Stereotypes in Music Journalism

• Examines how the interplay of age and gender is associated with negative stereotyping in music journalism.
• Focuses on media stereotypes of musicians and their fans in U.S. and UK music journalism.
• Conducts a quantitative comparison of how modern boy bands and their fans are portrayed compared to non-boy bands and their fanbases.
• Argues that a multifaceted connection of social identities of different individuals can create an associational effect leading to stereotypes.
• Measures the scope of the issue within UK and U.S. music journalism through a quantitative content analysis.

Introduction

• Many young women underplayed their obsession with One Direction because liking them wasn’t "cool".
• One Direction fans were seen in a belittling and condescending light that was perpetuated within the mainstream discourse.
• The study shows that being young and male does not automatically mean marginalization and stereotyping.
• The bands were stereotyped in part because of the combination of their age and their fanbase’s age and gender.

Stereotyping and Schema Theory

• Stereotyping in journalism is studied in a way that is generalizable, expanding on qualitative work.
• Stereotypical writing results from implicit schemas journalists have developed.
• Dismissing or ridiculing artists with young female fans perpetuates a cultural hierarchy.
• Media-perpetuated stereotypes of boy bands have the ability to marginalize a wider swath of society.
• Media stereotypes consist of recurring messages that associate people with traits, behaviors, and values generally considered undesirable, inferior, or dangerous.

Boy-Band Literature

• Consistently include their age or youth, feminine descriptors, innocent sexuality, and authenticity.
• There is a dearth of studies about boy bands from a critical perspective, but quantitative work is even more limited.

Age and Youth

• Sustained images of youthfulness make boy bands seem harmless.
• The members’ youth make them seem more accessible, intimate, and relatable.
• Looks skew toward the prepubescent and feminine, with members clean-shaven faces and lean builds rather than muscular forms.
• Stories about boy bands will describe them significantly more often than non-boy bands in terms of their age and youth.

Feminine Descriptors

• Boy bands have been associated with femininity since their inception.
• The presence of this stereotype manifests in the use of descriptions more often associated with women, such as “vulnerable,” “delicate,” “gentle,” etc.
• Stories about boy bands will use significantly more feminine descriptors than stories about non-boy bands.

Innocent Sexuality

• Differentiates between domineering “cock rock,” as music that emphasizes male sexuality, and vulnerable “teenybop".
• Boy-band sexuality is transformed into a spiritual yearning carrying only hints of sexual interaction.
• Terms such as “wholesome,” “innocent,” “pure,” and “chaste” abound.
• Stories about boy bands will use significantly more innocent sexuality stereotypes than stories about non-boy bands.

Authenticity

• A common refrain is that boy bands do not make “real” music.
• Authenticity can be viewed as individuality, authorship, honesty, identity, and integrity, and can change over time.
• The dichotomy between authentic/inauthentic is gendered.
• Opposition to commercialization is another tenet of authenticity.
• Stories about boy bands will use significantly more negative authentic stereotypes than stories about non-boy bands.

Fan Culture

• Fan communities go beyond those whose interest is merely casual.
• Aspects of online fandom is writing and consuming fanfiction, where fans create their own stories about artists.
• The teenybopper and the groupie stereotypes are further linked because of their immaturity when compared to the “true” rock and roll fan.
• This immaturity comes from a perceived lack of taste and appreciation
• Stories about boy bands will use significantly more negative fan stereotypes than stories about non-boy bands.

Methods

• Used a stratified random sample of journalistic articles including reviews, interviews, features, and Q&As, about boy bands and non-boy bands published between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2015.
• The sample size of 210 stories was determined by a G*Power analysis for a Mul- tivariate Analysis of Variance to correct for multiple tests with power of 0.95 and error of 0.05.
• The total N was stratified by whether the group was a boy band or non-boy band, with an equal number of stories per group – 105 per band type.
• This study was limited to all male, English-speaking bands. The bands with the most articles were chosen, provided they had at least five articles in at least two different publications.
• To have close comparisons with the non- boy bands, the front man for each non-boy band needed to be under 35 years old.

Measures

• Included New York Times, Billboard and Rolling Stone in the U.S., and the Guardian and the Times in the UK.
• Articles shorter than 250 words were eliminated because they did not focus on the bands enough to warrant coding.
• Age or youth was coded if the story gave a number for a band member’s age or a descriptor such as young, immature, youthful, teen, childlike, boys, etc.
• Feminine descriptors were coded if inherently feminine terms including vulnerable, delicate, gentle, sweet, chatty, perky, intimate, etc., were used.
• Innocent sexuality was coded if the music or artist was described negatively with a lack of sexuality including terms like wholesome, innocent, pure, modest, na ̈ıve, chaste, etc.
• Authenticity was coded if the story described a band’s music as a false or inaccurate representation of the members, produced for financial gain or fame rather than personal self-expression, being controlled by its label, having an emphasis on commerciality, sticking to a formula, and if members did not play instruments or write their own songs.
• Fans was coded if the story referenced fans or fan behavior with a negative connotation including using fan stereotypes such as groupies and teenyboppers, trivializing or rid- iculing fans, describing fans as having bad or immature taste, perceiving fans to like a band for sex appeal or unserious reasons, describing fans as obsessive, hysterical, frivolous, silly, or unable to control their emotions.

Results

• The first hypothesis predicting stories would stereotype boy bands in terms of age and youth significantly more than non-boy bands was supported.
• The second hypothesis predicting stories about boy bands would stereotype them using feminine descriptors significantly more than non-boy bands was not supported.
• The third hypothesis predicting boy bands would be described using innocent sex- ualized stereotypes more than non-boy bands was supported.
• The fourth and final hypothesis about the bands, predicting that stories about boy bands would be significantly more likely to use negative authenticity stereotypes more than non- boy bands was also supported.
• The fifth hypothesis, concerning fans, was supported; stories use significantly more negative fan stereotypes for boy bands.

Discussion

• Boy bands are stereotyped significantly more than their non-boy band equivalents in U.S. and UK music journalism on four of the five categories studied, including their fans.
• This study found that boy bands between 2010 and 2015 were diminished by stereotypes about their age, authenticity, sexuality, and fans, compared to non-boy bands.
• The fans of these boy bands were stereotyped significantly more than were the fans of non-boy bands including mentions of obsession and hysteria, dehuman- izing descriptions of screaming, hyper-focus on the most extreme fan behaviors, accusations of hormones running high.
• It is the combination of characteristics of the fans that interacts with the characteristics of the bands that lead to significantly more stereotypical writing.
• It becomes a problem when journalists repeatedly reference ideas like hysteria as an automatic go-to concept for boy-band fans without considering the underlying meaning or giving balanced portrayals.

Conclusion

• Stereotyping results when two or more categories of people are linked that interacts in a combinatory effect.
• The age of the band members and the age and gender of the fans results in stereotyping at greater rates.
• A limitation of this study is that it is correlational, it focuses exclu- sively on English-speaking boy bands and their portrayal in U.S. and UK media.
• Rather than intent, it is more likely that implicit stereotypes play a role in shaping how music journalists write about boy bands.