Zendaya: Audience and Industries blog tasks

Audience

Smart Water brand case study

1) What is the charity link to her Smart Water brand ambassador role and how does this link to the celebrity persona she has created?

Zendaya has been announced as the Global Brand Ambassador for smartwater. As ambassador for the premium water brand, Zendaya will appear in a series of new creative celebrating those defining ‘smart’ on their own terms, and support community water programmes that directly impact women.

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.

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

“We could not be more thrilled to have Zendaya join smartwater as the newest face of our brand,” said Matrona Filippou, Global Category President, Hydration, Sports, Tea & Coffee, The Coca-Cola Company. “A global icon and cultural force, Zendaya isn’t afraid to be true to herself, and that’s what makes her the perfect addition to the smartwater family.”

“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.”

3) What details are provided about Zendaya’s audience?

Drinks brand smartwater speaks to a 59% female audience across both Instagram and Twitter. Single or married, its followers are most typically 25-29, though its reach expands both younger and older. 

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

Professionally-speaking, smartwater is followed by marketers, bloggers, fashion stylists, performers and company directors on Instagram, and marketers, social media specialists, PR specialists, bloggers, designers and real estate agents on Twitter. Looking at likes and interests, this group enjoy music, soft drinks, fast food, film and TV, clothing, dance, theme parks, coffee and sport. Zendaya appears in the list of high-ranking celebrity influences (alongside Selena Gomez, Bill Gates and Miley Cyrus), ranking in the top 10% of all Twitter accounts, with 25.4% share.

5) 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

1) Pick out three notable statistics from the site.

Followers - 185,328,761
Engagement Rate - 3.43%
Likes rate - 3.42%

2) Scroll down through the data available. Who are Zendaya’s top mentions? 



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

It is significantly higher which means that her Instagram is more popular than an average account with the same amount of followers.

Zendaya: audience questions and theories


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

Zendaya posts glimpses into her personal life and shows her commitment to social justice, but most of her content is focused on promoting her film projects and partnerships with other brands. With tens of millions of followers across various social media platforms, Zendaya has quickly become a fashion icon.

Zendaya shares trailers and teasers for her film work to generate publicity and excitement for the productions. She posted this dramatic production still from Dune to Instagram and racked up over 5 million likes.

The YouTube video helps pitch the lavish musical to a younger target audience, but it also celebrates Zendaya’s acting and impressive acrobatic talents. By positioning the audience to admire her hard work and professionalism, Zendaya is boosting her star power and shaping her public identity. It is worth mentioning the single “Rewrite the Stars” went on to become a multi-platinum success in the American and UK markets.

Twitter is popular with its users because it spotlights breaking news and trending topics. Zendaya is taking advantage of the real-time updates to make the programme seem like a “live” event her audience cannot afford to miss.

believe through all this her particular gender audience is targeting both men and women as this representation is typical of the unwavering confidence Zendaya encodes in her social media output. It will also encourage users to watch the epic story in the cinema and see her in action.

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

Feminist discourse has always addressed the imbalance of power between the traditional gender roles. We have already seen Zendaya’s determination to construct representations through her acting and modelling work which inspire and empower women to take control of their future and have their voices heard. She is very articulate when discussing her views on equality. In an interview with The Female Lead, she said “a feminist is someone who believes in the power of a woman the same way they believe in the power of anyone else”.

Zendaya also positions herself as an intersectional feminist seeking ways to address issues that affect women from all backgrounds regardless of their ethnicity, class, and sexuality. When she was featured as the cover star of Cosmopolitan’s July 2016 issue, she told the publication “It’s hard as a young person of a different ethnicity or background to look at the TV and not see anyone who looks like you. Representation is very important.”

3) 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 programmes produced by the 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.

We have already analysed the different ways Zendaya uses social media platforms to start conversations with her followers. But we have also seen how many of these posts are partnerships with luxury brands and promotional pieces for her acting work. Despite the huge increase in user-generated content and the mass amateurisation of production, the media conglomerates and global enterprises can still exercise their power through these social networks to reach their target audience.

4) 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? 

Media Effects theories attempt to explain how content can influence the audience and society as a whole. For example, George Gerbner investigated the impact of television on the viewer’s attitudes and beliefs. Known as the cultivation theory, he argued heavy users of television were more likely to view the world as hostile and violent because they saw those representations on the screen. Albert Bandura also showed viewers would imitate behaviour they observed on television through a process he called symbolic modelling.

We should also consider to what extent Zendaya’s posts and tweets satisfy the needs of the audience. The uses and gratifications theory suggests we use the media to help construct our personal identity. Perhaps her followers are motivated to engage with her empowering messages because they want to emulate that success and confidence in their own lives. Some users might be inspired by her fashion sense and buy the products.

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

Audiences will interpret the messages according to their own framework of knowledge. Zendaya wants to inspire the audience, so the preferred reading is linked to personal identity.

Industries

1) How many users do the major social media sites boast?

2.96 billion monthly active users.

2) What is the main way social media sites make money? 

This isn’t a unique observation, but it’s a crucial one: If you’re not paying for the product, the product is you. The real transaction here isn’t you receiving enjoyment in the form of a free temporary distraction created by a  media company at great expense. That media company renting your eyeballs to its advertisers.

For many people, this is most obvious in the television industry. CBS doesn’t come up with a new episode of NCIS every week strictly to please viewers with a limitless capacity for being passively entertained. It’s because you and 12 million other people will watch that episode, and thus pay at least subconscious attention to the 16 minutes of commercials that are interspersed throughout it.

For a car manufacturer or fast-food restaurant, there are few more efficient ways to grab customers’ attention, something CBS and its rival networks are well aware of. Media companies are interested in pleasing the brewer before the viewer.

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

ARPU, which means average revenue per user.
Meta's ARPU at the end of 2022 was $39.63. Multiply that by the aforementioned estimated user base for Q4 2022 to get a total revenue approximation, and now you can understand why Meta had a market capitalization of over $1 trillion at its height.

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

Growing Meta’s user base to the point where it reached critical mass was obviously important to the company’s operations, but only to the extent that it provided something to attract advertisers. To an uninterested observer, committing $19 billion to acquire the texting application WhatsApp might sound like the height of dot-com-era hubris and recklessness. But it wasn't.

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. 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.

5) 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

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

One of its suggestions is that social networks should be required to release detail of their algorithms and core functions to trusted researchers, in order for the technology to be vetted.

It also suggests adding "friction" to online sharing, to prevent the rampant spread of disinformation.

The report was published by the Forum for Information and Democracy, which was established to make non-binding recommendations to 38 countries. They include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, South Korea and the UK.

2) Who is Christopher Wylie? 

Among those contributing to the report were Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie, and former Facebook investor Roger McNamee - a long-time critic of the social network.

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

One of the core recommendations is the creation of a "statutory building code", which describes mandatory safety and quality requirements for digital platforms.

"If I were to produce a kitchen appliance, I have to do more safety testing and go through more compliance procedures to create a toaster than to create Facebook," Mr Wylie told the BBC.

He said social networks should be required to weigh up all the potential harms that could be caused by their design and engineering decisions.

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

The report also suggests social networks should display a correction to every single person who was exposed to misinformation, if independent fact-checkers identify a story as false.

5) 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.

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

The way Facebook approaches these problems is: we'll wait and see and figure out a problem when it emerges. Every other industry has to have minimum safety standards and consider the risks that could be posed to people, through risk mitigation and prevention. 

If you regulated the big social networks, would it push more people on to fringe "free speech" social networks?

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. 

7) What has Instagram been criticised for?

This is a product of a platform that is making recommendations to you. These algorithms work by picking up what you engage with and then they show you more and more of that. 

In the report, we talk about a "cooling-off period". You could require algorithms to have a trigger that results in a cooling-off period for a certain type of content. 

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.


8) 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? 


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. 

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