Texting and Tweeting at Live Music Concerts: flow, fandom and connection with other audiences through mobile phone technology (original) (raw)

in Burland, K. & Pitts, S. E. (Eds) Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience, Ashgate Press.

Email me for full version of the chapter. In recent years, the use of mobile internet and social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and SMS text messaging has changed the live music experience for some popular music audiences quite considerably. Within music fandom, live concerts have been determined as constituting a “powerful meeting” place where individuals come together to “enact the meaning of fandom” (Cavvichi 1998: 37). The arrival of these social tools has permitted a powerful interjection into the behaviour within this meeting place, by not only allowing music fans to find and connect with each other, but also to tweet and text concert set-lists, photos and other information as they happen, thereby allowing non-attendees around the world to feel part of the event (Bennett 2012). This chapter will examine the process of texting and tweeting by live popular music concert attendees in an effort to connect with a non-physically present audience. Through empirical research, in the form of a questionnaire conducted with fans of prolific touring artist Tori Amos, the impact of this practice on the physically present audience will be explored, in an effort to understand and unravel the consequences of this process on their live music experience. I will examine the responses of those engaged in this activity during concerts, and how non users perceive it, in order to ascertain the extent and manner with which use of technological tools and subsequent connections with non-physically present individuals are changing, and can change, an audience’s engagement within the live listening process. Subsequently, an important consideration of the study will be to ascertain what fans at live music concerts perceive is gained or lost by the incorporation of these emerging social platforms into their live music experience. For example, mobile phones are now increasingly held in the air during concerts, replacing the tradition of using cigarette lighters (Strauss 1998) and being “constantly present” (Chesher 2007) within the audience. I will question how this may disrupt the concept of “flow” which involved an understanding that, “the very conditions of live performance help focus attention on the music” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990 [2002]: 110) and and how the engagement of a live music audience is viewed as being affected and impacted by the new tools. Finally, the analysis will also strive to question how the music and technological industries are working together to encourage this presence of the remotely located audience and to determine the subsequent effects of this on the physically present and their immersion in the show. With some music acts tweeting and texting their audiences during the show, offering exclusive access to online viewers, downloads of live performances, and encouraging the participatory use of mobile phones during some songs, I will explore how this impacts on the concert listening experience and expectations of crowd members. ""