussed differently by some groups depending on their political affiliations, either being hated or more popular. [2]

4. Methodology

In order to gain an understanding of how subcultures ascribe their ideologies to politically ambiguous figures we embarked upon a cross-platform analysis comparing attitudes prior to and after the moment of political affiliation – their symbolic turning point. As enforced by Rogers (2017), a cross-platform approach engages with each platform separately, taking into consideration the specificities of 4chan, Reddit and Tumblr – behavioural conventions for each platform and the digital traces which can be collected there – and therefore allowing the cultural variance of the users to emerge.

Determining time intervals for closer analysis

Based on brief research on our two case studies, we were able to pinpoint the precise dates of the “political coming out” of our two case studies. For PewDiePie, a YouTube video containing anti-Semitic terminology was released on January 11th, 2017 which we determined as the most significant turning point in a series of similar videos that exposed the YouTube personality as having far-right political leanings (Archive 2017). For Taylor Swift, her very direct Instagram post on October 8th, 2018 indicating she was voting Democratic in the American federal elections is considered her “political coming out” (Snapes 2019).

In order to substantiate our hypotheses about the influence of the political “coming out” of our two case studies on the ongoing discussions on pseudonymous and anonymous online platforms, we used 4CAT to query the archived 4chan/pol/ data from January 1, 2012 to January 15, 2019. [4] The query design, located in Figure 1, collected the 4chan/pol/-posts featuring any of the monikers the two public figures are known by as well as the names of their fans. The resulting histograms clearly reflected our hypotheses that the political steps taken by Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie heavily influenced the discussion: the histograms show clear peaks in the respective months (October 2018 for Taylor Swift and January 2017 for Pewdiepie). For the most parts of our following cross-platform analysis, we relied on data from these two months (10 days prior and 20 days post and including each date). This ensured data processing was only conducted for a relevant time period, which was an important consideration as 4CAT processing is time consuming when interpreting large datasets. Additionally, this month long period allows for comparison between the original attitudes, immediate reactions to the event and attitudes after the political coming out.

“Taylor Swift”	“Taylor Alison Swift”	taylorswift	tayloralisonswift	Swifties	Swiftie	“Tay Tay”	TayTay	T-Swift	“T Swift”	Tswift
“Felix Kjellberg”	“Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg”	Pewdiepie	Pewds	“Bro Army”

Figure 1. Query design to extract the discussion around Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie on 4chan using 4CAT’s query syntax.

Collecting Reddit Data

Using the time period derived from the 4chan frequency histogram, 4CAT was once again employed to construct two Reddit datasets of scraped posts. The data was narrowed through the selection of specific subreddits to mitigate the large volume of posts available on the platform across the thirty days. Utilising an archive of past search results from previous resarch conducted into Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie on Reddit, available from 4CAT, this was searched to identify the subreddits within which either celebrity is mentioned. The resulting lists of subreddits, located in Figure 2, were then scraped using an identical query design to that in Figure 1 entered for 4chan/pol/. Taylor Swift was queried from September 28th until October 28th, 2018 and Pewdiepie was queried between and including January 1st and 31st, 2017.

PewdiepieSubmissions, AskReddit, pewdiepie, teenagers, unpopularopinion, Gamingcirclejerk, ChapoTrapHouse, BreadTube, videos, SaimanSays, worldnews, dankmemes, The_Donald, iamatotalpieceofshit, RoastMe, me_irl, Animemes, FortNiteBR, tseries, Destiny, ShitPostCrusaders, ksi, news, youtube, foundfelix, pyrocynical, LivestreamFail, Showerthoughts, OutOfTheLoop, KotakuInAction, trashy, TopMindsOfReddit, Drama, SubredditDrama, BeautyGuruChatter, PrequelMemes,wholesomememes, insanepeoplefacebook, entitledparents, 4PanelCringe, politics, bakchodi, assholedesign, MurderedByWords, HistoryMemes, copypasta, starterpacks, woooosh,india, mildlyinfuriating, interestingasfuck, AdviceAnimals, madlads, h3h3productions, Ice_Poseidon2, circlebroke2, IndiaSpeaks, ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM, Memes_Of_The_Dank, TooAfraidToAsk, moviescirclejerk, Cringetopia, youngpeopleyoutube, NewTubers, TheMonkeysPaw, Brawlstars, IAmA, teenagersnew, TranscribersOfReddit, TumblrInAction, softwaregore, AccidentalRacism, demildlyinteresting, DDLC, showthistoaloona, TuberSimulator, MemeEconomy, facepalm, apexlegends, CringeAnarchy, canconfirmiamindian, ComedyCemetery, BikiniBottomTwitter, PewdieGame, undelete, jacksepticeye, tf2, dank_meme, JoeRogan, Conspiracy, furry_irl, Duklock, neoliberal, quityourbullshit, COMPLETEANARCHY, traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns, greentext, sendhertotheranch

AskReddit, popheads, TaylorSwift Music, todayilearned, hiphopheads, unpopularopinion, rupaulsdragrace, BlackPeopleTwitter, teenagers, funny, Kanye, WhitePeopleTwitter, RoastMe, JerkOffToCelebs, thebachelor, politics, bangtan, nfl, nba, AskWomen, The_Donald, kpop, AskMen, memes, videos, LetsTalkMusic, Showerthoughts, blogsnark, news, indieheads, Drama, notliketheothergirls, AmItheAsshole, movies, pickoneceleb, barstoolsports, spotify, teenagersnew, centerleftpolitics, pics, ChapoTrapHouse, starterpacks, SquaredCircle, tipofmytongue, Philippines, dankmemes, lastfm, ifyoulikeblank, Guitar, OutOfTheLoop, hockey, entertainment, BeautyGuruChatter, Random_Acts_Of_Amazon, NoStupidQuestions, SpotifyPlaylists, Celebs, lewronggeneration, aww, radiohead, askgaybros, ariheads, mildlyinteresting, OldSchoolCool, CelebBattles, changemyview, Eminem, PewdiepieSubmissions, TaylorSwiftsLegs, worldnews, AteTheOnion, actuallesbians, television, ChoosingBeggars, marvelstudios, celebJObuds, WeAreTheMusicMakers, panicatthedisco, Nicegirls, neoliberal, facepalm, soccer, freefolk, leagueoflegends, Gamingcirclejerk, Coachella, lgbt, Braincels, TooAfraidToAsk, AdviceAnimals, LiveFromNewYork, Cardinals, MGTOW, relationships, magicTCG, trashy, BravoRealHousewives, ToolBand

Figure 2. List of subreddits used to extract Reddit posts on Taylor Swift (top) and Pewdiepie (bottom).

Collecting Tumblr Data

The 4CAT query process for Tumblr data differed in that the posts were scraped by the hashtags with which they were labelled and not the textual content of the posts. Due to the single-word format of Tumblr hashtags the query design was altered to that in Figure 1. There were two other challenges encountered due to the platform specificity of Tumblr data. Firstly, the Tumblr API restricts collecting large amounts of data so the scraping process was completed in batches and then collated. The second obstacle was that the API only allows querying before a certain date, therefore once the data was collected it was manually cut to commence at the appropriate starting date. Eventually two datasets were procured; all Tumblr posts tagged with Taylor Swift from September 28th until October 28th, 2018 and all Tumblr posts tagged with Pewdiepie from January 1st until 31st, 2017.

taylorswift	tayloralisonswift	Swifties	Swiftie	TayTay	Tswift
FelixKjellberg	FelixArvidUlfKjellberg	Pewdiepie	Pewds	BroArmy

Analysis: Macro, Meso and Micro

During the winter school, we approached the data we collected in different ways which allowed us to perform an analysis on different levels (macro, meso and micro) using different methods (quantitative; mixed quantitative and qualitative; qualitative). First, we generated six histograms (4chan, Reddit, Tumblr x Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie) showing the number of posts across time using RawGraph software. This quantitative analysis of the frequency of mentions of our two case studies (Waller, Farquharson, and Dempsey, 2016) allowed us to gain a first broad overview of our material and to make the first quantitative observations on cross-platform similarities and differences.

In a second step, we decided to filter our data set and to look at a subset [4] in more detail following a mixed quantitative-qualitative procedure. The textual markers (memes) /ourguy/ and /ourgirl/ prevalent on 4chan allowed us to look at the discussions around Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie in more detail. We developed a coding scheme according to which we classified the posts: Each post was read and coded as “YES”, “NO” or “UNSURE” depending on whether the author identified the celebrity as “ourguy” or “ourgirl” and where possible it was noted why the user felt that way. This particular coding procedure was only relevant for the 4chan data because the vernacular is specific to the subcultures using that platform. Although the memes “ourguy” and “ourgirl” are not widespread on Reddit and Tumblr, we used a similar coding procedure to map out the attitudes towards the two public figures on these platforms over time. Posts were interpreted and coded as “critic”, “fan” or “neutral” across a random sample (n=400) extracted from the original data sets. Examining the quantitative distribution of codes across time lead to a better understanding of the fluctuations in attitudes towards the two public figures. Comparisons can be drawn both on either side of the political coming out and across platform.

Third, we planned to conduct a close reading of a selected number of posts in order to scrutinize the rhetoric used to talk about Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie on different platforms both before and after their “political coming out”. Due to a limited amount of time, we could not conduct such an analysis in a structured manner which is why we exclude this part from this report, although the samples which were analysed have informed the findings and conclusions we discuss here.

5. Findings

5.1 Histograms

5.1.1 October 2018: Taylor Swift on 4chan/pol/, Reddit and Tumblr

Figure 4. Taylor Swift presence on 4Chan/pol, reddit, Tumblr from 28/10/2018 to 28/11/2018

January 2017: Pewdiepie on 4chan/pol/, Reddit and Tumblr

Figure 5. Pewdiepie presence on 4Chan/pol, reddit, Tumblr from 01/01/2017 to 31/01/2017.

Visualisation: Is Taylor Swift /ourgirl/ /ourgal/ on 4chan/pol?

Figure 6. Taylor Swift - /ourgal/, /ourgirl/ on 4Chan/pol, from 09/2016 to 12/2019. Top: Relative frequencies of posts depicting Taylor Swift as /ourgirl/ or /ourgal/ (YES) or “not /ourgirl/ /ourgal/” (NO) on 4chan from September 2016 to December 2019. OTHER refers to posts which were hesitant about the political views of Taylor Swift. Bottom: Histogram of mentions of the memes /ourgirl/ or /ourgal/ in absolute numbers.

Figure 10. Top 10 Subreddits that contain the most posts mentioning Pewdiepie in January 2017

“I don't know about you but I've always wondered how much money youtube channels, any channel, actually earn since [socialblade](https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/h3h3productions) is like hilariously useless with it's ridiculous ranges. Well, I finally got a hint that's better than "between x and 20x" when in the pewdiepie podcast, the beanie god and the yelly dude [Ethan and Felix estimated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dftpb1THBdc&feature=youtu.be&t=468) that 27 million views are worth - conservatively! - $50,000. I got real excited when I heard that because I can finally use that to estimate actual income based only on views (so not counting sponsorships etc). Essentially, in channels of these size, we can estimate that 540 views = $1. That's more than I expected honestly, I didn't realize youtubers would make that much money, so I might still be wrong. According to [socialblade](https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/pewdiepie) again, pewdiepie had almost 380 million views in the last 30 days and fairly steady view counts this year. At that rate, he would have made $700,000 in the last 30 days (😱) or $8.4 million in the last year. A google search and [recent forbes article](http://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2016/12/05/the-highest-paid-youtube-stars-2016-pewdiepie-remains-no-1-with-15-million/#2ad90cb46b0f) seems to indicate I'm not too far off. H3 had about 47 million views in the last month, which might have netted them $87,000 in 30 days. That would make just over a million dollars a year! Their view count has been growing steadily, so even if they didn't make that number this year they probably will next year. Even if my estimate is high by 2x, that's a lotta pepsi max! Just thought it was interesting and I'm happy they seem to be doing well now. Keep it up, appreciate ya. **TL;DR** Maybe around a million a year annualized by recent view counts.”

Figure 12. Top 10 Subreddits that contain the most posts mentioning Taylor Swift in October 2018

6. Discussion

The frequency of posts discussing Taylor Swift throughout October 2018 across the three platforms has been visualized with a set of histograms (Figure 4). 4chan/pol/, Reddit and Tumblr all witness their most drastic spike in activity around the same few dates.

On 4chan/pol/ mentions of Taylor Swift remain relatively low during the first ten days of the month with a sharp increase on the 7th October and a second jump on the 8th,, the day of Taylor Swift’s political ‘coming out’. [5] The frequency of posts steadily decreases after the peak until around the 14th when the curve plateaus maintaining a low-level similar in expanse to that before the spike. The fluctuations of activity on Reddit prove quite similar. A sharp jump in mentions occurs on the 8th October and remains frequently discussed for two days before dropping downwards on the 10th. The number of posts then experiences a slow decrease until the 14th when the occurrence of mentions returns to amounts similar to the beginning of the month.

Finally, the variations of the curve from Tumblr are more unique. Once again we observe a peak in activity on the 8th October, however this was caused by discussions about a specific concert of Taylor’s tour. The conversations slowly evolved towards her “political coming out” and this is preceded by a gradual increase and is followed by the largest spike two days later on the 10th, the comments quickly wore off. Unlike the previous two platforms which evidenced a slow decrease in mentions post political turning point, the number of Taylor Swift mentions on Tumblr drops drastically after the highest peak with levels on the 11th returning to that of early October (this took four days on both Reddit and 4chan/pol/).

As evidenced by Figure 5, the frequency of posts mentioning Pewdiepie is more consistent over time across all three platforms under study, particularly on Reddit and Tumblr. This consistency in posts on Reddit and Tumblr, even before the identified symbolic turning point, could possibly be explained by their large communities on games and YouTube, evidenced by the subreddits names (see Figure 10). Nevertheless, Figure 5 shows a peak in Tumblr posts mentioning Pewdiepie on January 6, 2017. This date can be identified as the moment Pewdiepie used the n-word during a livestream. A second rise in posts mentioning Pewdiepie on all three platforms can be identified during or right after the release of the video containing anti-semitic content on January 11, 2017. [6] After January 11, a rise in posts mentioning Pewdiepie on 4chan/pol/ is two followed by a rise of posts on Pewdiepie on Reddit and Tumblr. These findings suggest that 4chan/pol/ potentially informs the other two platforms the days after the video was posted. This is particularly visible on January 22, 2017 (see Figure 5). On this day, Pewdiepie posted a video on his YouTube channel in which he justified the anti-semitic content that appeared during a livestream eleven days ealier. These three particular moments were then taken for further qualitative analysis in which close reading of a sample of posts was conducted.

The memes /ourgirl/, /ourgal/ and /ourguy/

In the period from September 2016 to January 2020, the memes /ourgirl/ and /ourgal/ were used a total of 240 times within the larger data set of posts about Taylor Swift. [7] Over time, there are noticeable fluctuations in their use (see the histogram at the bottom of figure 6): After a long period of low use, /ourgirl and /ourgal really gained traction in the second half of 2017. Towards the middle of 2018, their use declined again. In the month of Swift’s political coming, the frequency of the memes peaked for the last time (36 mentions) before abruptly falling to almost zero mentions.

The coding and classifying of these 240 posts revealed an observable change in the way Taylor Swift was discussed on 4chan. When /ourgirl and /ourgal gained traction in the second half of 2017 and the first months of 2018, Taylor Swift was usually depicted in a positive light. Relatively speaking, the majority of posts clearly stated that Swift is “ourgirl”. In 2018, the number of people who were not sure about this status relatively increased. After the political coming out, the relative amount of posts stating that Taylor Swift is “ourgirl” decreased significantly while there were more and more people clearly voting against this.

During the process of coding the posts mentioning the memes /ourgirl and /ourgal, we identified three ways in which they are being used. Together, they form a kind of protocol or a specific organization among the members of the community when it comes to their collective political identification. First, the memes are used to consult the community about the political views of Taylor Swift by asking questions like “Is Taylor Swift /ourgirl/?” or “Is Taylor Swift still /ourgirl/? [...] I don't know what to make of the whole situation. She's friends with very liberal people, but doesn't go full on SJW”. Posts in this category have the function of inciting the discussion Swift’s political views over and over again. In response to these posts, the memes /ourgirl/ and /ourgal/ often appear in posts which can be viewed as “voting”. Users vote whether Taylor Swift is “ourgirl” or not, usually making very short and definite statements like “She is /ourgirl!”.

The third category of posts contains more elaborate responses and arguments why Taylor Swift should be seen as “ourgirl” or not. These posts are furthering the narrative around Taylor Swift and seemingly function to convince other users of the opinion of their author. “Arguments” and “reasons” in these posts can take various forms. Often, they link to articles, images, videos or other dubious sources and contain conspiracy-like claims. It is in these posts that the political views of the community become most obvious and crystallized: The way Taylor Swift is discussed ultimately points to the attributes and convictions of the in-group. Through the meme-character of the phrases /ourgirl/ and /ourgal/, the posts are performatively consolidating the identity of the in-group.

In comparison to the analysis of the use of the meme /ourguy/ within the dataset of posts about Pewdiepie, we observed interesting similarities and differences in the ways these memes are used. The three categories of posts described above (inciting, voting and furthering) also apply to the use of the meme /ourguy/ in the discussion of Pewdiepie on 4chan. However, we observed some interesting differences which arguably point to the gender politics of the /ourgirl/ and /ourguy/ memes. Noticeably, the meme /ourgirl/ often appears in combination with claims that there can only be one “ourgirl” on 4chan. For example, one post said: “Taylor swift is /ourgirl/, and we are a one woman kind of board”. Another one reads: “Taylor Swift is /ourgal/ though. She is the undisputed queen of /pol/”. Such demands for exclusivity could not be observed in the discussion of Pewdiepie. On the contrary, we noticed various mentions of the meme /ourguys/. In posts containing this meme Pewdiepie was typically discussed as one of several “ourguys” (other people that were mentioned besides him were LeafyIsHere, SlyFoxHound or RayWilliamJohnson ). Although the meme /ourgirls/ was also used to discuss Taylor Swift on 4chan, we would argue that the demands for exclusivity point to a form of collective online monogamy on this platform.

We explored the issue of gender politics further through close reading of the language and tone of the posts about Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie. In the case of Taylor, we observed open declarations of love, admiration and worship (Taylor is often depicted as queen, princess or “Aryan beauty”), often referring to her appearance. In the case of Pewdiepie we observed more subtle declarations of kinship, rather in terms of brotherhood. These findings and our hypotheses pertaining to the gender politics of the memes /ourgirl/ and /ourguy/ would need to be replicated in a more structured manner, using a research design that specifically caters to this issue. However, we decided to point out these preliminary findings because they point to the role of gender in the collective identification on pseudonymous and anonymous platforms.

Fans and Critics on Tumblr and Reddit

As the memes “ourguy” and “ourgirl” are not widespread on the platforms Tumblr and Reddit, we decided to employ a slightly different coding scheme which allowed us to gain insights in the amount of fans and critics on each platform (and subreddits). For the respective 30-day time frame, we coded either each post or a random sample of 400 posts.

Coding posts mentioning Pewdiepie on Reddit

In January 2017, 2183 posts mentioning Pewdiepie were posted on Reddit. The top 10 subreddits on which the YouTube star was most frequently mentioned contained only one subreddit specifically dedicated to politics: CringeAnarchy, a subreddit on politically incorrect content, featuring content dedicated to far-right politics (Figure 10). This subreddit was banned on 25 April 2019 for violating Reddit’s policies regarding violence. None of the posts on this subreddit have mentioned the the n-word moment, the livestream in which anti-semitic content appeared or comments on the justification video as seen on 4Chan/pol/. However, one of two posts that mention Pewdiepie as /ourguy/ did appear on this specific subreddit. The other posts in which a user expressed Pewdiepie is /ourguy/ appeared on r/altright.

Through the close reading and coding of the sample of 480 posts mentioning Pewdiepie, a small majority of critics (166 users) can be identified. This group of users expressed their criticism towards him in two notable ways. The first category comments on the development of his YouTube channel. According to this group of users his fame has affected his video content in a negative way, for example by saying that he has become “annoying” or only after more engagement on his channel although he is already earning millions of dollars every year. The second category consists out of posts that frame Pewdiepie in a critical way without a specific reason. Only one post from the sample dataset shares a critical view on him because of the video that was identified as the symbolic turning point.

Pewdiepie fans on the other hand can be seen to express their opinions by comparing his content to that of other YouTube stars, or share ideas on Pewdiepie’s salary (figure 11).

Coding posts mentioning Pewdiepie on Tumblr

The Tumblr dataset consisted of 871 posts mentioning Pewdiepie in January 2017. A majority of these posts (711) is identified as fan, while 104 can be interpreted as critical and 56 neutral or unidentifiable. Before and after the release of the video on January 11. Different than on Reddit, Tumblr fan posts can mainly be seen to comment on particular video content or consider Pewdiepie a funny person. Only three ‘fan’ posts comment directly on the video containing ‘anti-semitic’-content is a positive way. Critical posts however, can be seen to comment on that specific moment, implying that they “are done” and that he should apologize.

Coding posts mentioning Taylor Swift on Reddit

Taylor Swift was mentioned in Reddit posts 11223 times between 28th September and the 28th October 2018. However out of that collection the term /ourgal/ is not written and /ourgirl/ only appears five times. The /ourguy/ /ourgal/ vernacular originated amongst a certain alt-right subculture which could account for the limited number of mentions. From the five accounts two appear on r/The_Donald which hosts users with a similar political affiliation to those on 4chan. All /ourgirl/ references occur after Taylor Swift’s political turning point. One provides no opinion whilst the remaining four confirm she is /ourgirl/, for example; “TayTay is /ourgirl/ and a glorious Aryan goddess”.

Figure 12 depicts the top ten subreddits mentioning Taylor Swift within the time period. It is interesting that the two political subreddits of the list (r/politics and r/The_Donald) both surpass r/TaylorSwift dedicated exclusively to the singer.

Scraping Tumblr for Taylor Swift tags between the assigned time period produced a dataset of 40360 posts. There were no mentions of /ourgirl/ or /ourgal/ amongst the entire dataset.

Coding a random sample of 400 posts for their attitude towards the singer revealed an absence of criticism. When categorizing the author of each post as either a fan or critic of Taylor Swift 100% of the sample posts from both before and after her ‘political coming out’ were labeled as fans.

From the complete Taylor Swift dataset “democrat” is mentioned 222 times, and “politics”/”political” 1124 times so Tumblr users are aware of the political context and remain encouraged.

7. Conclusion

Our threefold cross-platform analysis, has resulted in some interesting findings pertaining to the ways in which pseudonymous and anonymous online subcultures discuss public figures like Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie. We have considered the different function these discussions serve, specifically observing the discourse around moments which represent ‘symbolic turning points’ in the public politicisation.

The purely quantitative analysis of the content collected and presented in six histograms reveals, as we hypothesised, that the discussions which feature these two figures are largely influenced by political statements they have made. While the peaks in frequency of posts correlate with these statements across 4chan/pol, Reddit and Tumblr, we were also able to identify curves between these platforms which indicate ways in which the content on one platform might inform another.

The quantitative-qualitative meso-level analysis we performed, using coding schemes which were adapted to platform specific conventions and behaviours, revealed interesting and more varied insights regarding the affiliations and collective political identities of the communities studied. It became clear, by close reading the data, that on the different platforms (and even the subreddits on Reddit) the conversations touched upon a variety of topics outside political engagement and the specific “symbolic turns” of both public figures. On Reddit and Tumblr, we discovered some more fan-based communities which for the most part either unconditionally accepted or even overlooked their icon’s ‘political coming out’ – fans discussing Taylor Swift’s concert tour or Pewdiepie’s gaming videos, for example.

However, we found discussions on fringe anonymous image boards like 4chan/pol to be less interested in fandom for its own sake and more interested in appropriating the image of a public figure as political statement and for the formation of collective political identity. As such, the symbolic political turning points of were extremely important in shaping the discussion of Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie on 4chan.

The notion of /ourguy/ seems to be a method to make public figures part of a community by claiming, or even manipulating, their identities to represent the political ideals and beliefs of the community. On 4Chan/pol/, this was clearly represented by Taylor Swift, who expressed her personal political interest which did not correspond with the community (right-wing) ideals.
We want to conclude that the created fan-communities around public figures like Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie on these platforms had some influence in the way the fans or non-fans spoke about their “symbolic turns”. It is however difficult to measure the (political) impact, on for example people’s interest to effectively go and vote. What our research did demonstrate was that the behaviour of public figures has repercussions for how they are appropriated on these platforms and within the subcultures on them; Taylor Swift’s declaration of support for the US Democratic party means she can no longer be their “Aryan queen”, while Pewdiepie, who delivered an ambiguous justification for his video which could be interpreted in many ways, stayed on as a bro at 4chan.

The memes /ourguy/ and /ourgirl/ provide an opportunity for further close reading and platform analysis, particularly on 4chan/pol to more closely trace and track the nature of discussions around both Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie. The meme is strongly tied to a particular set of practices which we refer to as inciting, voting and furthering. Further research might focus on image analysis over time as well as which images are most closely associated with the practices we identify as being used to form collective political identities. Further close reading might also look more closely at variations in language pre- and post-politicisation to understand how these practices develop and change as statements about these newly politicised public figures being ‘in’ or ‘out’ becomes more closely associated with a collective political identity.

References

Footnotes

[1] Quote from Sal Hagen, DMI 2020 Project pitches, available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EkeEa6vnIQI1QH8xEIZkAbI23vn3ChsjoJs3U6tkeqo/edit

[2] In line with existing research, we expected the 4chan community to increase their associations of Pewdiepie as “ourguy” after his “political coming out” and have the opposite reaction after Taylor Swift’s coming out. This was based on previous research on 4Chan’s /pol/ board that has revealed the tendency for the platform to support and enable far-right political ideologies (Tuters and Hagen 2019). When it comes to Reddit, we expected the responses to be a less extreme version of 4Chan’s, given the platform’s wide diversity of political content (Lagorio-Chafkin 2018). Finally, when it came to Tumblr, we expected the opposite response to Tumblr because of the previous academic research on the platform’s politically left-leaning tendencies (Nagle 2017).

[3] We decided to use 4chan to determine the time periods for closer analysis because we expected a larger fan culture on Reddit and 4chan which unconditionally accepts the respective public figure. For the purposes of our analysis, the political discussions around the two personas are of greater interest because it is in these contexts that public figures can incite (re-)negotiations of the collective identity of anonymous and pseudonymous communities.

[4] Note that in this part of our analysis, we relied on the entire 4chan dataset for Taylor Swift and Pewdiepie - not limited to the 30-day period we used in the other parts of our analysis!

[5] The specific post can be read at The Guardian. She wrote an elaborative caption, that was quoted by people on 4Chan (see figure 8). Durkin, Erin. (October 8, 2018). “She just ended her career: Taylor Swift's political post sparks praise and fury”. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/08/taylor-swift-instagram-post-endorsement-democrats-tennessee

[6] The video displays two men, paid by Pewdiepie, who are holding up a sign that says “Death to all Jews”.
The YouTube fragment can be watched on The Guardian:
"YouTube star PewDiePie posts antisemitic content – video", The Guardian, (February 14, 2017)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2017/feb/13/pewdiepie-antisemitic-video-youtube

[7] This is excluding the posts that we identified as “not relevant” because they were not discussing Taylor Swift but Microsoft’s AI chat bot Tay. Since we queried 4chan for Taylor Swift’s nickname “Tay Tay”, we retrieved many posts that were not actually about Taylor Swift.

Works cited

Archive, V. [Video Archive[. (2017, Feb. 14). I’ve Discovered The Greatest Thing Online… | PewDiePie REUPLOAD [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhq7dIU2txI.

Durkin, Erin. (October 8, 2018). “She just ended her career: Taylor Swift's political post sparks praise and fury”. The Guardian, Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/08/taylor-swift-instagram-post- endorsement-democrats-tennessee

Hagen, S. (2020, January). Who is /ourguy/?: Studying political Internet subcultures through their identification with public figures. DMI Winter School 2020, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Herrman, J. (2017, Feb. 16). YouTube ’s Monster: PewDiePie and His Populist Revolt. The New York Times Magazine. https://nyti.ms/2lm27AR.

Lagorio-Chafkin, C. (2018). We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet’s Culture Laboratory. London: Piatkus.

Nagle, A. (2017). Kill all normies: The online culture wars from Tumblr and 4chan to the alt-right and Trump. Zero Books.

Rogers, R. (2017). Digital Methods for Cross-platform Analysis. In Burgess, J. et al. (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Media (1-20). London: Sage, 2017.

Snapes, L. (2019 Aug. 24). Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/aug/24/taylor-swift-pop-music-hunger-games-gladiators.

Tuters, M., & Hagen, S. (2019). (((They))) rule: Memetic antagonism and nebulous othering on 4chan. New Media & Society, 146144481988874. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819888746.

Waller, V., Farquharson, K., & Dempsey, D. (2016). Qualitative social research: contemporary methods for the digital age. Los Angeles: Sage.

(February 14, 2017) "YouTube star PewDiePie posts antisemitic content – video", The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2017/feb/13/pewdiepie-antisemitic-video-youtube