Media Niche Overview
The media niche decided upon for this digital artifact was looking into Kanye West or Ye's Media presence. The idea behind this topic was to understand what and why Kanye is...Kanye, keeping up with his social media posts to gather this knowledge and discover why my favourite rapper is rapidly changing his entire online persona. What helped me define the media niche of Kanye west online persona was evaluating various websites which provided detail into Mr West's mind concerning his social media pages; (these articles also exhibited throughout my blog posts). A Qualitative Content Analysis of Kanye West's Twitter Practice. A report by Lucas Gloe discusses the extensive use of celebrity Twitter accounts, especially Kanye West. The thesis aims to grasp an understanding of Kanye's Twitter presence, with a more significant aim at creating an individual and authentic narrative that reevaluates and adapts to Kanye's already dominant celebrity persona. Next, Kanye West and the Digital Information Matrix, an article by Caithlin Mercer, explores the idea of taking a great sample of demonstrably 'fake news' concerning Kanye West and how these people are gaining politics.
Overall, both these articles helped define and determine what was going to be the main topic for the digital artifact; the niche was an exciting topic for me, a learning curve about the famous Kanye west, as well as provided my learning benefits of the various perspectives on this man.
Introducing new audiences to your media niche.
My digital artifact is an interactive, informative website that updates Kanye West's life. The website is titled WES Studios, which exemplifies everything aimed and intentionally surrounding Kanye; the website has many features, from a Kanye Portfolio, displaying his home life, past achievements, and a list of his albums in numerical order. Wes Studios aims to give different approaches to Kanye's life by adding interviews and other video content for the audiences to examine. This was shown throughout the 'To Watch' section of the website. Through various online searchers, I found it hard to find something along the same lines as Wes Studios. Different websites answer small questions when you search Kanye West specifics. In contrast, Wes Studios is alone in answering many Kanye Updates through articles, video content, updated autobiographies and more. WES Studios can target new audiences with frequently updated information on this platform.
The audience attempted to the targeted crowd can not solely be defined as one market. However, the media niche is based on a celebrity; therefore, the website will focus on bringing audiences from all platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram and YouTubers, on looking at Wes Studios when you ask yourself the question, "what's happening in Kanye's Life recently?". Due to Kanye's recent outbreaks (Seen on WES Studios), he is bringing in a wide range of new and exciting audiences. WES Studios will be advertised by placing the link in my Instagram bio, Hashtags and placing on my Twitter account to enforce the introduction of new and thrilling audiences for the media niche. (see images below for context)
Relevant academic research that has assisted in your investigation of the media niche
Through online research, I could conclude the terms of my first epiphany and figure out more about this question:
"An idea popped into my head thinking about all the algorithms placed throughout our technology today; it got me thinking about if Kanye west even needs algorithms to boost his Media existence or if he is more powerful than the algorithms themselves"
Despite this thought, I found myself researching online, where this website gathered my attention. An article written in 2022 titled KANYE WEST: ALGORITHM BREAKER by Nigel Mika details how Kanye West 'Changed the algorithm." Nigel Mika claims that 'Ye is the algorithm breaker'. By this, he means Ye does exactly what he wants when he wants to do it. Public opinion isnt ever crossed throughout Ye, he continually changes modern culturalism, so maybe he is changing the way we interpret media. His media content isnt placed for the algorithm; recognised for retaining attention, which Kanye gets without said algorithm.
Other websites used to help discover my other epiphanies into why Kanye is exploding the media in such a significant way were articles such as….
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276123671_Beautiful_Dark_Twisted_Pedagogy_Kanye_West_and_the_Lessons_of_Participatory_Culture - Anterio Garcia
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/201812/Kanye_West_and_the_Digital_Information_Challenge.pdf - Caithlin Mercer
Preface: The Cultural Impact of Kanye West - Julius Bailey
These articles help us understand Kanye and his uncontrollable mind. He's getting to a point in his life where what he's saying is potentially causing harm. Yet people are still followers; his music and generational opinions have been a focal point for his media prominence. But Kanye could take his recent actions regarding George Floyd, and the White lives matter situation too far. The articles provide much-needed information to determine Kanye's Conscience. The conscience I've questioned through my epiphanies in which 2 and 3, ask:
“With the overwhelming change in his media presence since the first epiphany, Ye has switched his account back to 2 posts, and all his propaganda has been deleted. I aim to try to figure out why he works like this. Was it so Kanye could make a point and then have it vanish? Or is it just to show how powerful his media presence is in terms of his ability to turn people around?”
And
“Kanye west has now created outrage among high-in-charge people in Adidas and Gap franchises, saying he will no longer work with them. Much information has been coming out on this and will be necessary for my website development.”
The combined analysis of the websites listed above gave a direction into these epiphanies. The article Beautiful Dark Twisted Pedagogy: Kanye West and the Lessons of Participatory Culture, Written by Anterio Garcia, Explores the argument that a massively populated rapper such as Ye can effectively provide meaningful pedagogical guidance for critical educators”.
Yet seeing his constant banning on powerhouse platforms such as Instagram and Twitter makes us all question the ‘meaningful pedagogical guidance’ stated by Anterio. More information can be seen on the Media Menacing tab on WES-Studios under ‘Twitter Banning’.
The recent Kanye outrage in terms of his break up with clothing company Gap has taken to light due to a ‘breach of contract’ according to The New York Times. This collaboration gave hope to Gap breaching at least ten years of partnership, where Kanye thought unjust treatment of the contract was being shown therefore diminishing his part in the company. This epiphany gave me great information for creating a segment for my assignment where an article titled ‘Kanye White Lives Matter - Fashion week goes briefly into the gap situation, which leads me into the White lives matter controversy.
How has autoethnography helped you to reflect critically on your experience as an audience member in the media niche?
To critically reflect on my journey as a member of a media niche audience, it needs to evaluate the various research methods I used to create this online persona. As a Kanye fan myself, not physically knowing Kanye or having no real impact on his life, Media was the primary form of one-sided communication where information could be used for this project. A wide range of platforms can gain Kanye attention, the obvious ones being Twitter and Instagram, yet I found myself scrolling on Reddit more often than not, which gave me a personal and humerus approach to commencing this project. I feel Reddit is a more comfortable and anonymous way of stating your potentially harsh feelings towards a subject, in this case, Kanye. The brutal world of Reddit has recently become one of the most prominent website journals on the planet, having 52 million daily users. The app always seems to be the opinion platform for controversial events. (Nicholas Proferes 2021). Through an analysis of Reddit, I determined what nitty-gritty elements the people wanted to see and read about to gain a dominant presence for the website. Being able to post and share my website on Reddit under comments and hashtags related to Kanye will hopefully kick off the website to create the wanted persona.
Autoethnographic research was very new to me before starting this project, even something as simple as looking over at people's phones to see what people were listening to played a part in being a member of the ethnographic audience. The media niche itself was fascinating overall; picking a subject, I thoroughly enjoyed ensured that I couldn't possibly lose interest. Watching and analysing people's experiences of Kanye's media presence pushed me further to digest the needed and wanted information for WES-Studios, helping me move toward more meaningful content.
.
The public persona created to develop expertise in your media niche.
To develop expertise in the field of Kanye West's media presence, a significant focus needs to be placed on the eyes of Kanye's audiences across all media platforms. Through ethnographic research methods, I determined and understood what it means to be a part of this media niche; observation took place across all media channels to get the initial idea of his media presence. After a while, I could grasp that I, myself, was the audience for this niche. When looking into this topic, I expressed what it was like to view life from this angle. Being part of the fan pages and having my notifications for 'Ye' Twitter notification pages on alert at all times gave me the impression of genuinely being part of and involved with this niche expertise. An anonymous bystander was the public persona I created to be involved with my niche. Waiting for opinions on Reddit, news articles, and interviews to be released to get as much information from all perspectives on Kanye's actions and potential wrongdoings. The research method used, ethnographic methods, indeed advanced my knowledge of my media niche and helped compromise my website's information.
Audio Content
References
Adams, T. E. (2015). Popular culture studies and Autoethnography: An essay on method. Huskie Commons. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/allfaculty-peerpub/808/
Garcia, A. (2013). Beautiful dark twisted pedagogy: Kanye West and the lessons of ... https://www.researchgate.net/. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276123671_Beautiful_Dark_Twisted_Pedagogy_Kanye_West_and_the_Lessons_of_Participatory_Culture
Haring, B. (2022, October 9). Kanye West locked out from Twitter for perceived Anti-Semitic Post. Deadline. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://deadline.com/2022/10/kanye-west-twitter-account-locked-for-perceived-anti-semitism-1235139182/
Lucas, G. (2016). The life of kanye - lu. A Qualitative Content Analysis of Kanye West’s Twitter Practice. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=8872496&fileOId=8891938
Manning, J., & Adams, T. E. (2021). Popular culture studies and Autoethnography: An essay on method. Huskie Commons. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/allfaculty-peerpub/808/
Proferes, N. (2021). Blackfishing on Instagram: Influencing and the ... - sage journals. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305121101900. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20563051211038236