Kang, J., Lee, M., Park, E., Ko, M., Lee, M., & Han, J. (2019). Alliance for My Idol: Analyzing the K-Pop Fandom Collaboration Network. Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-6). Association for Computing Machinery. A really interesting, thoughtful, balanced novel about a very current issue in society which I think was handled very sensitively. Idol by Louise O'Neill is a fast and addictive read that I found really intriguing. Well written and filled with darkness. I thought this was a timely story and although the characters weren’t likeable they were highly interesting. A highly entertaining read! A gripping read from start to finish. People are going to be talking about this book for a long time to come! Thank you to NetGalley and to Random House UK for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. Idol will be out on May 12th - guaranteed to be a hit!

I love how this novel explores the many versions of truth as well as trauma and memory. It starts uncomfortable but important conversations about consent, sexual assault and the #MeToo movement. It's also an acute deep dive into the influencer lifestyle and image, social media toxicity, performative wokeness and cancel culture. In the opening moments of Sam Levinson’s The Idol, red hot pop megastar Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp, Johnny Depp’s 23-year-old daughter) is commanded by a photographer to cycle through seven different emotions on cue. It’s worth making the most of these, because it’s six and a half more than you’ll see her deploy over the next hour and three quarters. She understood their despair but more importantly, she understood the fury hiding beneath their smiles. She knew there was nothing more powerful than a woman finally given permission to scream."

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People claimed they wanted the the truth but when faced with it, it was too messy for them to accept. The truth often felt like a story, one with plot holes, an unreliable narrator."

I've lived in this city long enough to know that the only thing these people can't forgive is poverty. If you have enough money, they'll forget everything." This book consists of a Part 1 dedicated to research design and causality, making use of causal diagrams to make the concept of identification straightforward, and a Part 2 dedicated to implementation and common research designs like regression with controls and regression discontinuity. You can see the chapters and navigate between them on the left (on in the dropdown menu up top if you’re on a small screen). For the first two instalments of this colossally gormless series, Jocelyn’s face is frozen in a glassy-eyed, brink-of-tears moué, as she weathers the sheer relentless hell of being a rich, popular, conventionally attractive American woman in her early 20s who lives in an enormous mansion in Los Angeles. Idol - like all of Louise's books - is a timely and incisive take on important socio-cultural issues. As always, her commentary is searing and her writing scalpel-sharp. Essentially this is a story about the subjectivity of memory and the curation and manipulation of the past to spin a suitable narrative. This is also a book about friendship and envy, and although this book is set in New York and Connecticut, the story throbs with the bitterness of Irish begrudgery.Mansor, N. A., Abdul Razak, R., Mohamad, Z. Z., Din, N., & Abdul Razak, A. (2020). The Affective Economy and Online Fan Communities: A Case Study of Johnny & Associates. In N. Suki, & N. Suki (Eds.), Leveraging Consumer Behavior and Psychology in the Digital Economy (pp. 91-105). IGI Global. This author is just a master at creating these amazingly complex, flawed human beings and you hate them but relate to them all at the same time for the perfectly imperfect way they swan through life. I think so much can be written about the world of influencers - particularly a type of influencer (rich, white women) who don't really know the meaning of struggle taking advantage of the needs and issues of other women who are so desperate for a calm face to guide them through it all. There were some great moments in this when we see how Sam's following is mostly white young women (but that's not her fault) and she receives criticism from BIPOC influencers in the same sphere for her cultural appropriation when it comes to the type of practices she preaches which seem to be a mixture of different faiths and organisations.

Ultimately, to me, this does a huge disservice to everyone who has ever been the victim of sexual violence. Our MC has suffered through sexual violence, but since she lied about how it happened, it will only be used against her. The best friend, who has come forward with her allegations and is obviously not well, literally only suffers for trying to speak her truth and will continue to do so now that the truth is finally out in the world. So really, there is no way to win. Isn't that just the uplifting message you want to send to people dealing with sexual violence? Obviously it isn't. So why send it? Livingstone, S. (1998). Relationships between Media and Audiences: Prospects for Audience Reception Studies (pp. 237-255). Routledge.With the development of the entertainment industry, a massive number of fan groups have gradually entered the public eye. This situation has led to the development of a unique fan culture and a “fan economy.” Traditional media mainly use a more traditional yet persistent format, such as television programs, for relevant publicity. However, the constant emergence of artists and fan groups is no longer enough to satisfy the influence and appeal of traditional media. Idols and fans are now seeking newer, faster and more efficient ways to target audiences using online media. Because of the timeliness of the Internet and the good human interaction, both provide great mediums for the fan base to have an emotional connection with their idols that is “engaging” and “companionable”. In contrast, such an emotional connection is crucial for brands and advertising, as fans will buy like crazy for the products endorsed by their idols, which is the most desirable situation for brands. However, emotional connections do not generate new value but transfer value from some goods to others. Liu, X. (2020). Observation on the Turn of Music Talent TV Show 3.0 in China. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2020) (pp. 535-540). Atlantis Press. You can't give a man the power to make you cry. That's what they want and if you're weak enough to give it to them, they won't respect you. There's always one person who loves the other a little more in a relationship." This era has witnessed the constant updating and progress of Internet technology and social networking services. New media has brought fans and idols closer and provided convenient and diversified interactive entrances for fan groups’ activities, becoming an essential foundation for the development of the idol industry. The Internet era has brought idols and fans closer together emotionally. The development of new media has diversified the means of communication and increased the exposure of idols on various platforms. Secondly, the interactive nature of online video variety shows. Viewers are connected not only through the production of meaning, but also through the production of content.