OSP: ZENDAYA CSP: AUDIENCE AND INDUSTRIES!

 

OSP: ZENDAYA CSP: AUDIENCE AND INDUSTRIES:

Audience

Smart Water brand case study

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

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 the Global Water Challenge, a charity working to help achieve universal access to clean drinking water, by launching the smart solutions: global water challenge, inviting local organisations to apply for funding to GWC’s women for water action platform

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

I’m very excited to begin this new relationship with smartwater,” said Zendaya. “We all know how important it is to stay hydrated and smartwater is my go-to source no matter what I am doing throughout the day.

What details are provided about Zendaya’s audience?

Zendaya’s audience is 67% female on Instagram and 73% female on Twitter. Typically single, her followers are most commonly aged 20-24. English speaking, they are based mainly in the United States, followed by Brazil and the UK. LA, New York and São Paulo are her top cities. Occupationally, her audience work in retail, broadcasting, publishing, entertainment, modelling, design or makeup. Diving into hobbies, Zendaya’s fans on Twitter are interested in music, mystery films, reality TV, social networks and fantasy books. On Instagram, music, basketball, fashion, makeup, coffee, radio, boxing, skateboarding and American football reign supreme. Other celebrity influences for this profile include Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Kylie Jenner, Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, Dwayne Johnson and Harry Styles. Comparing media consumption, Zendaya’s followers enjoy MTV, Vogue, E! News, ESPN, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Marie Claire, Hugo Gloss, Playboy, The Times and HBO.

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

- aspirers 

-explorers? 

-reformers

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

Overall, Zendaya and smartwater are more or less aligned when it comes to age, gender and location demographics. It may be that the brand are hoping the star will raise its profile with younger consumers, as well as tapping into her 190m social reach and over £1m social media value. Zendaya also has well above average equity, appeal and awareness scores and is one of the biggest names on the planet right now. She is no stranger to brand partnerships, but this marks her first drinks collaboration and continues her philanthropic project work.

Social media data analysis

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

Pick out three notable statistics from the site.

• 185,406,551 followers
• 1,806 following
• $556,220- $1,297,846 cost per post

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

• @louisvuitton
• @nicolasghesquiere
• @lancomeofficial
• @abdmstudio

Suggests that she uses the account for business purposes, to gain and promote promotions.

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

shows that she’s not actively engaging with the followers, shows that she’s probably not the one controlling her account to be able to engage with the followers that’s why compared to the 100000 followers there’s only a 3% engagement rate. 

Zendaya: audience questions and theories

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

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

I think zendayas website and social media is to appeal to her fans which include both male and female with the age from 16-35, teens- adult.

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

There are rarely any opportunities for audience interaction in zendayas online presence this is because her accounts are mainly not controlled by her, the only time there could be a chance is when she is invited over for an interview, for example, "actually me" however the audience would not know if its actually her because she replies through a completely new account without the verified tick until the interview is not released no audience will know.

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

In the traditional model of media consumption, audiences simply read the newspapers and watched television programs produced by large media outlets. Moving from the broadcast to broadband, social media has enabled audiences to be active participants and engage directly with the content creators. Clay Shirky argued this shift in consumption challenges the old power structures and offers new opportunities for individuals to shape the world.

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? 

Majority of zendayas online presence is to promote her work although i would say her online presence does show some views on social and political issues for an example her repost on twitter about the gun shoot, although we don’t know for sure if it’s actually her who reposted the twitter tweet but it shows the audience that zendayas online presence is not only capital based but also to educate and inform the audience that zendaya also is one who stands by what’s right and wrong in terms of the social and political issues.

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

oppositional: oppositional could be some audience looking at her zendayas posts and believing that she posted these pictures because that’s how we as audience are meant to look like. A figure like hers inclu. skin, make-up and style. audience will think that her social media is a way of brainwashing them to be a certain way because zendayas instagram or any celebrities account only shows the expectations and not the reality. 

preferred: audience will believe that she’s a celebrity, a normal way of promoting some companies incl. sponsorships etc if she does or does not post anything about political or social issues it’s up to her, they will only look up to her as in inspiration 

Industries

How social media companies make money

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

How many users do the major social media sites boast?

As of Q4 2022, Meta (META), formerly Facebook, had 2.96 billion monthly active users.1 Twitter (now X) stopped reporting monthly active users, but the last count in Q1 2019 was 330 million, while LinkedIn had about 900 million monthly active users as of Q1 2023

What is the main way social media sites make money? 

Through advertising 

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

Meta's ARPU comes primarily through profits earned from advertisers who use the platform to reach customers.

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

WhatsApp boasts over 2 billion monthly active users, which to Meta management means an even greater stock of susceptible minds to sell as a unit to companies looking to, for instance, move a few more smartphones this quarter.11 Every acquisition Meta has made since, whether it was $1 billion for Instagram or $19 billion for WhatsApp, was conducted with the same goal in mind.

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

Other social media companies are also exploring new ways to increase their revenue. For example, after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he changed the site's blue "verified" checkmark system. These checkmarks were once given to prominent or important accounts (such as journalists, politicians, celebrities, and newspapers, and other media accounts) to show that their identities had been verified and could be trusted.

Regulation of social media

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

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

• - implementing "circuit breakers" so that newly viral content is temporarily stopped from spreading while it is fact-checked
• - forcing social networks to disclose in the news feed why content has been recommended to a user
• - limiting the use of micro-targeting advertising messages

Who is Christopher Wylie? 

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie

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

In most Western democracies, you do have the freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is not an entitlement to reach. You are free to say what you want, within the confines of hate speech, libel law and so on. But you are not entitled to have your voice artificially amplified by technology. 

These platforms are not neutral environments. Algorithms make decisions about what people see or do not see. Nothing in this report restricts your ability to say what you want. What we're talking about is the platform's function of artificially amplifying false and manipulative information on a wide scale.

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

There are some objectively disprovable things spreading quite rapidly on Facebook right now. For example, that Covid does not exist and that the vaccine is actually to control the minds of people. These are all things that are manifestly untrue, and you can prove that. Our democratic institutions and public discourse are underpinned by an assumption that we can at least agree on things that are true.

Why does Wylie compare Facebook to an oil company? 

An oil company would say: "We do not profit from pollution." Pollution is a by-product - and a harmful by-product. Regardless of whether Facebook profits from hate or not, it is a harmful by-product of the current design and there are social harms that come from this business model.

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

If you have a platform that has the unique selling point of "we will allow you to promote hate speech, we will allow you to deceive and manipulate people", I do not think that business model should be allowed in its current form. Platforms that monetise user engagement have a duty to their users to make at least a minimum effort to prevent clearly identified harms. I think it's ridiculous that there's more safety consideration for creating a toaster in someone's kitchen, than for platforms that have had such a manifest impact on our public health response and democratic institutions.

What has Instagram been criticised for?

If it has just spent the past week showing you body-building ads, it could then hold off for the next two weeks. If you want to promote body building, you can. 

But from the user's perspective, they should not be constantly bombarded with a singular theme.

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? 

I believe that Zendaya should make it clear that she is being paid to promote a company, this is because the audience tends to look at their “inspiration” and want to be like them, if zendaya promotes a cream that “helps her skin to be clear” and promotes that only because she’s being paid viewers tend to fall in the trap and purchase the item only to find out it was not true. 

I believe because celebrities like zendaya do not control their social media, their agents and managers show them in a certain way to the audience, for an example on zendayas instagram account some of her outfits show her as a spectacle, by showing her body figure and showing in all pictures that she is "perfect" - this links to the criticism made of instagram.