TY - JOUR
T1 - Innovation and conformity in music reproduction: A network analytics approach to contestants’ song covering in reality shows in Mainland China and the U.S.
AU - Zhang, Xinzhi
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Hong Kong Baptist University under the Faculty Start-up Grant (no. RC-1617-1-A2).
Funding Information:
The author would like to thank Mengyi Zhang, Ge Song, and Wanting Xu, for their help to this project. The author also thanks Professor Lun Zhang, Professor Scott Lash, Professor Anthony Fung, Professor Wei He, and Professor Jie Qin, and all the discussants at the 2nd Digital Media Studies Conference held on 26?27 August 2017 at Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, for the valuable insights and comments of an earlier version of this manuscript. The author also thanks the Editor and two anonymous reviewers of International Communication Gazette for their constructive comments. The author would like to thank Ms Joan Zong for all the wholehearted support when this manuscript was developed and revised. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Hong Kong Baptist University under the Faculty Start-up Grant (no. RC-1617-1-A2).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2021/11
Y1 - 2021/11
N2 - Contestants in music reality television shows usually cover songs by other singers; however, excessive song covering is seen as a sign of lacking innovation. Informed by frameworks of innovation, conformity, and cultural capital, this study examines the patterns of song covering practice with a network analytics approach by examining the networks formed by the contestants’ song co-covering practices—an edge is created between two contestants if they cover songs from the same original singer—and how contestants’ positions in those networks are related to their performance outcomes. Examining contestants’ co-covering networks on the U.S.’s and mainland China’s versions of The Voice (an international music reality television show), the social network analysis largely supported the conformity hypothesis: contestants were connected to a certain extent, meaning that most contestants covered songs from similar original singers. Contestants’ betweenness centrality was positively associated with performance outcomes.
AB - Contestants in music reality television shows usually cover songs by other singers; however, excessive song covering is seen as a sign of lacking innovation. Informed by frameworks of innovation, conformity, and cultural capital, this study examines the patterns of song covering practice with a network analytics approach by examining the networks formed by the contestants’ song co-covering practices—an edge is created between two contestants if they cover songs from the same original singer—and how contestants’ positions in those networks are related to their performance outcomes. Examining contestants’ co-covering networks on the U.S.’s and mainland China’s versions of The Voice (an international music reality television show), the social network analysis largely supported the conformity hypothesis: contestants were connected to a certain extent, meaning that most contestants covered songs from similar original singers. Contestants’ betweenness centrality was positively associated with performance outcomes.
KW - Bipartite network
KW - conformity
KW - cultural capital
KW - innovation
KW - music reality television show
KW - social network analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105615852&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/17480485211014372
DO - 10.1177/17480485211014372
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1748-0485
VL - 83
SP - 639
EP - 661
JO - International Communication Gazette
JF - International Communication Gazette
IS - 7
ER -