Zendaya: Audience and Industries blog tasks

 Audience

Smart Water brand case study

Read this Smart Water case study from Influencer Intelligence and answer the following questions:

1) What is the charity link to her Smart Water brand ambassador role and how does this link to the celebrity persona she has created?

 

She will work with Global Water Challenge and this links to her twitter celebrity persona as she can often be seen working with and promoting charities.

2) Read the analysis of Zendaya’s social media profile. What statistics support why she is described as ‘a high-ranking celebrity influencer’?

 

She is ranked as a high-ranking celebrity influencer due to her fanbase being primarily aged 20-24.

3) What details are provided about Zendaya’s audience?

 

Her audience is aged 20-24 and 67% female with the rest being male.

4) What psychographic groups would fit the profile for Zendaya’s audience in this case study?

 

The main group would be aspirer as they would be wanting to be like Zendaya and to have/live her life.

5) Why does the case study suggest Zendaya is a good fit for the Smart Water brand? 

 

The case study reveals that due to her young audience and her ability to reach a wide range of people she would be best fit for the smart water brand as the brand and Zendayas target demographics are more or less the same.

Social media data analysis

Look at this analysis website for Zendaya’s Instagram account. Complete the following tasks:

1) Pick out three notable statistics from the site.

 

3.46% engagement rate

85 million followers

6.4 million average likes

2) Scroll down through the data available. Who are Zendaya’s top mentions and what does this suggest about how she uses the account? 

 

Louisvuitton is her top one which is a premiuim luxory clothing brand, this reveals that she uses her account for brand promotion.

3) How does Zendaya’s Instagram engagement rate of 3%+ compare with the average engagement rate for accounts with more than 100,000 followers? 

 

It reveals that for the size of her account her engagement rate is extremely good as the average engagement rate for an account with 100,000 followers is only 2.4%

Zendaya: audience questions and theories

Finally, work through the following questions to apply media debates and theories to the Zendaya CSP: 

1) Is Zendaya’s website and social media constructed to appeal to a particular gender or audience?

 

Zendaya's website is mostly about fashion, modelling and female related activities revealling that her content is constructed for a female audience. Although some unisex content is shown such as her mvoies such as spiderman which could be argued that it is for a male audience in particular.

2) What opportunities are there for audience interaction in Zendaya’s online presence and how controlled are these? 

 

Some opportunities like polls and shout outs can occur however this is very limited due to her large fanbase. These are specifically controlled by her media team in order to no make her seem unfavourable and unjustly.

3) How does Zendaya’s social media presence reflect Clay Shirky’s ‘End of Audience’ theories? 

 

Clay Shirky argues that consumers are no longer consumers but are now producers, Zendaya is a perfect example of this as her media presence can be strongly seen through her relatable posts that she makes, this engages with the audience directly.

4) What effects might Zendaya’s online presence have on audiences? Is it designed to influence the audience’s views on social or political issues or is this largely a vehicle to promote Zendaya’s work? 

 

Her celebrity life is desired by the audience and this can cause people to compare themselves such as young teens to Zendaya and this can lead to mental health issues. However, her social media presence is mainly to promote her life and her work but small instances on her twitter can be seen where she talks about political issues so it depends on which platform she is on.

5) Applying Hall’s Reception theory, what might be a preferred and oppositional reading of Zendaya’s online presence? 

 

A preferred reading is that her online presence is directly targetted towards a young audience in order to promote her TV shows and works whereas an oppositional reading would be that she might be trying to influence and promote her social and political views to her audience such as feminism and/or black identity issues.

Industries

How social media companies make money

Read this analysis of how social media companies make money and answer the following questions:

1) How many users do the major social media sites boast?

 

 Meta says it had 2.96 billion monthly users, Twitter in 2019 had 330 million and LinkedIn had 900 million active users.

2) What is the main way social media sites make money? 

 

The main way is through advertising to their audiences, it is the company "renting your eyeballs to its advertisers".

3) What does ARPU stand for and why is it important for social media companies? 

 

Average revenue per user and this is important because if the ARPU is low then the social media companies will not make any more and advertisers will not invest.

4) Why has Meta spent huge money acquiring other brands like Instagram and WhatsApp? 

 

By having a huge increase in the amount of users available more ARPU can be collected.

5) What other methods do social media sites have to generate income e.g. Twitter Blue? 

 

Twitter/X uses a premium subscription plan.

Regulation of social media

Read this BBC News article on a report recommending social media regulation. Answer the following questions:

1) What suggestions does the report make? Pick out three you think are particularly interesting. 

 

One suggestion is that algorithms should be made available to researchers, another is that friction should be added to online sharing and another is limiting the use of micro-targetting advertising messages.

2) Who is Christopher Wylie? 

 

He is a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower and a former Facebook investor.

3) What does Wylie say about the debate between media regulation and free speech? 

 

He says that algorithms make decisions about what people see/ do not see whereas in most Western democracies you are free to say what you want to say within the confines of hate speech.

4) What is ‘disinformation’ and do you agree that there are things that are objectively true or false? 

 

Disinformation is false information and I would argue that most things are to be decided by people and what they believe as people have a right to think what they want however there are some things which are bound by logic therefore being objectively true.

5) Why does Wylie compare Facebook to an oil company? 

 

He says that an oil company would argue they dont profit from pollution as it is a by-product whereas Facebook profits of hate.

6) What does it suggest a consequence of regulating the big social networks might be? 

 

It says that a big consequence is that they may not make as much money as they use to.

7) What has Instagram been criticised for?

 

It has been criticised for making recommendations to you that may not be of your interest or for the good of your mental health as users should not be constantly bombarded with a singular theme.

8) Can we apply any of these criticisms or suggestions to Zendaya? For example, should Zendaya have to explicitly make clear when she is being paid to promote a company or cause? 

 

One could argue that Zendayas social media posts may make young people feel like they are not enough and will begin to compare themselves with superficial people. However she does not do this always and is very focused on promoting her work and films.