I read the article “Unveiling the success factors of BTS: a mixed-methods approach“. The literature review was the biggest takeaway for my project from this article. The literature review clearly outlines pop culture, K-pop groups, and their globalization processes, which provides reference materials for my work. Although published in 2021—before BTS members’ mandatory military service—the study has meaningful and inspiring findings. The study explores the key success factors behind the sustained global popularity of BTS. By using a mixed-methods approach that combines text mining of social media data and in-depth interviews with fans and entertainment industry experts, the authors identified ten critical success factors. These factors include an active global fandom, SNS (social network service) communication, fans’ loyalty, empathy through music, storytelling and worldview, performance quality, music video quality, early overseas expansion, efforts for self-development, and teamwork among members (Lee et al., 2021). These factors provide a valuable reference because my project aims to explore strategies for the global spread of music and the enhancement of a nation’s soft power. However, as I noted, this article was published in 2021, and the global music market is constantly changing. I hope I can build upon this research to analyze and develop up-to-date strategies that reflect the current reality of the global music industry.
This week, I have been refining my “Training Modules List”. Since I plan to present my research as an interactive website, I need to learn various new skills. In addition to LinkedIn Learning courses, I found that many YouTube tutorials on website building and data visualization are also useful. For example, I found the YouTube channel of “The Pudding,” a digital publication that successfully combines multimedia into a unified website. The channel offers several concise, practical tutorials demonstrating how to recreate bubble charts, animated stacked bar charts, and other graphics without code (The Pudding, 2025). In addition, I’ve sent invitation emails to potential committee members and scheduled a meeting with the potential committee chair for next week.
References:
Lee, S. H., Choi, S., & Kim, H. W. (2021). Unveiling the success factors of BTS: A mixed-methods approach. Internet Research, 31(5), 1518–1540. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-12-2019-0507
The Pudding. (2025, January 30). How to recreate our charts without code—bubble chart [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4WuZxvMnVI