This presentation is work in progress which examines the audience response via Twitter to The X Factor franchise.

1. RETWEETS AS A RESOURCE
FOR AUDIENCING: THE X
FACTOR
DR RUTH PAGE
UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER
REP22@LE.AC.UK; @RUTHTWEETPAGE

2. AUDIENCING AND TWITTER
• Developing practices of social television (Buschow et al. 2014)
• Does this shift ‘power’ towards the audience?
• Harrington 2013, Stever et al, 2014
• Participatory fandoms (Wood and Baughman 2012, Bore and Hickman 2013)
• Or are audience responses primarily of value to the producers of mainstream
content?
• Bober 2014, Bury et al. 2013

3. EXISTING WORK ON TWITTER AND AUDIENCING
• We need to know more about the diversity of audiencing practices
• Differences according to the type of television programme (Doughty et al. 2012)
• Differences according to national context (Highfield et al. 2013)
• Fandoms, anti-fans (Gray 2005) and Snark fandoms (Harman and Jones 2013)
• The X Factor franchise as a transnational example

4. THE DIVERSE X FACTOR AUDIENCES
• Show creates rival fandoms around contestants
• Judges make evaluations as well as the viewing public
• Exploits confrontainment (Blitvich et al. 2013)
• Franchise has been subject to controversy since the outset
• #xfactor threads as a collapsed context
• There are multiple series in the franchise

5. DATA AND METHODS
• Topical hashtag #xfactor
• Tweet archivist
• October-December 2013, UK series 10, USA series 3
• 1.6 million tweets (10 episodes)
• Sample of four episodes (3 weekly intervals)
• Start and end of live shows + 2 mid-points
• Mixed methods analysis derived from computer-mediated discourse analysis
(Herring 2007)

6. RETWEETS
• There were a lot of retweets in the data!
• 95,672 retweets in 159,680 posts (or 60% of the data)
• Different from other datasets (e.g. boyd et al. 2011, Page 2012, 2014)
• Why might retweets be so prevalent as a resource in audiencing?

7. THE IMPORTANCE OF RETWEETS
• Retweets increase visibility
• Retweets are ‘conversational’ and co-constructed
• The social meaning of retweeting is ambiguous (boyd et al. 2011)
• Here framed as entextualisations of affective response and affiliation
• RT @TheXFactor: They couldn't have given their #SaveMeSong more. RT to give
@KingslandRd a deserved round of applause. #XFactor

8. GOFFMAN (1981) ON FOOTING
• The Figure
• Persons represented in the
reported speech
• The Author
• The person who created the
content of the reported speech
• The Animator
• The ‘voice box’ who reproduces
the earlier content

9. ASYMMETRY IN THE PARTICIPATION ROLES
• Authors – create content
• Animators – redistribute the
content
• Many more animators than authors
• 71,517 unique Animators
• 6,527 Authors
• Very little overlap between
Animators and Authors (top
Authors retweet in only 0.3% of
the data)
• Emphasis on redistribution is higher
in relation to The X Factor USA
• USA – 13 reduplications/RT
• UK - 5 reduplications/RT

10. AUTHORS IN THE TOP 200 RETWEETS
X Factor USA (series 3)
• Series account, Judges, Contestants
• Personnel from the wider music
industry
• Entertainment news and fan news
accounts
• Fan
X Factor (UK) series 10
• Series account, Judges,
Contestants, Guest performers
• Entertainment news and fan news
accounts
• Personnel from the entertainment
industry (not just music, but also
sport, reality television, comedians)
• Parody and humorous accounts
• Commercial accounts
• Fans

11. IT’S A MATTER OF
THE MATHS
Follower list Percentage of
the retweets
@ddlovato
(Demi Lovato)
25 million 59%
@thexfactorusa 2.85 million 32%
@thexfactor 5.28 million 55%
@littlmixoffic 6.73 13%
The high rates of reduplication can
be explained in part by the size of
the follower lists of the most
frequently retweeted Authors.
The retweets in response to The X
Factor USA are dominated by the
Twitter based fandom of Demi
Lovato, whose Follower list is over
four times the size of the next
largest list, and who appeared in
every episode as a Judge/Mentor.
Lovatic-derived usernames featured
in 1963 of the accounts in the
episode for the first USA Live Show
(5% of all tweets).
Retweet rate taking into account the
size of the Follower list shows a very
different picture.

12. AUDIENCING
STRATEGIES
Redistribute
celebrity
content
Interaction:
Encouraging
audience
engagement
& Projecting
affiliation
Creating
commentary
The verbal and visual content of the
retweets suggests that there are
four main strategies that occur in the
audiencing.
These can be taken up by both
performers (that is personnel related
to the show such as judges and
contestants) and viewers, but
position the audience as variously
‘creative’ and rapport enahcing or
threatening within a scale of
produsage activities.

13. #1 REDISTRIBUTING (MICRO)-CELEBRITY CONTENT
• Fans redistributing celebrity content
• Breaking news
• RT @ddlovato: It's Motown night!!!! #xfactor
• Images reproduce stills from the show
• Backstage access
• RT @GaryBarlow: Morning all ! Off to routine my groups for this weekends show !
#Xfactor
• Images on set or in rehearsal spaces
• Micro-celebrity greetings to the fanbase
• RT @Andrew_Scholz: Merry Christmas to all from Restless Road #Christmas #xfactor
#christmassweaters http://t.co/FuNw6qS93W

14. #2. ENCOURAGING
AUDIENCE
ENGAGEMENT
• RT @JASMINEVILLEGAS: EVERYONE! make
sure to watch #XFactor tonight & VOTE as
many times as you can for my boy
@Carlitosway89 PLZ help keep …
• RT @GbArmy: call 09020 50 51 05 to vote
@RoughCopyUK Make sure @GaryBarlow s
last group are safe through to semi final
#XFactor http://t.c…
Made by performers and members
of the viewing public.
Seems to be ‘participatory’, but the
interactions serve the economic
interests of the television company
• Vote
• Retweet
• View in real time
• Join loyalty programmes
and so commodify audience
response.

15. #3 (A) INTERACTION
WITH THE
PROGRAMME: FAN TO
PERFORMER
• RT @fatherteebird: @TheXFactor Please can
I get a #TXFSign from Tamera? My name is
[deleted] and I love her so much please!
#txfsigns #xfactor xx…
• RT @demilovatobr: @TheXFactorUSA Hey,
we want @ddlovato next to @SimonCowell
on #xfactor! Demi Lovato #popartist
#PeoplesChoice
Like the performers on the televised
show, the members of the audience
can leverage the visibility afforded
by retweeting.
These examples show how fandoms
seek to influence the content of the
show.
But in their requests, the fans are
still positioned as audiences
consuming the content (such as
TXFsigns), thus perpetrating the
commodification of celebrity

16. #3 (B) INTERACTION FROM PROGRAMME’S
PERSONNEL TO OTHERS
Contestant > established celebrity
• Original tweet
• @TheXFactorUSA: That's right, THU
night @selenagomez will be
performing on the #xfactor stage!
Details here:
http://t.co/3qxNywRe25
• Modified retweet
• RT @sierradeaton: AHHH! RT
@TheXFactorUSA: That's right, THU
night @selenagomez will be
performing on the #xfactor stage!
Details here: htt…
Contestant > audience
• Original tweet
• @imLucyWatson: Can Luke Friend
just be a bit older #XFactor
• Quoted within a retweet
• @LukeFriendMusic:
"@imLucyWatson: Can Luke Friend
just be a bit older #XFactor" I
know it's such a shame :)

17. #4. CREATING COMMENTARY
Positive fandoms
• RT @rioferdy5: Roughy Copy did
their thing there with the R.Kelly
hit!! #Xfactor
• RT @JulienMacdonald: The
gorgeous @elliegoulding looked
stunning wearing my dress on the
#XFactor last night, amazing
performance! http://t…
Snark fandoms
• RT @MoreMon3yPlease: The way
Hannah tensed like she was in Gym
tho #Xfactor
http://t.co/S5mTIZq1oK
• Remediated image of the televised
content
• RT @KatieWeasel: The final 12
#XFactor http://t.co/0lT07Bd6eH
• Macro recontextualising the
televised content

18. RAPPORT IN THE COMMENTARY
Judges
• Make face-threatening critiques
within the performance of the
show as part of the
confrontainment, but do not carry
this critique into their social media
comments
Viewers
• Remediate and amplify moments of
confrontainment from the show
• Add their own critique as the ‘fifth
judge’, including satirical mockery
of the series as a whole

19. DISTRIBUTION OF STRATEGIES BY SERIES
53
26
12
4
USA Series Audiencing strategies
Amplifying celebrity Encouraging engagement
Interaction Commentary
46
18
9
24
UK Series Audiencing strategies
Amplifying celebrity Encouraging engagement
Interaction Commentary

20. CONCLUDING REMARKS AND QUESTIONS
Similarities
• Fandoms at work in relation to both
series which primarily position the
audience as consumers who
redistribute celebrity content and
shore up the interests of the
franchise
• More exaggerated in The X Factor
USA, where the sense of hierarchy
between emerging and established
celebrity is stronger
Differences
• Creative commentary is present to a
greater extent in The X Factor (UK)
• The rapport-threatening snark
fandom in parody accounts is absent
from The X Factor USA series
• American norms for (im)politeness?
Less threat to ‘The American Dream’?
• Performances of British humour?

21. LIMITATIONS AND NEXT STEPS
• Only looked at high frequency RTs
• Comparison of high and low frequency RTs
• Primarily verbal analysis here
• More to be said about the images and their interactional responses
• Analysis of the hashtags
• Analysis of the changes in audiencing behaviour in the opening, mid-point and
close of the live shows