K Pop stan accounts have been gaining a lot of positive publicity in recent times for their potential to rally as force for political activism (Bruner, 2020; Reddy, 2020). But who are they and what have they achieved? To put it briefly, ‘a K-pop stan is simply an enthusiastic and active fan of Korean pop music’ (Bedingfield, 2020) who show their support via social media platforms, most famously on Twitter. However, this online community has been making headlines for its involvement in political issues, namely the Black Lives Matter movement, by rallying in vast numbers to flood online platforms with messages of their choice. Dean (2005) is a sceptic of the circulation of political messages through social media, stating that ‘messages are more likely to get lost as mere contributions to the circulation of content’ (2005: 53). Contributions made to the info stream are said to have a ‘subjective registration effect’ (Dean, 2005: 60), where the fantasy of participation sees technology function as a fetish that disguises passivity and makes the user believe they are being politically active (Dean, 2005). This is the phenomenon of ‘technological fetishism’ (p. 60).
Dean makes an interesting point about the spreading of messages on social media, insofar that it questions ‘the democratic potential of computer networking’ (Dahlberg, 2015: 1) by suggesting ‘the frantic activity of the fetish works to prevent actual action’ (Dean, 2005: 60). However, her thesis is now fifteen years old and it’s possible that she did not foresee how users on contemporary media platforms are able to harness the power of the fetish ‘to amplify messages about injustice’ (Brown et al, 2017: 1841). During the Black Live Matter (BLM) protests, sparked by the death of George Floyd, the Dallas Police Department asked people to ‘share videos of “illegal activity protests” through the iWatch Dallas app’ (Reddy, 2020). K-Pop fans flooded the app with fan-recorded videos and memes in an effort to stop protesters’ actions being tracked , shuttling down its ability to function and rendering it useless.
Due to technical difficulties iWatch Dallas app will be down temporarily. pic.twitter.com/zksA1hkVhV
— Dallas Police Dept (@DallasPD) May 31, 2020
(Dallas Police Department, 2020)
In this instance, the K-Pop fans harnessed the technological fetish to achieve an effect similar to a Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber attack, showing how quantity of messages can prevail over quality. This means of activism, where a large amount of the messages in the info stream (Dean, 2005) were not related to BLM at all (Reddy, 2020), is in stark contrast to the #SayHerName campaign which made ‘intersectional mobilisation part of its agenda’ (Brown et al, 2017: 1832). Where that campaign specifically intended to ‘challenge the cultural domination of a group’ (2017: 1834), creating a legitimate space for debate and ‘leading democratic politicians to invoke the importance of intersectionality’ (p. 1841), the K-Pop method mostly ‘drowns out’ (BBC, 2020) messages.
While in the case of the Dallas iWatch app this can prove useful, if anti-racism is to become a mere fact of fandom with K-Pop stan accounts being labelled in the media as forces of social justice, it may make it harder for Black fans in these online spaces to feel as if they’re being heard. From this viewpoint, Dean’s stance that the circulation of content ‘secures and protects the space of official politics’ (2005: 61) seems to particularly resonate. Wherever there are legitimate attempts to spread awareness of injustices in society, it should be encouraged, however, intersectionality is critical to black and minority politics (Brown et al, 2017) and without true interrogation of the power structures at play, messages run the risk of being purely noise.
References:
BBC (2020) ‘K-pop fans drown out #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag’. BBC. June 4 2020. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52922035 [Accessed 3 November 2020].
Bedingfield, W. (2020) ‘How K-Pop Stans Became an Activist Force to Be Reckoned With’. Wired. June 25 2020. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/how-k-pop-stans-became-an-activist-force-to-be-reckoned-with/ [Accessed: 2 November 2020]
Brown, M., Ray, R., Summers, E. and Fraistat, N. (2017) ‘# SayHerName: A case study of intersectional social media activism’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(11), pp.1831-1846.
Bruner, R. (2020) ‘How K-Pop Fans Actually Work as a Force for Political Activism in 2020’. TIME. July 25 2020. Available at: https://time.com/5866955/k-pop-political/ [Accessed: 2 November 2020]
Dahlberg, L. (2015) ‘Which social media? A call for contextualization’. Social Media+ Society, 1(1).
Dallas Police Department (2020) June 1. Available at: https://twitter.com/DallasPD/status/1267236088755695618 [Accessed: 2 November 2020].
Dean, J. (2005) ‘Communicative capitalism: Circulation and the foreclosure of politics’. Cultural Politics, 1(1), pp.51-74.
Reddy, S. (2020) ‘K-pop fans emerge as a powerful force in US protests’. BBC. June 11 2020. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52996705 [Accessed: 2 November 2020]