{"id":223103,"date":"2024-02-06T16:40:53","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T21:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/?p=223103"},"modified":"2024-02-09T16:01:23","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T21:01:23","slug":"study-taylor-swift-social-media-conspiracy-theories-suggest-record-super-bowl-ratings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/2024\/02\/06\/study-taylor-swift-social-media-conspiracy-theories-suggest-record-super-bowl-ratings\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Taylor Swift, social media conspiracy theories suggest record Super Bowl ratings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is Taylor Swift about to help set a record for Super Bowl ratings and overwhelm online discussion around the \u201cBig Game\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>Based on a research study released today by a team of faculty from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/school-of-communication-and-media\/stratcomm\/?wp_logged_in=true\">Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication<\/a> in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, the continuation of America\u2019s most popular sport meeting the world\u2019s most famous pop star seems destined to dominate the airwaves and social media next weekend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Super Bowl always brings in a whole new audience because some people just come for the ads and halftime show while attending Super Bowl parties,\u201d said Professor Kelly Whiteside who leads the Sports Communication program in the School of Communication and Media. \u201cBut now you are adding the biggest pop star on the planet, almost guaranteeing this will be the most watched Super Bowl of all time. It will not surprise me if <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsmediawatch.com\/super-bowl-ratings-historical-viewership-chart-cbs-nbc-fox-abc\/\">the viewership record (114.12M)<\/a> is broken by more than 10%.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The study, authored by professors Yi Luo, Jin-A Choi and Bond Benton, backs the theory that a sharp increase is likely.<\/p>\n<p>Data from the study includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the period when the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers advanced to Super Bowl LVIII, Taylor Swift related #superbowl posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) totaled more than the COMBINED number of posts about the game\u2019s QB\u2019s and even her beau, Travis Kelce. Total #superbowl posts generated in the period around and immediately after the AFC and NFC championship games resulted in 52,419 mentions for Purdy, 75,258 mentions for Mahomes, 91,325 mentions for Kelce, and an astounding 272,406 mentions of Swift in connection with the big game. For #superbowl tweets mentioning any of the four studied individuals, Swift mentions accounted for 63% of the total.<\/li>\n<li>The social mentions of Taylor Swift and Super Bowl reached 2 million in the seven-day period (January 28 &#8211; February 3, 2024) after the Chiefs\u2019 win on January 28 and sparked an 80% surge in social mentions compared to the previous seven days. Particularly, the conversation thread of \u201cTaylor as a national treasure\u201d increased 100% and is still gaining strength on social mentions.<\/li>\n<li>The social discussions on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce\u2019s relationship surged 490% since the Chief\u2019s AFC Championship victory on January 28. Tons of \u201cSwiftie\u201d fans shared their well wishes for the couple and demanded more coverage of their love story. Fans have also speculated about if\/when Kelce will pop the question\u2026perhaps after a potential Super Bowl win.<\/li>\n<li>Nearly 31,000 social posts (approximately 224% increase) in the past seven days speculated that Swift&#8217;s involvement with the Super Bowl could potentially boost ratings and interest in the event. This landslide interest in Swift\u2019s role in the NFL made lots of social media users predict that this year\u2019s big game will be the \u201chighest watched Super Bowl in history.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Data related to conspiracy theories such as Swift being an ally of the Democratic Party, that the NFL playoff games were \u201crigged\u201d to favor Kelce\u2019s Kansas City Chiefs, and that the Swift-Kelce relationship is a product of the \u201cdeep state,\u201d are also examined in the study.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAdding the \u2018conspiracy theory\u2019 factor to all this is like pouring gasoline on a rating\u2019s fire that was already set to explode,\u201d Luo said. \u201cIt will be fascinating to see how the numbers on and off the field shake out.\u201d Choi stressed that \u201cFrom deepfakes to politics, the \u2018Taylor Swift effect\u2019 is evident in our data. She holds unprecedented influence among Americans and her star power is expected to continue beyond this Super Bowl.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The full study, which can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/school-of-communication-and-media\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2024\/02\/Montclair-Taylor-Swift-2024-Big-Game-Social-Media-Study.pdf\">here<\/a>, is the 13th from the Center for Strategic Communication, which provides social media analytics tools and training for faculty and students for classroom learning and research projects.<\/p>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n\/\/ Output tags as a list for Google Analytics custom dimension\nwindow.MSU_TagList = [\"Research Scholarship and Creative Activity\"];\n<\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is Taylor Swift about to help set a record for Super Bowl ratings and overwhelm online discussion around the \u201cBig Game\u201d? Based on a research study released today by a team of faculty from the Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication in the School of Communication and Media at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":223104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[446],"class_list":["post-223103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication-and-media","tag-research-scholarship-and-creative-activity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223169,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223103\/revisions\/223169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}