Perceived impact of BTS’ ‘love myself’ campaign in the lives of Malaysian engaged fans

Jung, Bo Eun (2023) Perceived impact of BTS’ ‘love myself’ campaign in the lives of Malaysian engaged fans. Master dissertation/thesis, UTAR.

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Abstract

This qualitative study, guided by Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT), focused on the perceived impact of BTS’ ‘Love Myself’ campaign in the lives of Malaysian engaged fans. Celebrities play a powerful role in promoting values to public opinions however, they are often glamorized, and the limelight is often stolen from the campaign. With the rise of popularity of Korean-pop especially the Korean boy band named BTS, they launched a campaign with UNICEF called the ‘Love Myself’ campaign. The campaign focuses on in terms of purpose and desire to help oneself to empower themselves to gain self-respect and true love that they can share with the rest of the world. Previous studies conducted on celebrity-led campaigns lacked the perspective on the recipients of the campaign. With the launch of the ‘Love Myself’ campaign, it showed significant estimated funding and outreach due to the fame of BTS. Given the phenomenon of the campaign and the lack of audiences’ perspective, a qualitative investigation was conducted by using face-to-face interviews. The researcher used purposive sampling and recruited 11 male and female participants who are Malaysian ARMY young adults located in Klang Valley and who had participated in the ‘Love Myself’ campaign. Data were analysed using thematic analysis deductive approach where concepts and topics were constructed and arranged according to the research questions and research objectives. The research questions were drawn using the three basic human psychological needs of SDT: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The interview questions were constructed from the three needs and tackled the three research objectives. Study findings displayed an in-depth understanding on the perspective of the Malaysian engaged fans who had taken part in the ‘Love Myself’ campaign by BTS and was able to share a wide audience-focused perspective on the perceived impact of the ‘Love Myself’ campaign.

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