Take our latest survey here: bit.ly/armytwt_survey! 💜

There has been lots of writing about BTS’s musical contributions, the impact of their messages to fans, their cultural impact, and their economic impact. I am interested in the relationship that BTS has with ARMY. As RM states in his April 8, 2022 VLIVE, “when you say the name of ‘BTS’ it’s not just 7 boys. It includes… ARMYs. They are truly are together in our everyday lives. It’s not just one-way. It’s mutual. We give them something and they give us something. I mean, you guys give us something. And I truly felt that today as well, seeing you guys in person and hearing your voices. It’s something, it comes from the heart. It’s about the soul. It’s about sharing hearts and sharing souls.“

I am leading a team of researchers to better understand the technological platforms that BTS and ARMY use to create their own special community. I am especially interested in how this impacts marginalized ARMY, such as disabled ARMY. We are looking to understand how playful online communities, such as fandoms, engage in forms of care and activism. In doing this, we hope to legitimize these communities as spaces for play and enjoyment, as well as care, relationship building, and civic engagement.

Contributions from this research will 1) help us better design tech platforms for communities like ours, 2) help legitimize the BTS ARMY community, 3) help us better understand the practices of the BTS ARMY community, and 4) shed light on some experiences within the BTS ARMY community.

To do this we’ll be conducting several different studies (surveys, interviews) and well as continuing to notice my own experiences (participant observation) as an ARMY. We’ll be posting some surveys over time to gather some information about ARMY and how they use different social media and other tech platforms.

I will update this page with new information about findings and publications as they happen!

Do you search for, download, or share BTS related content? We are designing a platform to help make searching for images and gifs easier and to help crowdsource alt text. Take this survey to help us design: https://bit.ly/BangtanImageSurvey

Survey for ARMY is available here: http://bit.ly/armytwt_survey

Academic Publications

The first full length paper about BTS ARMY from this project is being presented at CHI 2022 in May: https://kateringland.com/armys-magic-shop/

I presented my work about the accessibility of play in the BTS ARMY community online at SCMS 2022: https://kateringland.com/scms-2022-the-serious-business-of-accessibility-in-playful-community-spaces/

We have been featured in the ACM XRDS Magazine! You can read more about it here: https://kateringland.com/new-article-finding-community-online-in-army-acm-xrds-magazine/

The first of this work will be presenting at a CSCW 2021 workshop on the Future of Care. You can read more about it here: https://kateringland.com/looking-for-care-in-playful-online-communities/

Here is the pre-recording of my SCMS 2022 talk:

I gave a talk at the University of Washington January 12, 2022 for the DUB group. You can see that here:

If you have questions about this research, please feel free to reach out to me at kringlan [at] ucsc [dot] edu or on Twitter (@liltove).

Latest Posts about BTS ARMY

Page last updated: April 12, 2022.