Nice to (re)meet everyone.
My name is Virginia Alves and I’m a Mass Communication – Public Relations student with a French Minor and I am currently a communications intern at AARP Texas in Austin.
I was born in Brazil but soon moved to Austin when I was 2 years old because my dad got a job as none other than a Journalism professor at The University of Texas at Austin. He enjoys telling me that he has more Twitter followers than me and is one of the most hardworking people I know.
My parents raised me speaking only Portuguese at home and to this day my brain is wired so that speaking to them in English is extremely weird and almost uncomfortable. This year I moved back home to live with them and my three younger siblings, two sisters in high school and a brother who is majoring in computer science at UT.
When I was younger I dreamed of being a ballerina and was classically trained until I was 16 but nowadays I like to describe myself as I do in my twitter bio: “A 21 year old social media and pop culture enthusiast with the music taste and the mind of a teenager”.
Here, let me explain:
Once upon a time in 2009, I “fell in love” with an up-and-coming viral webstar/pop sensation named Justin Bieber and made a twitter to follow him. In a time when not many people used twitter, not many people knew who Justin Bieber was and he only have 300,000 followers, he interacted with me by being my 33rd follower as I was the 1240th person he followed. (His current stats are: 54.2 million followers and following 145,000. My current stats are not nearly as impressive with a whooping 3,300 followers.) Now, I may not be as much of a fan as I was back when I was 15, but I have him to thank for my interest in social media and it’s impact on music and pop culture. I was shown a world that some people consider to be “noise” within social media….the so called “fandoms”. I watched as social media changed his career and many others as the years went by. With new social media platforms came new ways of artists to be found and to launch their projects.
This viral music scene is what most interests me, and it is mostly based around teenage girls with computers and phones all over the world who retweet, revine, reblog, re-everything videos on various platforms. It is fascinating to see the power of social media.
I spend most of my free time exploring this world of talented and viral people (usually teenage boys, but occasionally girls, as well as “older” indiviudals) who post videos and vines and keep up with an extensive amount of social media interaction. Whether it’s on YouTube watching copious amounts of well produced “homemade” music videos, “challenge” and “tag” videos or on Vine watching so many “relatable” and “music” vines that I almost feel like everything in the world only goes for 6 seconds or even just staring in awe at the Twitter accounts of “social media gurus” who have audiences sometimes larger than TV or Hollywood stars you will always find me on my iPhone and Macbook (sometimes simultaneously).
Now for our class project I was reading the ideas posted by the rest of you and I think you all covered most of what I would’ve offered as suggestions.
Jesse’s second idea about the anticipation and social media buzz is the most appealing to me as I’m sure you would imagine.
- I think the idea is extremely interesting but I would add that if we are going to target “local” artists I would think the buzz might not be very prominent. When doing my own research about fans going to specific concerts I’ve found that sometimes band names are difficult because they are made of very ordinary words or even the venue names sometimes aren’t as specific as we would imagine. I guess these would just be complications that we could overcome but I think they are worth pointing out.
- I would also like to add on to this idea. Could we focus on a big event like ACL? Or several big events since this project will be continuing after the class is over. We could connect how these big events like ACL and SXSW bring together a community of music lovers from not only Texas but around the world, all to Austin to enjoy music. I know for a fact these events create buzz and it would be interesting to maybe look at how they influence Austin.
Jesse’s third idea is also one that I am interested in. I think certain venues in Austin have specific reputations and people go back searching for music that is similar to something they’ve heard there before, while at the same time some venues have all kinds of artists.
Jordan’s idea of “local” artists is definitely another that I would love to explore. With the app idea that she proposed I think we could combine it with Jesse’s venue idea. Compiling a data base of bands and venues and see how they crossover might be interesting. Also, I love her idea of following around a local band. I think that would be very interesting and perhaps give us insight we wouldn’t have otherwise had.