BTS’ Massive Popularity Surpassed Collective Efforts Of Global Health Institutions During The COVID-19 Pandemic ( Photo Credit – Facebook )
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The South Korean boy band BTS is surely among the most celebrated musical groups in the world. With their immense popularity, the band has made millions fall in love with their music. Not only that, their influence is often addressed to be massive and it has now even been proved. A new study by a university student has revealed that the group’s influence drove better public health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that the K-pop group surpassed the collective influence of CDC, NIH, and WHO.
The seven-member band debuted in 2013 and took the world by storm. Their quirky tracks and dance moves have made millions fall in love with their talent. Moreover, their connection with their fan base, ARMYs, is surely uncanny.
Herbert Chang, a Quantitative Social Science professor at Dartmouth College, has released a study in which he mentioned the massive influence of the K-pop group. The study was done when Chnag was a graduate student at the University of Southern California and the results show BTS’ impeccable influence during the pandemic.
As per Koreaboo, Chang, in an interview, revealed that the study pointed out how the WHO head used BTS in 16 tweets during the Pandemic and 2000 other tweets had a similar message. However, the reach of the BTS ones was 111 times. He said, “His 16 tweets that did contain BTS generated around 200,000 retweets. His other tweets generated about the same amount as well. From this, we can see that the increase in virality, just by adding them, was more than 111 times.”
Without a doubt, several BTS members, including Jungkook, V and RM, do regular live streaming to interact with their fans while a few of their bandmates are completing their mandatory military service. Chang added that another factor that helped in influencing so many people was the band’s strong and closely connected communities.
He said, “Also, one of the things we looked at was how strong their communities are. We can imagine social media networks as just networks; users are connected to users. We could basically measure the strength of these communities as well using social network analysis algorithms.” Throughout the Pandemic, BTS made sure to release upbeat songs that cheered their fans. Often, ARMYs have called the band a driving force during their difficult times.
As their many concerts were also canceled throughout the world, their fans donated a huge amount of money to charities. Chang revealed, “The fans online organized themselves to donate, basically, these refunds to different causes. One is the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Also to UNICEF as well. And this summed to more than $3 million or $4 million in total donations, often all in the span of a few days. This is all from this type of grassroots organization from using social media.”
BTS members are, RM, Jin, Jimin, J-Hope, Jungkook, Suga and V. The band is currently on a hiatus as they have to get enlisted for mandatory military service. So far, only Jin, J-Hope, and Suga have joined the service.
