Chloe Ward, Reepham High School and College (18333), 3219

Wednesday 3 July 2013

G324 - Jessie J Audience Profiling - Survey Analysis

In order to find out some characteristics of Jessie J fans, I created a survey on the online survey service called Surveymonkey. I created a survey that had three qualitative questions and seven quantitative ones.
I posted the link to the site on Facebook, as well as contacting popular Jessie J fan page jessiejheaven.com. They agreed to post the link on their Facebook page and their Twitter, which I feel gave me some more responses. 
In my survey, I got 21 responses. Firstly, I asked the respondents what their gender was. I gave an option for people to opt out of saying, but they all chose to answer. There was 18 female responses, and 3 male ones. 
This supports what I previously wrote about Jessie J's fans being predominantly female. I am glad that I have the male responses however as it shows a little variation in the fan base.

This next question aimed to find out the variety of ages in the sample. I found that there was quite a varied range of ages, although the majority of the fan base was aged 16 to 19. There was also quite a few fans who were aged 12 to 15, but more surprisingly 28 or over; this was not an age range I had expected would be a fan of Jessie J, mainly due to the simple nature of her more popular songs. However, I found from my research when posting the questionnaire that this is in fact something the artist is attempting to challenge in her next album. 


The variety of ages suggests that she although she appeals predominantly to one certain age group in particular, 16 to 19 year olds, certain elements of her music appeal to a variety of audiences.


Next, I queried to find out what kind of radio stations they listened to as I felt this would give me an indication as to any variety in their personalities. A majority of the respondents listened to radio channels that corresponded with Jessie J's musical style, such as Capital, Heart and Kiss. BBC Radio 1 plays slightly more alternative music, and as this was the fourth most popular response it suggests that Jessie J fans do not religiously stick to listening to one genre of music; rock and indie music is frequently given airplay on Radio 1. One respondent also listened to Kerrang!, a radio station that plays much more heavy music, including rock and metal. Also, Radio 2 was listened to as often as this, which often plays older pop music. This contrasts my original opinion on the musical tastes of Jessie J fans; I was under the impression that her fans were entirely pop oriented and were almost rigid in their tastes.

Three responses were gathered under the section of "other". One mentioned using music channels in order to listen to music, such as Starz TV, and the other two mentioned less mainstream radio channels, such as Kisstory, a channel that plays "old school" hip hop and dance, and BBC 6 Music, a channel that "brings forward the cutting edge music of today, [and] the iconic and groundbreaking music of the past 40 years". These also suggest that her fans are not as single minded and have a lot of variety in the music they choose to listen to.
I then asked fans about their tastes in magazines, believing it would reveal more about them as to whether or not they were as easy to pinhole as I had originally thought.
 
Reflecting upon the options I provided, I believe I influenced them too heavily with my expectations of the answers I was going to receive. Consequently, I did not provide any answers that were targeted towards male respondents, and I gave answers that were very stereotypical, tabloid, real life or fashion. In the other section, I got answers such as Good Housekeeping and Horse Life, suggesting that the fans read a more varied selection of magazines. I can see from these responses however that a lot of the respondents do in fact read these magazines, and subsequently my predictions were not too incorrect. Magazines like WeLovePop, Reveal and Closer all frequently have stories about artists such as Jessie J, and magazines like Company and Glamour all regularly draw on popular artists to show the latest trends and fashions.
In relation to this, I next asked about the respondents' fashion choices, offering them seven statements to choose from and asking them to select which one they felt they belonged to the most. I assumed that they would be very into fashion and keep up to date with the latest trends. However, the results contradicted this somewhat.
Most of the respondents claimed that they simply wear whatever is comfortable to them. Next, people wore comfortable, cheap clothes that made them feel at ease. This indicates that they do not make their clothing choices based on the preferences of the artists they most listen to. Two respondents wore "clothes [they saw their] favourite artists wear, because they look good". Two people liked to stand out from the crowd, although one was more for fashion reasons, and the other for the point of shocking people. 
Three of my respondents enjoyed wearing unusual clothes that made them look and feel good. These responses are generally in line with my presumptions; that Jessie J fans draw inspiration from her, and that they did not like to blend in with the crowd and they enjoyed having somewhat of an style which they felt was unique to them. I do not think that the graphic I put together showing a variety of clothing choices likely to be worn by fans of the artist is too wrong; although it was my intention to put together an idea of what the fans may typically wear, the hybrid nature of many genres and fashions nowadays in our postmodernist society suggests that they pick and choose which ones they wanted for themselves. 
Following this question was a question about social networking sites. I believed that they would all use social networking sites, because of their age, and as well because of the fact Jessie J is such a popular artist who is likely to use Twitter and Facebook to communicate with her fans.
The results confirmed this assumption. However, not as many used Twitter as I expected them to, with only 11 of 21 respondents using it, compared to 18 of 21 for Facebook. Video and photo sharing websites Vine and Instagram were relatively popular. This allows for artists like Jessie J to communicate with her audience through more personal videos and photos about her life.
As expected, people no longer actively used social networking sites like Myspace and Bebo, and only one respondent used Tagged. None of the respondents did not use any form of social networking; even the child who was under 11.
These results suggest that Jessie J fans are somewhat mature and very sociable.
Then I asked the respondents to choose four activities out of a list of 16 that they most preferred to do in their spare time. I set the questionnaire so that only four results could be selected; no more and no less.
I found from this that listening to music was the most popular activity, with 81% of the sample choosing this as one of their favourite activities. Next, people liked to watch movies, then meet friends. This was closely followed by people who preferred to read books and watch television. No Jessie J fans listed playing video games, playing an instrument or looking online for the latest trends as their favourite. However, there was a definite spread across the answers and clearly some variation in the kind of social activities that fans did. The fact that more fans liked to meet friends than use social networking sites is a positive thing as it suggests that Jessie J fans are positive, friendly people who enjoy spending time with friends. This is something that I suggested may be true based on the stereotyping I did in the previous post on this topic area.
Next were my qualitative questions. In order to analyse these I put some of the responses into Wordle, a free piece of online software that allows you to create word clouds. as a form of content analysis. The question was "What do you most admire about Jessie J?". The words which came up the most frequently are in the largest font; for instance 'awesome', 'charity', 'people', 'fashion' and 'honesty'. These words reflect how people see her as a person and I feel that these reflect them as individuals; for instance, the people who commented on her charity work did not also mention her fashion sense. The people who commented on her being 'awesome' did necessarily not talk about the other words on the cloud, such as 'dedication', 'confident' and 'inspiring'. I think this is important to note as it reflects how different people see her; it may be helpful to know individual responses and hence I went a little more indepth. Surveymonkey has a feature which allows you to see each respondent's answers individually; I chose a respondent who had answered "she does charity work" as a reason why they admired her. This respondent "wore comfortable, cheap clothes". In contrast, another wrote she has an "awesome fashion sense" and this same person declared that they often wore clothes they had seen their favourite artists wear.
I think this is important as it highlights the sort of things which people look for from their favourite artists. Some look to her to see how she is inspirational and committed to charity work, having shaved her head for Red Nose Day. Others look to her as a fashion icon and someone to see as a TV personality on shows such as The Voice. I then looked to see which song of hers they would say was their favourite and found out the following; the two most popular songs were Price Tag and Who You Are. An excerpt of the lyrics from each song are shown here too. I think this is a very important point because as I said in regard to the previous question, it reflects what people look to the artist for. In particular these two songs send messages that often are contradicted in more popular songs. Songs by rap artists and many pop artists brag about wealth and how happy and complete it makes a person feel. For instance the song Billionaire by Travie McCoy and Bruno Mars talks about the positives of having money and about the different kinds of entertainment and fun it offers a person. On the other hand, Jessie J asks "why is everyone so obsessed; money can't by us happiness". The song also asks why we can't "enjoy right now"; Travie McCoy's song states "oh the world better prepare; for when I'm a billionaire". This shows different ways of thinking in popular music, and is most likely a reason why Jessie J is popular for being a little bit different to her industry colleagues.
The second most popular song is Who You Are; the lyrics are also pictured. This song discusses feelings of insecurity and offers support to people who are feeling left out and unusual in their lives, friendships and schools. It is almost inspirational in some aspects, giving messages to these fans that they are not alone and that they do not have to feel bad for feeling that way in the first place.
I think that this shows a lot of her fans see Jessie as a strong role model who, despite her views being unorthodox as far as pop music is concerned, conveys positive messages of strength and honesty to her listeners.
This question leads into the next well. I then asked "Do you think Jessie J is a good role model? Why/why not?".
The overwhelming consensus from this question was "Yes". One person stated they didn't think so, claiming they believed she dressed provocatively.
Upon reading the responses, I think it is clear what Jessie J fans see in their favourite artist and why they have selected her as such. I have inserted the responses here, highlighting in bold some of the key words that they used to justify their reasoning. These include inspirational phrases she has used before. I think that this one sums them all up well: "Never expect, never assume, always work hard and always stay true to who you are".
From these answers I also think that people enjoy listening to Jessie J and have chosen her as a favourite artist because she is a role model to them in many ways; even if they are not acutely aware of her being someone they look up to, their answers here and in the previous qualitative questions reinforce this opinion; they all gave inspirational songs and commented on her in a way that suggests they would perhaps mimic her actions in their own lives (charity work and such).

In conclusion, Jessie J fans are very different in terms of their social lives, fashion sense, gender and age. However, the qualitative questions have revealed that they all like her for very similar reasons. I believe this leads me to the conclusion that people enjoy Jessie J as an artist because of her status as an inspirational and active member of charities. She has had a difficult life, one she spoke about often in songs like Who's Laughing Now, a song that talks about being bullied as a child, and has dedicated herself to raising £1million a year for charities that are 'close to her heart', ones that she became familiar with through difficulties in her youth, such as having a stroke at the age of 18 due to a condition she was diagnosed with at 11.
I think this also suggests to many young fans that they can always be successful no matter what they have dealt with at previous points in their lives. This is a positive message for young people and one that has hopefully reached a lot of her fans.

1 comment:

  1. Ideally you need to complete this task again for a band more closely linked to your chosen artist. You could also add a post/section that almost mood-boards a typical genre fan for your artist.

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