Who are BTS ARMY?
The BTS ARMY refers to the official fandom of the group. ARMY is an acronym that stands for Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth. The Vivid Seats infographic provides insight into BTS’s ARMY demographics. While the fans are largely female (75%), there is a wide range of age groups represented, disputing media attempts to trivialize the authenticity of BTS by labeling their fans as “teenage girls”. It is also noteworthy that there was an increase in age range diversity after their 2019 tour announcement. The fan female category of ages 24-35 increased by 11%.
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Why do They Like BTS?
As stated in the previous section, BTS mainly interacts with fans through social media. To further understand why they are fans, there needs to be an explanation on why people use social media. Ridings and Gefen study on “Why people hang out online” examined the motivation for social media use, and discovered three primary usages: to seek information, to receive social support, and to establish friendships and recreation. Out of the three listed reasons behind social media usage, Young Hwan Kim claimed, “social support and friendship are the most influential motives” (Kim 808).
This motivation can be implicitly shown through the internet community of BTS fans, where people of different backgrounds, ages, and cultures interact on multiple social media platforms as a result common appreciation of the same musical group. After the research conducted on transnational K-pop fans, they [K-pop fans] have cited that the increasing availability of K-pop on social media was a particularly significant factor allowing the fans to freely access K-pop (Yoon 177).
The fans also cite the language barrier as a reason for their involvement through social media. Since, the majority of fan content and songs are written for their primary audience, Korean youth. The language barrier paradoxically facilitates overseas K-pop fans’ investment in translation and interpretation of the original texts, using social media, and thus, allows them to participate in K-pop fan culture. (Yoon 182).