In this article, we analyze how a music genre is reciprocally defined online, through the crowdsourced ‘facts’ of Wikipedia. What are the traditional implicit and explicit exclusionary practices in this sort of genre formation? And how can internet-specific sociabilities create new exclusionary practices in the process of defining music? By analyzing the edit history of Wikipedia’s ‘hyperpop’ page, we locate ongoing debates, controversies, and contestations that point to shaping forces around online genre formation. These potentially have a huge impact on how hyperpop is understood both inside and outside of the music community. In locating the most active editors of the hyperpop Wikipedia page and scrutinizing their edit histories as well as the discussions on the hyperpop page itself, we uncovered debates about artistic notability, biases toward specific sources, and attempts at associating or dissociating musical genre from non-musical identities (such as race, gender, and nationality). In sum, we aimed to investigate the main controversies involved in the Wikipedia definition of hyperpop for what they can tell us about both the process of online genre formation and the very nature of collective knowledge-making spaces.
ButlerJ (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
5.
ButlerJ (2004) Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
6.
CaliandroA (2018) Digital methods for ethnography: Analytical concepts for ethnographers exploring social media environments. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography47(5): 551–578.
7.
CurrieM (2012) The feminist critique: Mapping controversy in Wikipedia. In: BerryDM (ed.) Understanding Digital Humanities. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 224–248.
8.
DeleuzeGGuattariF (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (trans. MassumiB). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
9.
DeNoraT (2013) After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.
DetrickB (2012) Little mermaid goes punk: Seapunk, a web joke with music, has its moment. New York Times, 2March.
11.
DhaenensFBurgessJ (2019) ‘Press play for pride’: The cultural logics of LGBTQ-themed playlists on Spotify. New Media & Society21(6): 1192–1211.
12.
DowdG (2006) Introduction: Genre matters in theory and criticism. In: DowdGStevensonLStrongJ (eds) Genre Matters. Bristol: Intellect, 11–27.
13.
DuffD (ed.) (2000) Modern Genre Theory. London: Routledge.
FabbriF (1982) What kind of music?Popular Music2: 131–143.
17.
FileneB (2000) Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & and American Roots Music. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
18.
FordHWajcmanJ (2017) ‘Anyone can edit’, not everyone does: Wikipedia’s infrastructure and the gender gap. Social Studies of Science47(4): 511–527.
19.
FrithS (1978) The Sociology of Rock. London: Constable.
20.
HaimsonODame-GriffACapelloE, et al. (2021) Tumblr was a trans technology: The meaning, importance, history, and future of trans technologies. Feminist Media Studies21(3): 345–361.
21.
HarawayD (2018) Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleManMeetsOncoMouse. New York: Routledge.
22.
HebdigeD (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen.
23.
HesmondhalghD (2002) The Cultural Industries. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
24.
IbaTNemotoKPetersB, et al. (2010) Analyzing the creative editing behavior of Wikipedia editors: Through dynamic social network analysis. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences2(4): 6441–6456.
KozinetsR (2010) Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
28.
LatourB (2007) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
29.
LeskovecJHuttenlocherDKleinbergJ (2010) Governance in social media: A case study of the Wikipedia promotion process. International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1004.3547. (accessed 12 July 2024).
30.
LuceM (2021) The ‘gec-effect’: How 100 gecs renders genre and gender absurd. Zenith!5(1): 9–24.
31.
McRobbieA (1989) Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
32.
MatsueJ (2017) The ideal idol: Making music with Hatsune Miku, the ‘first sound of the future. In: WeintraubABarendregtB (eds) Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 320–348.
MoatsD (2019) Following the Fukushima disaster on (and against) Wikipedia: A methodological note about STS research and online platforms. Science, Technology, & Human Values44(6): 938–964.
35.
MooreA (2003) Analyzing Popular Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36.
MuñozJE (1997) ‘The White to be angry’: Vaginal Davis’s terrorist drag. Social Text52/53: 81–103.
37.
MuñozJE (2009) Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press.
StirlingC (2016) ‘Beyond the dance floor’? Gendered publics and creative practices in electronic dance music. Contemporary Music Review35(1): 130–149.
50.
StrawW (1991) Systems of articulation, logics of change: Communities and scenes in popular music. Cultural Studies5(3): 368–388.
51.
ThomasP (2016) Wikipedia and Participatory Culture: Why Fans Edit. Transformative Works and Cultures, No. 22. Organization for Transformative Works. DOI: 10.3983/twc.2016.0902.
WangAPappuACramerH (2021) Representation of music creators on Wikipedia, differences in gender and genre. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media15(1): 764–775.
