The question on everyone's mind: What does it take to research BTS? If you also self-identify as 'everyone', read on to learn more!
When you think of research, what comes to mind? Is it test tubes and pristine white labs? Wearing a blazer with tweed elbow patches as you stroll down the university green to a century old library? Maybe I’m not giving you enough credit. Perhaps you think research is university access to unlimited databases and having a Ph.D. to get paid for research.
You wouldn’t be wrong, but you also would be wrong.
Research is a passion. No one knows that better than Courtney Lazore, a university employee by weekday and a BTS Researcher when she can, and she can because she has the motivation.
“[My BTS studies] is a motivation of personal desire to learn and create, but also kind of became this motivation of how I want to create helpful content or content that in some cases can help go against mainstream narratives where there's some things that aren't correct,” she shared.
Lazore began listening to Korean music and watching Korean entertainment in 2007. She later became a fan of BTS in 2015 around the time when the Dark & Wild album dropped and shortly before the BTS classic “I NEED U” was released as a single. Later in that year, the album The Most Beautiful Moment in Life (also known as the HYYH era) signified a launch of the Bangtan Universe wherein the members took on character roles to illustrate significant storylines.
Despite Lazore’s background in history during her undergrad, she always had an interest in critical reading and gained skills in writing linguistics during her time in grad school. She began applying close reads to BTS music videos and as the Bangtan Universe expanded, so did Lazore’s content, which she published to a personal blog for her own fun and enjoyment.
“The start was just a personal blog that I didn't really try to share much online. It was more just for personal satisfaction. And then I can't stay away from it because now I just do it all the time where I have to write about this, or I have to analyze this. That's just my nature.I would have gone on to a PhD program, but I just didn't have the patience or the money for that. [I realized] I don't have to do that formally. I can just kind of do my own thing for a while and see what happens,” Lazore said.
In 2019, Lazore bought the website domain for The BTS Effect and began moving her content there and creating new content geared towards giving new ARMY the resources to understand the greater implications of the Bangtan Universe, especially when BTS generates a significant log of content. With BTS receiving global notice, it was clear that even academia began to take interest in the group and their cultural contributions. Opportunities such as the BTS conferences sprouted up, which is where Lazore met others taken with BTS studies and talks of starting Bangtan Scholars began.
The amount of effort put into the upkeep of maintaining a site of The BTS Effect’s nature feels insurmountable when knowing the amount of content generated by BTS, from media coverage, and works, posts, and more by BTS ARMY. That’s why with Bangtan Scholars, many conducting BTS Studies can contribute to the archive.
Being an individual researcher is the biggest challenge for Lazore. “I'm having to self-learn. Fan studies, for example, the research methodologies that weren't relevant to me as a history student, or as an English student. Now that I'm moving into fan studies, media studies, as related to BTS, not having background in some of those areas and not having a mentor, like at a university, if I had gone on for a PhD, I'd have an advisor and I could talk to them. That's been the biggest challenge, because I'm like, ‘Am I doing this right?’ Or ‘Did I misunderstand something?’”
Another challenge that faces all BTS studies, and fandom in general, is media coverage generalizations of fandoms primarily involving women. I 1000% agree with Lazore when she said, “The problem with mass media has been dismissive, dismissing fandoms, especially female fandoms.It's the tendency for media to kind of talk in generalizations. Obviously, those have their place, sometimes they make things more easily understandable. But if you're in media, you have to research and realize that if you generalize a monolith that's not a good thing because not everybody is the same and not everybody's experiences are the same, and not everybody's motivations are the same.”
When researching as a fan, one may wonder if it is possible to not have a subjective bias. No matter what area of research one is involved in, there is an implicit passion for that topic; it’s impossible to eliminate that factor. However, when it comes to research ethics, Lazore emphasizes informed consent. With mass media, ARMY tweets get pulled into articles all the time. It’s important as fan researchers to do our due diligence in research transparency with fan participants.
As the website grows, she will stick to her mission. “I want to help contribute to the good information on both BTS, and ARMY and fandom narratives. And so, obviously, I'm not a big media news site or whatever, but if I can create good content that's out there for people to find, I'm hoping that it's going to help, you know, be part of the little effort to or be a little part of the bigger effort to, you know, counteract those narratives.”
I loved this post, Emma! Brilliant interview... it's so clear how well your questions prompted complexities in her thinking that we would never have heard on their own!