R6: A Case Study of SungWon Cho

In my case study of the voice actor SungWon Cho, I look at his Twitter account, “SungWon Cho (ProZD),” to demonstrate how his content makes use of micro-celebrity techniques. To begin, it is important to mention that I define SungWon as someone who practices micro-celebrity techniques, which are “practices in which audience is viewed as a fan base; popularity is maintained through ongoing fan engagement; and self-presentation is carefully constructed to be consumed by others.” (Marwick and Boyd, 2011)

SungWon tweets and retweets multiple times a day. His retweets serve to recognize and affiliate himself with members of his fan base and other content providers. Many of his tweets are also designed in such a way that he tweets about things he is doing in his personal life while also making those events relatable. His content is almost all comedic in nature and there is a noticeable drop in the number of likes his non-comedic content receives. In one example, one of his posts got about 1,500 likes for talking about his experience with a new video game, whereas his advertising of Umai Crate only got 47 likes.

SungWon also finds ways to be intimate with his fan base. He usually accomplishes this task by posting videos where he is directly addressing the audience. He has done tours of his apartment, and he has explained the plot of a show he has seen to his wife while keeping the audience involved in the discussion. Tweets like these make his audience feel like they are a part of his life and that they are sharing in the experiences he is having.

A very important aspect of SungWon’s Twitter account is that he is the one who is making and posting the content. There isn’t an assistant posing as him on his account. As mentioned before, he tweets mostly to be funny, but occasionally he will post something about how editing his content on other platforms for hours on end can get rather tiresome. Tweets like these tend to make him feel more authentic and show his audience that while he is having fun doing what he does, there is still a lot of work involved with it.

SungWon uses many micro-celebrity techniques to better appeal to his audience. These strategies have worked out very well for him as he currently has about 133,000 followers. Based off of the likes he receives for his comedic content compared to his non comedic content, I believe that if he shifted his focus from comedy to another field he would lose many of his followers. This seems to indicate that in order for comedians to maximize their popularity on social media they have to include comedy in the majority of their posts and limit the amount of non-comedic content they post.

References

Marwick, Alice, and boyd, Danah, “To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter,” Convergence May 2011 vol. 17 no. 2 139-158, http://www.tiara.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/marwick_boyd_to_see_and_be_seen.pdf 

Cho, SungWon (@prozdkp). “persona game: In this social link you figure out how to make [persona] with [skill]! Sound fun? me: haha yeah*already googling the answer*.” 23 April 2017, 6:47 P.M. Tweet.

Cho, SungWon (@prozdkp). “Use the link below and the coupon code PROZDRAMEN to get $3 off your first Umai Crate: http://japancrate.com/umai?tap_a=18655-b8af8b&tap_s=76467-12d24b …” 23 April 2017, 3:30 P.M. Tweet

Cho, Sungwon (@prozdkp). “’you have a WIFE???’ yes, here's a video where i explained the plot of naruto to her very poorly.” 24 April 2017, 8:49 A.M. Tweet.

Cho, Sungwon (@prozdkp). “ah yes, editing for hours, the glamorous youtube lifestyle.” 20 April 2017, 10:21 A.M. Tweet.