Identity  

Although many people, artists and influential persons cultivate particular online identities Taylor Swift is known for being incredibly authentic, where her online image is widely regarded to be very close to the person she actually is offline. 

This authenticity is written about in an interesting Medium article by David Deal ‘Taylor Swift Defines Authenticity’ (Deal, 2023). At a time when so many people’s online identities are constructed and filtered to represent a different (often more favorable) version of the actual person, Taylor’s lack of constructed identity means that the authenticity shines through and allows her fans and followers to trust her even more than many other artists. 

 

Community 

If we accept the idea that her Identity is defined by her authenticity, then this combined with her immense popularity as a musical artist, has allowed her to create a very strong community. That is to say, not only does she have a massive social media following, but she has also built these followers into a cohesive and engaged community to the point that these fans are known as ‘Swifties’. According to the previously mentioned David Deal Medium article,  

‘She really does want to connect with her fans on a deeply emotional and authentic level (Deal, 2023). She has demonstrated this time and again in actions and words. And this is why she is beloved by her fan base. People love her because she cares about them, as much as this can be true for someone who will never meet the vast majority of her fans face to face.’ He goes on to say that the emotional connection with fans starts with music and the very personal, and often for her fans, relatable lyrics and emotional situations she finds herself in. There is also another hugely important aspect to her community building and that is her grass roots approach to that group where according to Deal she ‘reach(es) out to as many people as she could at a personal level, literally by sending them gifts’. She is also known to make sure to priorities her fans both online and in public by being very accessible to them whenever she could. 

Another reason as to why Taylor is so well liked is because of how aspirational she is to her fans. She is a role model to many people of all ages who have either watched her grow up or grown up with her – she sticks to her values and beliefs and shows her followers and fans that they can follow their dreams and do whatever they want to do in life (Pazzanese, 2023). Taylor has created a family-like feeling amongst her fan bases so much so that fans feel like they know her personally and feel personally supported by her, this gives her fans a feeling of self-empowerment and belief that they can strive for whatever they want. So, if Community is defined by shared interests, values, identities and belonging, Taylor appears to be incredibly successful. 

 

Network 

The Network aspect to this also starts with the two previous points. Her authentic identity and skill at community building is amplified by Network, where the Community itself is constantly growing because of the positive and supportive nature of the interactions, not just between Taylor and followers, but between the followers themselves. This effect amplifies the previous two points, further strengthening her identity and Community. So, given this background, I now want to talk more about the effectiveness of Taylor’s advocacy. It would be right to argue that because of Taylor Swift’s large fan base and social media presence and the unique Identity and Community she has created, she could be described as one of the most influential advocates in the world, meaning that the causes she advocates for fans are often also embraced by her fans. 

 

In the remainder of this essay, I will look at her advocacy for LGBTQIA+ rights and voters’ registration in the US. And why and how her online identity and huge fan base has allowed her to advocate for these causes. 

 

As previously mentioned, Taylor Swift is easily the most popular musical artist of recent years. Her Eras Tour is the highest grossing ever with over $1billion already earned and many billions more projected. The term “Taylor Swift Effect” refers to her incredible ability to influence her fans behavior… The Taylor Swift effect came into full swing at the end of 2023 when cities she was visiting would gain a substantial economic boost (Mccluskey, 2024). The idea that an artist could have a large enough influence over their fan base that it could affect an entire city’s economy was almost unheard of and this set the scene to allow her to be a very powerful advocate. 

So how has she used this platform and how effective has her advocacy been? 

 

Taylor has supported a number of causes over the years but most recently she has been very vocal about US politics (and the importance of voter registration) and the LGBTQIA+ equality movement. An example of the online power and influence she has over her fans is when she made an Instagram post just before the 2018 US elections, stating that she believes in the rights for LGBTQIA+ equality and any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is wrong. She also stated that she would not be able to vote for a candidate that is against those beliefs and that if her fans agree with her, they should register to vote and make their voice heard. By posting this statement, Taylor took an extremely strong stand against the Republican political party. Posting this statement was an extremely daring thing for Taylor to do due to the potential backlash and hate she could have received. However, that post did the exact opposite – although she did receive some backlash, by posting that statement she invited her fans into the conversation, to share their own experiences and be able to take a stand knowing they are supported (Xu, 2024). That post got over 2.2 million likes, and just 24 hours after that post was made 65,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 registered to vote. Just 2 days after that post, voter registrations further increased by another 102,000 registrations (Sullivan, 2023). Taylor didn’t speak up just once about the need for more voting registrations, as recently as September 2023 Taylor took to Instagram with a short message urging her fans once again to register to vote for the upcoming elections. In the hours after that post, over 35,000 new registrations were recorded on the vote.org website. Once again Taylor spoke, and her fans listened (Breuninger, 2018). 

 

Taylor has gone further than just Instagram posts regarding voters’ registration and LGBTQIA+ rights, she has also taken to award show stages like during her 2018 Amercian Music Awards acceptance speech she urged fans and viewers on global television to go out and register to vote to be heard. She also more recently released the song “you need to calm down” (and music video) which puts LGBTQIA+ rights in the spotlight, celebrating the themes of gay marriage and gay culture. The video has many iconic gay icons including actors, drag queens, tv personalities and singers like Katy Perry, RuPaul, the cast of Queer Eye and Jesse Tyler Ferguson to name a few. At the end of the video a screen comes up encouraging viewers to sign a petition asking the senate to pass the equality act, which calls for a ban on all discrimination based on sexual orientation. Just days after the video was uploaded to YouTube the petition received 219,000 signatures (Heil, 2019). Her long career and popular style of music has led to her having a wide-ranging fan base that in addition to her traditional Millennial fans, she also attracts a younger demographic of Generation Z fans. This means her advocacy has a larger impact in that even though many Gen Z are not yet at voting age, they are educated on many of these issues so by the time they do get to vote, they will have a better understanding of the issues. For those that are of voting age, she encourages her fans to want to vote for the causes they believe in so they can have a voice and to help ensure that Acts like the Equality Act are understood and passed. 

 

Advocacy for any issue always attracts criticism and her support of the gay community and gay rights was labelled a stunt for popularity by some commentators… In her “You need to calm down” video, she was criticized as placing herself in an issue that she didn’t belong and that she used it as an opportunity to “polish her own personal brand”. Critics complained that in the video Taylor unfairly portrays rural communities as “redneck” antagonists of the gay rights and the gay community and implies that there aren’t LGBTQIA+ people in rural communities’ (Martinez, 2019) .It has also been noted that Taylor, a straight white woman has placed herself at the center of the entire video that is supposed to be about how the LGBTQIA+ community is facing bigotry and hatred. These opposing views on the music video didn’t stop the main goal of the video which was to increase awareness and gain signatures to help support the equality act and it did just that with over 200,000 signatures on the petition. 

 

Taylor Swift freely expresses her political opinions and views on her social media platforms and during various PR opportunities like at award shows and on red carpets. Not only does she express her own opinions online, she also advocates for change i.e. she doesn’t just speak on an issue like gay rights, she shows her devotion to the issue by giving her fans a way to actually help the issue and educates her fan bases on what needs to change within the political world in America. 

 

To conclude, although there are some counter arguments against Taylor Swift’s advocacy, these don’t appear to stack up against the weight of the arguments for her advocacy. In addition to being incredibly popular, Taylor Swift is incredibly skillful at leveraging her social media to clearly define her Identity (where authenticity and relatability are the key points) and to build an incredibly cohesive Community which is made even stronger by Network effects. This allows her to be a very effective advocate for causes that she is passionate about, and this advocacy then feeds back into her Identity further strengthening her ‘Networked Self’, Taylor Swift is a clear example of how online advocacy clearly intersects with Identity, Community and Network.