BTS A.R.M.Y on Twitter

This article iswill talk about BTS A.R.M.Y, the fandom of Korean boyband BTS as a niched culture on twitter will analyze how the fandom influences BTS' achievements and success through online support.

Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS)

BTS (방탄소년단, Bangtan Sonyeondan) is a Korean boyband,  debuted in 2013 under BigHit Entertainment. They consist out of seven members: three main rappers and four main vocalists.

BigHit Entertainment

In Korea, when one wants to become part of a boy or girl group, they first need to become a trainee in an entertainment company, who trains the skills of those trainees in dancing, singing and rapping before debuting. Most well-known K-Pop Bands emerged from one of the biggest three entertainment companies in South Korea, also known as the ‘Big Three’, while BTS did not.

BigHit Entertainment founder and co-CEO Bang Si-hyuk described the immense interest that emerged for BTS after their debut, despite not being under one of those top three companies, as a result of ‘sincerity, consistency, and ability to embody the spirit of […] today’s generation.’ When looking into the fan community online, what Bang mentioned is often as well described by fans as the reason to why BTS became so big. Them speaking about the problems today’s youth is facing as well as ‘respect[ing] diversity and justice, the rights of the youths and marginalized people’ seemed to be what fans could identify with (Bruner, 2019). While back in 2013 BigHit Entertainment was an unknown company, they by now dethroned the Big Three with BTS' success.

Achieving to be BTS rose acknowledge towards themselves by breaking records like being the first Korean artists to ever chart in the UK as well as having the highest-ranked and sold Korean album in the US mtowardswern world. Followed by this they appeared on multiple big American and British talk-shows like The Ellen Show or Graham Norton which made there too them gain popularity all over the Western world. Having performed sold-out stadium shows in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, shows that their popularity is not only an accomplishment in Europe, the US, and East Asia but all over the world. 

Who is BTS A.R.M.Y?

Becker (1963) describes that in order to be part of a group one needs to follow certain norms, values, and rules. Next to that if you try to be part of a group a certain level of enoughness needs to be reached (Blommaert & Varis, 2011). So who is BTS' fandom and when are you seen as enough to be part of their A.R.M.Y?

A.R.M.Y (아미) is an acronym for Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth. The name was given by BTS themselves to their fans in order to be able to address them. With the name, the seven members wanted to express that their fans are the voice of youth while also relating to the English meaning connected to the military. As 방탄, the first part of the boyband’s name translates to ‘bulletproof/body armor’, the connection between A.R.M.Y and BTS is to be seen as that the fans and the band will always be together and protect each other (.n.d. 2017). Together, they function as an army.

Enoughness means that one has enough emblematic identity features that make an individual seen as ‘enough’ to be part of a group by people that are already members of the niched culture (Maly & Variis, 2016). For the question of what makes you an A.R.M.Y, what gives you enoughness to be seen as part of the group, I interviewed five A.R.M.Y’s that identify as female and agender from the Twitter community from Romania, Germany, and the United KingdomAs bconductaboutshowas well as toas a confirmation ofviewpointsAll of them have different stories about how they found out about the boyband and their personal connection with them, but in general, their views about A.R.M.Y are the same. 

thatan individual‘’iWhen I asked the question related to identity emblems about ‘What makes you an A.R.M.Y?’ all of the interviewees gave me an answer with the same core value, which is that in order to be an A.R.M.Y, 'you must simply love and support all seven members on the same level'. Furthermore, I observed during the interviews that A.R.M.Y. seems to see themselves as a family and that the feeling of connectedness seems to be very high. Connectedness is an aspect of being social online and refers to how individuals connect with each other, as well as the need for feeling this connection (van Dijck, 2013). In connection to that the feeling of being part of an imagined community also got described to me as ‘I feel part of something big, it feels like a family even though I will never know every A.R.M.Y in this world.’

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Imagined communities are “imagined because the member of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” (Anderson, 1983). Especially on Twitter, it was mentioned that ‘you never feel alone, as there is always another A.R.M.Y to talk to when you need it.’. It seems that the feeling of being strangers seems to vanish when being part of the same fan community.

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In the K-Pop community, fandoms often claim a colour to be represented by. The colour for BTS’ A.R.M.Y is purple, which has its origin from a speech held at one of BTS’ concerts in 2016 by member Kim Taehyung

“Do you know what purple means? Purple is the last colour of the rainbow colours. Purple means I will trust and love you for a long time. I just made it up […] I wish I can see you for a long time, just like the meaning of purple.” (Navi Yanti, 2017).

Since that the sentence ‘I purple you’ has been in use by A.R.M.Y as well as BTS to express their love towards each other. Furthermore, the colour turned into a transnational phenomenon that is now used in order to welcome the band wherever they go. Figure 2 shows multiple purple turned landmarks from all over the world. Not only their home country turns purple for BTS but also, for example, the Empire State Building in New York, USA or the Wembley Stadium, which is located in London, UK, in which BTS played and sold out two nights in a row as the first Korean artist ever.

BTS A.R.M.Y as Prosumer 

Social media has developed immensely over the past couple of years and nowadays it is a normal way to communicate and get connected to people. While some people use the internet in order to stay in contact with their family or friends, others join social media to get connected to a community they share the same interests with, this could be, for example, about a celebrity, a game or a TV show. Twitter is by now a common platform for these kinds of communities, also called fandoms. 

Through the new emerging media functions, Twitter has been developing into a place of super-diversity, where fandom communities form niched cultures and come together to follow their favourite artist and meet other fans (Vertovec, 2006). It is one of the main social media platforms for fandoms to gather together nowadays where they develop their own, norms, traditions and language. 

As a niched culture of the K-Pop fandom A.R.M.Y do often follow the things that are general norms for K-Pop fandoms, which are for example The Selca Days or 365 days Threads, which is an activity, where a fan posts a picture every day of their favorite band member for 365 days in a row. But what I found interesting to see is the way BTS A.R.M.Y seems to become a prosumer online as well as offline, helping BTS shape their success as well as making their products transnational. It got mentionedthat supporting BTS on a financial level is definitely not a must, we know this is not always possible for everyone, but as far as I can see, financial support is still an important point in BTS achievements.

According to Forbes, BTS took home $57million in pretax income in 2018, putting them on the no.48 spot of their Forbes Celebrity 100 list, which shows the world’s highest-paid entertainers. BTS commodification contributes to South Korea’s overall economy. In 2017 it was reported that one in every thirteen foreign tourists was visiting South Korea due to BTS, as well as that 1.7% of the total Korean consumer goods export are due to BTS product sales. They, so far, had an overall economic effect of 4.9 billion dollars to their home country. 

Chart-wise, BTS is known to be high on demand in the South Korean music industry, but also in the western world, they are able to chart number one albums. In 2019 they had a sold-out stadium world tour, which is showing their transnational demand in the music industry all over the world. An example of the power A.R.M.Y holds over the music sales market was shown in November of last year, when A.R.M.Y charted the band's entire discography as a response to the Grammy nominations reveal of 2020, which excluded the boyband in their nominations. 

Financial support might not be important to be accepted as part of the fandom but is still important for the band's overall success. Being able to sell out products, whether it is small things like fabric softener, or Hyundai cars somewhat shows the power A.R.M.Y holds towards the economic situation of BTS. It shows, that the fans can help BTS to sell their products on a transnational level, as well as giving them a certain reputation economic-wise, which is that their products sell out, making them high on demand on the sales market.

Next to financial support, there are indeed also other ways to give support online to shape BTS’ success. Hou (2019) explained how fan voting became one of the most important fan activities online. Fans seem to learn how to work algorithms in not only their but also the artist's favour in order to gain popularity as well as influence over the most talked about topics online. Trending your favourite artists does not only help them gain popularity online but also, for example, to rank higher in charts. As of January 2020 BTS has 23.4 million followers on Twitter and BTS A.R.M.Y in relation to stimulating the online traffic is quite known for their voting and trending dedication.ingTto the Right now BTS holds the Billboard Social 50, no. 1 spot record with since 1649 Weeks, which gets calculated by the total mentions of a Twitter account per week.

In relation to that, nowadays award shows have categories for which fans need to vote for on social media in order to make their favourites win. In relation to that A.R.M.Y is known for often winning those fan-voted awards for BTS. Knowing how to vote for those awards is common fandom knowledge, which is mostly made up of including an award related hashtag in a Tweet or a voting poll on Twitter as well as on external websites. This can be done by individuals themselves but also gets organized over so-called 'voting accounts', which encourages other fans to vote.   This shows the connectedness of the fans to come together from all over the world toform and  vote for their band. Twitter Data itself revealed in December that BTS are 2019 top musicians worldwide and own the spot for most-liked Tweet of 2019. 

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‘Love Yourself: Speak Yourself’ 

In November 2017, BTS and its label officially entered a partnership with the Korean Committee for UNICEF affiliated with the United Nations. The campaign they support in collaboration with UNICEF is called #ENDviolence and is aiming to support children and teens who experience any kind of violence all over the world. Furthermore, BTS tries to spread their message of self-love with their own campaign called "LOVE MYSELF" They based their last three piece album series under the theme of ‘LOVE YOURSELF’, and part of all albums sales go into donations towards BTS’ campaign.

In reference to their music some of my interviewees mentioned how BTS songs are very different in the sense of the topics they cover. BTS are known to tackle topics in their songs that are rather uncommon to speak up about in South Korea and while most songs in the music industry are about love, sex and party, this is not the case for them. A wide spectrum of their songs talk about how to achieve self-love in connection to their campaign but there are songs about all kinds of topics like mental health issues, capitalism or needing to live up to the standards of your parents from a very young age onwards.

Since the beginning of the partnership, BTS raised 2.4 billion Korean won for their campaign and while they contribute themselves with donations, fans all around the world made it their mission to support the campaign and spread the message of ‘Love Myself’. While the hashtag of #BTSLoveMyself has been shared over 10milion times on Twitter, you can also see fans actively working on spreading the word and actions connected to it.

One thing that has been standing out to myself since I became part of the A.R.M.Y fandom were the donations and charity projects that seem to be always going on within the fandom. When I asked my interviewees about it, they agreed with me, saying that they as well 'often get overwhelmed by how much A.R.M.Y tries to spread kindness over them'. 

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References

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities (p.6)

Bangtan Boys (BTS) reveal their official fanclub name. (2017). Retrieved November 25 2019 from https://www.hellokpop.com/news/bangtan-boys-reveals-their-official-fanclub-name/.

The culture of a deviant group. In (chapter 5, pg. 79 -95).Becker, H, (1963). The culture of a deviant group. In Outsiders. Studies in the
sociology of deviance.

Bruner, R. (2019). The Mastermind Behind BTS Explains the K-Pop Group's Success. Retrieved November 25 2019 from https://time.com/5681494/bts-bang-si-hyuk-interview/.

Hou, M. (2019, February 19). Fan communication on Weibo. Retrieved 1 January 2020 from https://www.diggitmagazine.com/column/fan-communication-weibo.

Maly, I & Varis, P. (2016). The 21st century hipster: on micro-populations in times of super-diversity. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 1–17. 

DOI: 10.1177/1367549415597920 

[Novi Yanti]. (2017, December 31). Purple taehyung [Video File]. Retrieved November 25 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUUuaAqCwSg.

Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity. A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vertovec, S. (2006).. Super-diversity.