If you have not yet seen a clip of Susan Boyle’s performance last week on “Britain’s Got Talent”, you can help contribute to this network phenomenon by checking out the Youtube video.

Susan Boyle, a forty-seven year old Scottish village dweller, exploded to worldwide fame last week when an online video of her “Britain’s Got Talent” performance was viewed over 50 million times by people all over the world.  Her story reached across countries and continents and was reported in newspapers, on blogging sites, on social news sites, and on cable news, such as CNN, mostly focusing on the juxtaposition of her plain looks and powerful singing voice, in addition to the audience’s initial, negative reaction to her and their complete reversal after hearing her sing.  She was recently interviewed by Larry King, and is reportedly scheduling an interview with Oprah Winfrey, a feat almost unheard of for a reality competition contestant, after performing only in the first round of the competition (so far).

However, the circumstances of her worldwide success are somewhat difficult to fathom.  We have seen this same type of situation on countless other reality competition shows - an unlikely superstar who rises above the cynical expectations of others by displaying incredible talent and succeeding in the face of extreme doubt (see Clay Aiken or past “Britain’s Got Talent” winner Paul Potts, among many others).  Those performances, for some reason, never reached the same heights of worldwide fame as Susan’s performance.  In addition, while it is hard to doubt Susan’s obvious talent, there are certainly singers with better voices out there; many current female singers and any number of Broadway stars have arguably superior voices.  Also, Susan did have some trouble hitting some of the lower notes in her performance.  But when contrasted with her plain looks, it is surprising and pleasantly shocking to hear such a powerful voice come from such an average-looking person (with all-due respect).

So how was Susan’s performance able to cross geographic networks from England to other countries?  First of all, the show aired only in England, on a British-only channel, ITV, not shown in any other countries.  Shortly after being broadcast, the video was posted to Youtube, where it was seen by millions of people from countries all over the world.  It was the #1 most watched video in many countries the week it was released, including in the U.S., the U.K., India, New Zealand, and Japan (according to Youtube’s statistics).  It is currently the #1 most watched video on Youtube for the month of April, and the #55 most watched video of all time, and still climbing.

Here is a Google Trend graph showing the 30-day search volume for the search terms “Susan Boyle” (blue), “Obama” (yellow), and “Britney Spears” (red) on Google:

Let’s analyze Susan Boyle’s sudden fame in terms of the ECON2040 concept of popularity as a network phenomenon.  To begin, the phenomenon was first popular in Britain.  If Britain is a node connected to the United States and to other countries, it can be thought that Britain was exhibiting a particular behavior (that is, watching the video of Susan’s performance) that affected the behavior of the nodes it is connected to.  In class, we talked about how a particular node will change its behavior (or adopt a particular technology, as was described in the class example) once its threshold is surpassed, based on the payoffs associated with adopting a particular behavior.  This is linked to the fraction of neighbors exhibiting a particular behavior (q = b/(a+b), where q equals the minimum fraction of neighbors needed for a behavior change of a connected node, and a and b equal the payoffs associated with adopting or not adopting the behavior, respectively).  In this case, however, the situation differs slightly in that Britain consists not of just one node, but of millions of nodes representing each citizen of Britain who either watched the performance, or did not watch the performance.  Once a particular threshold of British citizens (that adopted the behavior) has been surpassed, it then becomes worthwhile for external nodes (individuals in other geographic areas) to adopt the behavior of watching the video and agreeing with the general opinion.

The key question here is, how do people in other networks (countries) hear about this story and become motivated enough to watch the video?  Is it because of its popularity on Youtube, its exposure on cable news channels, or its presence on blogs, social news sites, and Twitter?  I will try to break down the reasons why this network phenomenon was able to occur, and how a small, 7-minute video launched an unknown Scottish village dweller into worldwide stardom.

Such a phenomenon like this probably never would have happened 3 or 4 years ago before Youtube, or internet video in general, became so widely accessible.  Youtube has created a network bridge across countries and continents by making the act of sharing video clips so easy and seamless.  If no such video site existed, there would be little reason for the story to be so exciting in America, since there would be no easy way to see the performance.

The video itself is extremely easy to digest - it is only 7 minutes long, includes a huge range of emotions and drama in a very short time frame, and a complete underdog story in 7 minutes.  These facets made it extremely easy for Internet news sites to talk about the phenomenon and link to the video. It is possible that its popularity was boosted by rich-get-richer effects, where a small, initial group of people viewed the video in a short time span, allowing the video to attract attention quickly and multiply its viewership over a short time.

Susan’s perkiness and complete optimism in the face of jeers and laughter attributed to her likability.  You can tell she has lived through a lifetime of social angst - we can see a little bit of ourselves in her, and by rooting for her, it’s as if we are subconsciously reflecting upon our own desire to get noticed and praised by others.  Her personal story is sad, yet inspiring - she has never been married, never been kissed as she claims, unemployed, lives with cats, from a small village, her life filled with failures - but she has a big dream.  We have an innate desire to root for her and support her dreams, perhaps because we would want the same to be done for us.  Ian Youngs of BBC News said, “The YouTube millions have cheered on the underdog, and seen in her the possibilities for their own hopes and dreams.”(1)  And Ben Quinn has said in his article, The Susan Boyle Phenomenon, that “Her performance resonates with millions because most of us in our heart of hearts have severe doubts about ourselves.”(2)

The video was also ripe for becoming a phenomenon because it had a distinct and dramatic beginning, middle, and end, like a classic story we would see in a movie.  When Susan Boyle first walked onto the stage as an unknown hopeful trying out for the first round of the competition, she received weird looks, laughs, jeers, rolling eyes, and condescending attitudes from both the judges and the audience because of her age, her looks, and a misguided expectation of an awful performance.  Once she started to sing the first line of the song from Les Miserables, the judges were visibly surprised and the audience almost immediately burst into cheers and standing ovations.  The sympathetic theme of the song, and its subtle reflection of the singer’s social situation likely helped to move the audience.  By the end of the video, nearly the entire room, including some of the judges, were on their feet, applauding, then practically apologizing for their initial treatment of her and commending her performance.  People in the audience were shown crying.  Susan Boyle went from being a loser to a winner in a 7-minute time span.  One judge later remarked that it was like watching the story of Rocky Balboa.

Other reasons that the video succeeded as a phenomenon was because Susan was actually funny and likable during the audition, and came off very confident and charismatic, despite the initial pessimism of everyone around her.  Additionally, the show was familiar to U.S. citizens because of its American clone, “America’s Got Talent”, and because of its famous judge, Simon Cowell, which made the video easier for American audiences to relate to.  Also, Cowell, well known for being rarely impressed by contestants’ performances, was actually reeling from Susan’s performance, as can be seen by Simon’s boyish look of wonder during the performance, a picture often used in the media to hype Susan’s story:

Lastly, I would like to end with a quote from Lisa Schwarzbaum, a writer for Entertainment Weekly, who wrote, “In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging - the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts - the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace.”(2)  Perhaps the video became such a phenomenon because people are tired of the carefully manufactured performers of today with little real talent, and Susan Boyle was like a breath of fresh air.

Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

(1)  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8005767.stm

(2 ) http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0421/p06s13-wogn.html