OSP: Taylor Swift CSP - Language and Representations

Go to our Media Magazine archive (issue MM79)  Media Magazine archive. and read the feature All Too Well on Taylor Swift and how she controls her own narrative. Answer the following questions: 

1) Why is Taylor Swift re-recording her earlier albums? 

She wants to present herself as an independent artist and wants to move on from being controlled under a record label.

2) Why did Taylor Swift choose to make the short film 'All Too Well'? 

She wanted to dive into different aspects of media as she felt she could achieve more in the industry and trusted herself to create a quality short film.

3) What other examples are provided in the article of Taylor Swift using media to construct her own image? 

Re-release of albums, producing short films. Since the original release of Red all the way back

in 2012, Swift has been forced to control virtually every aspect of her public image.

Taylor Swift textual analysis

Work through the following tasks to complete your textual analysis of Taylor Swift's website and social media. 

1) Go to Taylor Swift's website. What do you notice about the media language choices - text, font, images, page design, links?

She uses a serif font which gives a nostalgic and retro feels to audiences that may of an older age, also the font replicates the well-renown nirvana text which may further push the idea that she is trying to implicate nostalgic feelings into audiences and viewers.

Taylor swift uses quite revealing images which may link to Maulvey's theory of male gaze.

She uses modern but professional page designs and constantly provides links either promoting her shop or social media.

2) Now visit her Eras tour microsite. What do you notice about the construction of this site in terms of images and website conventions? 

The website page is designed to encourage fans to be directed towards spending money which can be seen through the tags of 'shop'. This may reinforce capitalist ideologies as she is focused on gaining a source of income. The typography remains in serif to signify the classic presentation and look.

3) Visit Taylor Swift's Twitter feed. Analyse her use of tweets/posts - are they promoting her music, her tour, or something else? Can you find any that are socially or politically oriented? 

Taylor's twitter is specifically organised in order to promote her music and website links. This can be seen by her bio demonstrating a promotional sentence for her album as well as a link underneath that directly goes straight to her website.

4) Look at Taylor Swift's Instagram account. What do you notice about the selection and construction of images, reels and posts?  

Her 3 purposely pinned posts are all promotional images of her trying to sell and present her new album as well as her following images , majority being of photos of her at concerts.

5) Research Taylor Swift across any other social media accounts - e.g. Facebook. Do you notice any differences in how she represents herself on different platforms? Comment on text, images or tone/content.  

In some social media applications Taylor Swift presents herself differently and may sometimes appear as a normal person which allows for personal relationships to be built with her and the fans however on other apps she is presented as too professional which can be seen through her twitter and Instagram.