Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Humanities, Psychology and Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Cause Célèbre or Monstre Sacré? Examining the Framing of Taylor Swift in Selected Popular Magazine Articles, 2014-2024
Charné Bronkhorst, Simphiwe Mpho Zondani
ABSTRACT:
Over the past decade or so, Taylor Swift has emerged as an icon within popular music and culture, solidifying her place within public consciousness. Due to her immense critical and commercial successes, Swift occupies a vaunted position that only a few musical artists have achieved. In this regard, her contemporaries in ubiquity include The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Beyonce, and Britney Spears, to name a few. In the case of Swift, as with some of her counterparts, intensive media coverage is often accompanied by immense scrutiny and unfavourable coverage of her personal life. Considering this, this paper will analyse narratives that emerge from selected articles about Taylor Swift published by three popular American magazines— namely, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and The Washington Post. Selected articles are published between 2014 and 2024 and are analysed using the content analysis method. By analysing the dominant media narratives within these articles, this paper aims to discover whether the media’s portrayal of influential women in the music industry is fair or perpetuates demeaning, simplistic and sexist stereotypes, as other scholars have found. This study will allow researchers to enact further research to determine whether similar findings are found when considering coverage of other popular women in the music industry, and whether they differ vastly from the portrayal and treatment of their male counterparts.
keywords: Taylor Swift, media coverage, framing, content analysis, popular culture