Gareth Hodgson explores how interpreting “what people are saying on socials” is not as simple as it sounds.
“Turn that crap off!” said a dad to his teen, somewhere in 1970. And 1980. And 1990. And… (you get the picture).
There’s nothing like music to hammer home the echo chambers that we live in. And when you’re thinking music this week, you’re probably still thinking Glastonbury.
Maybe it’s just the world we live in now, but for a festival that is deep-rooted in peace, love and harmony, Glastonbury seems to be more divisive than ever.
It’s 15 years since Jay-Z headlined, causing outrage amongst traditionalists for not being a guitar band (“I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It’s wrong” moaned generic songsmith Noel Gallagher). But since then, the festival has evolved more at a headline level with the likes of Beyoncé, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar and Dua Lipa bringing more pop and hip-hop to close the Pyramid Stage.
But that doesn’t stop the discourse.
This year we had Gen Z faves The 1975, 79 year old legend Neil Young and former Disney Channel star Olivia Rodrigo.
Pretty diverse. And so were the reactions. Especially when you look at different social media channels.
If you look at TikTok with its younger user-base, Neil Young’s performance was questioned in terms of its relevance, audience and stripped back presentation and imperfect sound. The 1975 drew plenty of emotional engagement with Matty Healy’s trending tears, and Olivia Rodrigo’s energy and power cut through.
Over on Instagram, the visual spectacle of the staging and theatre of the two younger acts was generating buzz and content, whereas for the not-so-young Young, the focus was on the musical impact with clips of his biggest hits.
On Reddit there was detailed positive and negative analysis, and true to type, on X there were short-form heated arguments. Arguments EVERYWHERE. And depending on your age or musical preference, Neil Young was anywhere between genius and geriatric bore. Olivia Rodrigo was a surprise… either positively from her performance, or negatively that she was even a Sunday headliner. The 1975 were either showing their top-of-the game musical prowess or delivering bland insipid drivel.
As Matty Healy drove older music purists insane saying “What this moment is making me realise is that I, probably, am the best songwriter of my generation. The best poet, ladies and gentlemen, is what I am. A generational poet. A generational wordsmith.”, Gen Z’s lapped up the sarcasm, rage-bait (to both ‘Boomers’ and ‘Swifties’) and meme-able qualities.
And how do I subtly shoehorn this back to having a research-focus?
The key takeaway is that you can’t treat “social media” as a single channel or a singular voice. “Social Media” often gets lazily used as a generic term. It’s not. Different people are using different platforms and using them differently.
As we’ve seen with Glastonbury. The focus might be visual. Or emotive. Or experiential. Or argumentative. But not necessarily all in the same place, even though the topic is the same. There will even be people debating the quality of a performance on one platform but then sharing and enjoying the visual production on another.
And it’s not as simple as old people vs. young people.
If you’re asking “What are people saying on socials?”, you need to ask: Which platform? Which people? In what context? Without thinking about the distinct purpose of each channel and segmenting by channel and audience, you risk misinterpretation or hearing only part of the story. The social noise around Glastonbury shows us just how fragmented online conversations can be. And that’s why nuanced, audience-specific social listening should be a critical part of any brand’s research toolkit.
