ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author shows her interests in Justin Bieber songs when she heard her students and others denigrate his teen girl fans, the 'Beliebers'. They were seen as 'obsessive', 'crazy', and all the other disqualifying words that have been used to describe female fans of popular music over the years. Alexy Khrabrov and George Cybenko noted their 'surprising discovery' of the 'Bieber ecosystem' in an early quantitative network analysis of Twitter: "The most influential person in Twitter mentions in our dataset, every day of the study, is Justin Bieber". Since the launch of 'Baby', Bieber has benefitted from a string of collaborations with African American and Caribbean musicians and rappers. The author explores how analysis of the song itself can elucidate this relationship between white Canadian Bieber and African American Ludacris. While regularly billed as 'Justin Bieber's "Baby"', the song is in fact performed by 'Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris'.
