A Blog by Joseph Sahyoun

Hip Hopping into a Pitch

My media niche is the music genre of Hip-Hop, after altering my week one idea I have decided this is the best route to take. In order to initiate as much conversation as possible I will start a Hip-Hop Twitter account that interacts with other pages’ tweets as well as creating my own on a frequent basis. The experience of engagement for artists and fans in the Hip-Hop community is unlike any other music genre due to its demographic that is fairly young in age. Using Twitter as well as a Spotify account with a weekly updated playlist I will examine how Hip-Hop fans interact with the genre.

@gothamcityrap is an example of a popular twitter account that is based entirely off of Hip-Hop content


Memes and ‘Hot Takes’ are a very common way to build engagement and conversation in the Hip-Hop community online and are a great way to build an audience and simultaneously create a persona online. Implementing these strategies I will build an online persona to accompany my Twitter account, I’ll aim to have as many as 10 tweets a week with 3 to 4 of them being memes. In a lecture it was stated by Christopher Moore that “Fieldwork involves making observations and collecting information about the field under investigation.” (Moore, 2020), with this knowledge I will visit as many ‘field sites’ as possible to gain as much of an understanding of the audience surrounding the niche as possible. Therefore, joining and observing the way that fans in Hip-Hop based discord servers, Instagram accounts and Twitter pages comment and connect will also be imperative to building an online persona and engaging with the audience. I will also create and curate a Spotify playlist weekly that will contain songs from the genre to better scope out the field site of my media niche.

Roadmap to the Beta

Expanded Field Map

Reference List

Joseph Sahyoun

8 responses to “Hip Hopping into a Pitch”

  1. Steff Robinson Avatar
    Steff Robinson

    Hey Joseph, focusing on Twitter sounds like a great way to immerse yourself into the Hip-Hop niche. You may want to investigate key hashtags for this niche and consider what types of accounts you’re planning to interact with and follow – will you stick to artists official accounts or interact more with other fans of the genre?

    Using Spotify is also a great concept, I hadn’t thought of using the platform like this before. How are you planning to choose the songs you’ll update with? Plus, will you be updating a single playlist or making relevant playlists weekly?

    The roadmap looks well thought out, but you may want to consider leaving some more time to focus on autoethnography rather than allocating a specific day. By keeping a current field journal, you can note any key discoveries or experiences as they happen. I found an interesting YouTube video that gives some good tips for keeping field notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp2UQQt4MdI

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  2. emmaviincent Avatar
    emmaviincent

    Hey Joseph,

    I’m loving your overall concept and utilizing not only Twitter but also Spotify! You may even want to identify followers within your own network to draw in followers outside of Twitter; this would build an initial platform and cause more receptive interest.

    Making sure to engage with replies, retweets, and tags as well as posting up-to-date visual content will keep your audience involved and consistently coming back to your account.

    The idea of a weekly updated playlist on Spotify is great! Would you want to create separate playlists for different artists, old school as well as the newest Hip Hop music just create options for your audience? Overall I love the idea and will be keeping up to date!

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  3. gracewallacemitchell Avatar
    gracewallacemitchell

    Awesome pitch, Joseph! You identified your niche and D.A very precisely and gave a great insight on exactly what it’s going to look like and why. The screenshot of your Twitter account demonstrated a clear persona and I personally love the bold and graphic aesthetic you’re going for. Your integration of meme culture is a great opening for interaction within the niche and shows that you understand the social atmosphere of Hip-Hop and it’s history in a contextual basis. Your roadmap looks quite busy as far as making and observing content goes: hopefully you can find a comfortable balance between enjoying and working in your niche. Your field site was a little difficult to discern because of its size and format. Your accompaniment of Spotify playlists to bolster your online presence sounds like it’ll work wonders for community engagement. Your interaction with the content and lectures is evident in the references and quotes in your contextual paragraph. I found a couple of resources that might be of use to you:

    The languages of global hip hop: https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YoCETlhOPDEC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=hip+hop&ots=aYbFG0M84V&sig=GLgyPNgboJiEEMlpjlPrPE2si2I&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=hip%20hop&f=false

    Generation of Memes to Engage Audience in Social
    Media: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2566/MS-AMLV-2019-paper11-p010.pdf

    Learn best practices to help you Tweet: https://business.twitter.com/en/basics/what-to-tweet.html

    Overall this is a fascinating study and I can’t wait to see it come into fruition alongside our studies. Best of luck!

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  4. casiepiccirilli Avatar
    casiepiccirilli

    Hey Joseph

    Being a huge fan of hip hop, I love this concept. The hip hop community is big online. So it’s good to see that your using different platforms as both Twitter and Spotify are great to use to help communicate with the hip hop community and to also build an audience, and for someone like me who keeps updated with new music, I think that creating a weekly updated playlist on Spotify is a good idea as new music is always coming out and also helps the audience to also keep updated with new music that comes out

    Ways you can interact with the audience is to make sure you engage with them such as like, comment and reposting will keep your audience more interacted with content you are posting

    I’ve also seen Tiktoks by @beepr_app who even posting content when music is coming out and information about artists which could be a good idea you could eventually start doing link: https://www.tiktok.com/@beepr_app/video/7000773302746615046?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

    The real question thoooo

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  5. jr586 Avatar
    jr586

    Wow! This blog post is seriously impressive. Firstly, I really enjoyed how in depth your video was in detailing your approach to this niche. The level of specificity is awesome, as it gives me a really great idea as to how you will actually be living out your auto-ethnography. I also like how you’ve referenced Dawson’s approach to “24 hour” research and linked it to your own process of embedding within the hip hop community. I also like how you have separated your material across both the video and text, as it makes the post as a whole feel very cohesive and professional. Given the subject matter, a bit of music in the background might have been a nice additional but that is only a minor point. Same goes for post tags which will help visitors navigate to your post.

    Considering this DA will be seeking to keep an eye on the pulse of hip hop, I think the article below detailing predictions for the future might be of interest for your research.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreabossi/2021/01/20/predictions-for-music-in-2021-according-to-pandoras-head-of-hip-hop/?sh=3d71329d5a9a

    This article is could similarly be of interest, as it analyse how “Black popular culture” such as hip hop has been globalised in the years since its birth, which might aid you in understanding its current state.

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504630.2015.1121567?src=recsys

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  6. Media Niches and Field Maps, Oh My! – runaway towards the clouds with me Avatar
    Media Niches and Field Maps, Oh My! – runaway towards the clouds with me

    […] Comment on Joseph’s ‘Hip Hopping into a Pitch’ […]

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  7. lozannabarnes Avatar
    lozannabarnes

    Hey,

    Your digital artefact pitch is really good, and your research and project plans are incredibly detailed in what exactly you plan on doing, e.g. how you will be utilizing Twitter and Spotify in your autoethnographic research. As others have commented, using Spotify for your research is really interesting. Your plan is well thought out, even predicting how many tweets you should have done by the end of the semester.

    The way you have set out your pitch is done well, making it easy to follow and easy to understand for a general audience. The blog post is visually appealing, as you have chosen to also add your field map and road map to the blog, making the information clear and easy to read. This is great for a general audience, as some audience members might prefer to skim/read a blog post instead of watching a video.

    I thought the definition on observational research was really good, and it was interesting how it mentioned that most researchers observe more than they participate. How will you ensure that you participate as much as you observe? Seeing as your plans are quite specific and detailed, I think you may have an answer for this already. I think it would be good to explore why researchers end up observing more than participating in practice, and how you plan on counteracting that trend.

    Overall, this is a great pitch and you’ve also done a good job in your use of visuals and images.

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  8. Reviewing Media Niche Research: Peer Review and Feedback – lauren barnes

    […] 3. https://blogofrandomoddities.com/2021/08/20/bcm-241-pitch/ […]

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