All the K-pop fans, where do they all come from?
During last year's T-ara War I was often wondering who all these people were, the commenters, the battlers. I made guesses (that most were in their teens or twenties, most were female) that I can't confirm; also wondered what countries they were posting from. I was watching the ones who posted in English, which I knew was an international language among Asians in East Asia, as well as among Europeans and North Americans, for communication across borders or - in places like the Philippines and Singapore - across ethnicities and language groupings. Usefully, hyotheleader, one of T-ara's staunchest and effective defenders last August (she* did the hard work of going through faked and out-of-context videos and photos and detailing exactly how they were bogus), has a flag counter appended to her Tumblr (lower right corner), which you can click to get much greater detail. Of course, that's just one person's Tumblr, it's skewed towards T-ara fans, obviously, since it's mostly devoted to reblogs of Hyomin pictures and gifs, and it'll skew towards followers from where Tumblr is most prominent and towards whatever reader trends accumulate on the basis of who started following her early and whom she started following early. Also, not everyone in a country is from that country.** Here are the numbers from a few days ago:
United States 14.9%
Thailand 13.7%
Malaysia 11.1%
Singapore 8.6%
Indonesia 7.9%
Vietnam 5.4%
South Korea 5.1%
Philippines 4.1%
Taiwan 3.0%
Canada 2.7%
Australia 2.1%
China 1.7%
Hong Kong 1.5%
United Kingdom 1.5%
Others 16.5%
Surprised that Japan is relegated to "Others"; T-ara's fanbase is probably strong enough in Japan that the fans don't have to worry about communicating in some language other than Japanese. Also surprised that Vietnam is so low, since if I went by what language provides the most subtitles to K-pop vids, Vietnamese seems second only to English (I say "seems" because I've never actually counted; but my impression is that no other language comes close to those two). Of course, this might indicate not just the strength of Vietnamese interest in K-pop, but a relative lack of English speakers in Vietnam compared to other Asian nations experiencing the Korean Wave.
Delving into "Others" is pretty interesting. The site's gotten over 300 unique visitors each from Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Germany, Mexico, Peru, Turkey, Spain, Chile, Netherlands, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Brunei, Kuwait, Mongolia, Romania. Countries with one visitor each are Namibia, Virgin Islands, Jersey, Botswana, Haiti, Gabon, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Aland Islands, Burkina Faso, Saint Lucia, Isle Of Man, Iran, Barbados, Tanzania, Fiji, Ethiopia.
[Wikipedia: "The Åland Islands or Åland (Swedish: Åland, Swedish pronunciation: [ˈoːland]; Finnish: Ahvenanmaa) is an autonomous, demilitarised, monolingually Swedish-speaking region of Finland that consists of an archipelago lying at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea. Collectively, the islands in the archipelago form the smallest region of Finland, constituting 0.49% of its land area and 0.50% of its population."]
*I have to use a pronoun so I'm going with my guess that hyotheleader is a she, based on my feeling about her tone of voice. But I've no actual evidence of her gender.
Of course it's a stereotype to assume that her flavor of anguish last August and the fact that she's such an active fan makes her female. I suppose that there are probabilities associated with those stereotypes, but a probability isn't a certainty, and I'm going on the basis of Anglo-American stereotypes anyway. (Only actual number I've seen is from when I did a little work for the Australian Smash Hits circa 1990: I remember that, in one of their business pitches, Smash Hits listed demographic info about readership, including that it was something like 80 percent female. But a percentage for Kylie Minogue fans in 1990 in Australia doesn't necessarily give us a percentage for T-ara fans in 2012 in Asia or of Asian descent (a lot of them) or generally internationally.) I've just noticed that hyotheleader's got an "ask me anything" link (I keep forgetting that Tumblr provides that service), so I can ask her who she is, if she's a she, where she's from, etc. Btw, going by fan chants, if that's any indication, T-ara's fanbase, while mostly female, has more males than most other K-pop girl groups do.
**Since hyotheleader mostly posts pictures, she could well get visits from a lot of people who don't know English.
United States 14.9%
Thailand 13.7%
Malaysia 11.1%
Singapore 8.6%
Indonesia 7.9%
Vietnam 5.4%
South Korea 5.1%
Philippines 4.1%
Taiwan 3.0%
Canada 2.7%
Australia 2.1%
China 1.7%
Hong Kong 1.5%
United Kingdom 1.5%
Others 16.5%
Surprised that Japan is relegated to "Others"; T-ara's fanbase is probably strong enough in Japan that the fans don't have to worry about communicating in some language other than Japanese. Also surprised that Vietnam is so low, since if I went by what language provides the most subtitles to K-pop vids, Vietnamese seems second only to English (I say "seems" because I've never actually counted; but my impression is that no other language comes close to those two). Of course, this might indicate not just the strength of Vietnamese interest in K-pop, but a relative lack of English speakers in Vietnam compared to other Asian nations experiencing the Korean Wave.
Delving into "Others" is pretty interesting. The site's gotten over 300 unique visitors each from Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Germany, Mexico, Peru, Turkey, Spain, Chile, Netherlands, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Brunei, Kuwait, Mongolia, Romania. Countries with one visitor each are Namibia, Virgin Islands, Jersey, Botswana, Haiti, Gabon, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Aland Islands, Burkina Faso, Saint Lucia, Isle Of Man, Iran, Barbados, Tanzania, Fiji, Ethiopia.
[Wikipedia: "The Åland Islands or Åland (Swedish: Åland, Swedish pronunciation: [ˈoːland]; Finnish: Ahvenanmaa) is an autonomous, demilitarised, monolingually Swedish-speaking region of Finland that consists of an archipelago lying at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea. Collectively, the islands in the archipelago form the smallest region of Finland, constituting 0.49% of its land area and 0.50% of its population."]
*I have to use a pronoun so I'm going with my guess that hyotheleader is a she, based on my feeling about her tone of voice. But I've no actual evidence of her gender.
Of course it's a stereotype to assume that her flavor of anguish last August and the fact that she's such an active fan makes her female. I suppose that there are probabilities associated with those stereotypes, but a probability isn't a certainty, and I'm going on the basis of Anglo-American stereotypes anyway. (Only actual number I've seen is from when I did a little work for the Australian Smash Hits circa 1990: I remember that, in one of their business pitches, Smash Hits listed demographic info about readership, including that it was something like 80 percent female. But a percentage for Kylie Minogue fans in 1990 in Australia doesn't necessarily give us a percentage for T-ara fans in 2012 in Asia or of Asian descent (a lot of them) or generally internationally.) I've just noticed that hyotheleader's got an "ask me anything" link (I keep forgetting that Tumblr provides that service), so I can ask her who she is, if she's a she, where she's from, etc. Btw, going by fan chants, if that's any indication, T-ara's fanbase, while mostly female, has more males than most other K-pop girl groups do.
**Since hyotheleader mostly posts pictures, she could well get visits from a lot of people who don't know English.