.jpg "BLACKPINK’s Digital Impact How They Reshape Social Media, AI Trends, and Global Fan Behavior")
Impact on YouTube and Video Platforms
BLACKPINK's music video for “How You Like That” broke the YouTube record for the most views in the first 24 hours with 86 million views. This figure was unprecedented not only in K-pop but also in the global pop music scene. Just three days after its release, the “Kill This Love” music video unexpectedly entered the list of the most-watched videos in India. Its appearance at the top of YouTube's recommended content in Hindi sparked discussions at numerous digital marketing conferences about how algorithms work.
Over 40% of the comments on “Pink Venom” came from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Despite being produced in a global language, the video resonated instantly with a large community in the Asia-Pacific region. This caused traffic congestion on YouTube's regional servers. By 2023, BLACKPINK had reached the top of the trending charts in over 90 countries on YouTube at least once. This data was used as an example in Google's internal presentation titled “Trend Dynamics of Global Music.”
The Power of Instagram and Individual Accounts
Lisa's Instagram account became one of the fastest-growing accounts among Asian artists. In 2021, she was gaining an average of 120,000 new followers per day. This figure was unmatched by any European footballer's individual Instagram account during the same period, with the exception of Cristiano Ronaldo.
In the comments on Jennie's Instagram posts, hidden advertising texts from brands were often detected. Some brands promoted their products using product names and emojis in a way that did not appear to be sponsored content. This practice was referred to as a “gray PR strategy” in social media analysis platforms.
Although Jisoo did not use geotags in her Instagram posts, content analysis showed that her follower count in France increased by 38% following her posts in Paris. This increase was particularly noticeable during her collaboration with Dior. The “film grain” effect used by Rosé in one of her posts went viral on TikTok independently and became the most used filter on the platform that month. In other words, the members of BLACKPINK were not only content creators but also trendsetters in aesthetics.
TikTok and Short Video Dynamics
Lisa's solo track “Money” went viral on TikTok with a 14-second dance clip. This dance move was replicated in over 4 million videos within just two weeks, making it one of the fastest-spreading dance trends in TikTok history. One of the dance moves from “DDU-DU DDU-DU” was used as an “interaction test” on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. Users filmed themselves dancing with filters that showed how well they matched the facial recognition technology. This trend reached 1.2 billion views in one week. Rosé's post on TikTok with a smile effect was referenced by artificial intelligence filter creators within a few days. So the content didn't just go viral, it directly inspired software developers.
Reflections in China and Alternative Networks
BLACKPINK's social media influence in China continues despite official bans. Fan accounts on Weibo had reached a total of 1.8 billion interactions by the end of 2022. This figure is considered surprising for a group that is not active in China.
On the video platform Bilibili, “fan edit” videos about BLACKPINK garnered approximately 400 million views between 2021 and 2023. Most of these videos were created by users using subtitles and editing techniques, and 70% of the content was not based on original sources. Thus, “fan-produced” content has become a kind of “shadow distribution channel” that expands the group's reach.
Twitter (X) and Global Hashtag Strategy
Most of the hashtags used in BLACKPINK's global events are organized by fans. The hashtag “#JisooDeservesBetter” surpassed 1 million shares in 6 hours without any PR support. This was cited as an example of the Twitter algorithm's “community power” effect.
Thanks to “reminder bot” accounts created on Twitter before the group's online concerts, YouTube comment traffic reached an average of 2,200 comments per minute during the 2021 “THE SHOW” concert. These bot accounts were systems coded by fans to automatically post at specific times during the concert.
Discord, Weverse, and Fan Coordination Power
On independent Discord servers created by BLACKPINK fans, not only is content shared, but interaction campaigns for the group are also planned. In particular, during events called “streaming parties,” thousands of users open the same video or song at the same time. Thanks to this tactic, some songs can re-enter the trend lists even days after their release.
Some Discord servers have developed mini analysis tools to understand YouTube algorithms. These bots monitor “Like-to-View” ratios and alert members when engagement drops. The fan base can then quickly identify unnatural declines and trigger renewed content distribution.
Even though BLACKPINK members do not post directly on Weverse, fans continue to produce content regularly. In particular, content in visual, text, and poetry formats is produced in areas called “fan diaries.” These diary-style posts keep digital engagement alive even when BLACKPINK is not active on social media.
Google Trends and Search Engine Dynamics
During the week of Lisa's solo debut, the phrase “Lisa Vogue” reached the top spot on Google Trends in Thailand. Interestingly, the same search term also entered the top 10 in Canada and Norway at the same time. This highlights both the influence of the Thai diaspora and global interactions within the fashion industry.
When Jennie's participation in the series “The Idol” was announced, the term “Jennie HBO” reached “breakout search” status in 17 different countries within just 48 hours. Google classifies such spikes only when there is an increase of over 500%.
The search combination “Rosé and guitar” showed a significant increase on Google following the pandemic. In the US, the search volume for this term even surpassed “female guitarists” during certain periods. This surge, following Rosé's acoustic performances, transformed her musical identity into a digital search reflex.
The frequency of searches for Jisoo's name in conjunction with Dior increased by 250% during Paris Fashion Week. This increase generated even more digital buzz than the brand's own advertising campaigns.
BLACKPINK on Spotify, Shazam, and Music-Focused Platforms
BLACKPINK's songs on Shazam aren't just popular when they're new—they can see a resurgence months later. For example, “Forever Young” became an instant trend on Shazam after being played for 8 seconds in a Netflix series three years after its release.
Lisa's “LALISA” song broke the record for solo female artists on Spotify, reaching over 30 million streams in its first seven days. Interestingly, 28% of these streams came from Germany and Mexico. This shows that digital influence can resonate in unexpected regions.
BLACKPINK's listener profiles on Spotify show a “single-repeat” trend, unlike most global groups. This means that users are not listening to an album from start to finish, but rather repeating their favorite tracks multiple times. This, in turn, causes the tracks to appear more frequently in the platform's “Discover Weekly” and “Repeat Rewind” playlists.
Digital Advertising Campaigns and Brand Engagement
Images of Jennie in the Calvin Klein campaign increased the brand's Instagram engagement rate by over 300%. After the campaign, 18% of the brand's non-Korean followers came from Thailand, Brazil, and Turkey. This effect has led brands to position BLACKPINK members not just as “regional” but as “multi-faceted global faces.”
Following Lisa's collaboration with MAC Cosmetics, the brand's visibility on Google searches increased 2.4 times in a week. More interestingly, despite the campaign being in English, searches from Japan and Thailand ranked first. This demonstrated that digital campaigns can generate global interest without the need for localized translation.
Following Rosé's collaboration with Saint Laurent, the brand created a special product page titled “Rosé Look” on its website. On its first day, the page received more clicks from South Korea, Australia, and Indonesia than from France and the US. This serves as a concrete example of how traditional fashion houses are developing new traffic strategies in the digital space.
After Jisoo's first event as the face of Dior Beauty, Dior's TikTok page gained over 200,000 new followers in two days. Even content not shared after the event went viral as users created “edit” videos, pushing user-generated content to the center of digital marketing.
Impact on Social Media Platforms and Transformative Power
In 2021, Instagram classified Jennie's post reaching 1 million likes in 6 minutes as a “record notification.” This speed was equal to and sometimes even surpassed that of Cristiano Ronaldo and Selena Gomez during the same period.
Despite not being active on TikTok, content about BLACKPINK members consistently goes viral on the platform. In 2023, videos tagged with “Lisa fancam” alone surpassed 9 billion views on TikTok. 70% of this content consists of videos edited and cut by fans.
Short clips produced on YouTube Shorts with tags such as “Jennie reaction” typically focus on Jennie's facial expressions or gestures. These videos are highlighted by YouTube's recommendation algorithm under the “facial expression trend” category, effectively turning Jennie into a “meme icon.”
On platforms like Weibo, Instagram, and TikTok, which cater to different cultures, BLACKPINK members evoke distinct user reactions. For example, Lisa stands out mostly for her dance aesthetics on Douyin (Chinese TikTok), while she is known as a fashion icon on Instagram and the “reaction queen” on Twitter. This multi-image structure clearly demonstrates that digital identity can be changed depending on the platform.
Artificial Intelligence, Deepfake, and BLACKPINK's Digital Clones
As of 2023, approximately 12% of BLACKPINK content circulating online was found to be created using artificial intelligence. The most common forms include deepfake videos, voice imitations, and AI-generated social media content. On TikTok, fake clips of Lisa rapping with an AI-generated voice were of such high quality that they were indistinguishable from real videos.
A deepfake video of Jisoo, inserted into a scene from a Korean drama, went viral and garnered 3 million views in just 48 hours. This video was actually from a project in which Jisoo did not participate, and since the content creator did not include an “AI-generated” warning in the video description, it sparked serious debate on social media. Following this incident, YouTube Korea launched a special review process for deepfake videos.
Some scenes from Jennie's “The Idol” series were re-dubbed using AI and went viral on social media. In these versions, Jennie appeared to be saying more aggressive lines, and some viewers did not realize it was fake for a long time. This situation became an example of how content manipulation can influence emotional perception and was included in many media studies curricula.
AI covers of Rosé's guitar-accompanied songs began to gain as much attention as the originals, particularly on YouTube and SoundCloud. Some AI versions were even created using classic rock songs Rosé had never sung, titled “What if Rosé sang...” and garnered hundreds of thousands of streams.
Lisa's face was integrated into some Asian game characters using AI and used in social media promotions. Although the characters were not directly introduced as Lisa, the facial similarities and makeup styles were immediately noticed by users. This situation brought the “influencer likeness without consent” (unauthorized use of digital likeness) debate to the forefront.
Fanfiction and User-Based Alternate Universes
Fanfiction content related to BLACKPINK members has become a digital genre not only among fans but also among some content creators and editors. There are over 120,000 stories written about BLACKPINK on platforms such as Wattpad and Archive of Our Own. Among the most popular themes are fictional titles such as “dystopian idol life,” “alternate reality trainees,” and “idols as spies.”
Among the fanfiction stories focused on Jennie, the most-read story is titled “The Ice Queen and The Lyricist,” which received 4 million views in 2023 alone. Some parts of the story have been adapted into visual novel-style videos on TikTok. Due to Rosé's background in classical music, fan stories often portray her as a character struggling with loneliness but shining on stage while playing the piano. These contents have further solidified Rosé's “melancholic musician” image in the digital space.
Lisa is most commonly featured in fanfiction with the “double life” theme: on one side, a dancer shining in the spotlight, and on the other, a character living the life of an ordinary student. The popularity of these themes led to an increase in searches for “Lisa + secret” on social media algorithms. Stories created for Jisoo often focus on themes of “silent leadership” and “a strong will beneath a fragile exterior.” These stories create depth for the character in the digital world by matching Jisoo's observant attitude in real life.
Algorithm Manipulation and Its Impact on Platform Behavior
BLACKPINK fans are one of the few communities that consciously attempt to influence YouTube's content recommendation algorithm. “10 minutes, 1 comment” campaigns, which focus on watch time and comment frequency rather than views, cause some music videos to be labeled as “freshly trending content” by the algorithm. This allows BLACKPINK videos to reappear among recommended content even days after they are released.
There is also a significant impact on the Spotify algorithm. BLACKPINK listeners add not only the group's songs to their playlists, but also individual members' songs in a specific order. Thanks to this regular listening pattern, Spotify places the members' solo projects in the same recommended playlists. This tactic creates automatic cross-promotion through listener behavior.
On TikTok, organized campaigns are carried out with the goal of making specific BLACKPINK content “go viral.” For example, a user shares a video themed “Lisa's smile” with 15 different hashtags to attract attention, and then other fans copy these hashtags. TikTok's hashtag-based distribution algorithm detects this pattern and shows the video to more users. With this collective strategy, even videos lasting just a few seconds can reach millions.
On Twitter, efforts to create a “trending topic” are supported not only through specific hashtags but also through content type. The BLACKPINK fandom announces trending headlines and, instead of just writing sentences under these headlines, uses formats such as GIFs, photos, and polls. Since the Twitter algorithm prioritizes rich media content, these campaigns gain visibility quickly.
On Instagram, Rosé's simple, unfiltered photos receive higher engagement than filtered and professionally shot photos. As a result, some fans began creating their own content with a similar aesthetic and tagging Rosé, sparking the “natural feed” trend. This aesthetic shift eventually spread to other influencers on Instagram.
BLACKPINK content is being used in short video formats like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, particularly to create “reaction chains.” A user shares a video reacting to Jennie's expressions, and another user reacts to that video. This creates a 4-5 layer interaction based on a single scene. These chained content pieces fall under the algorithm's definition of “conversation-generating videos” and often appear in the explore feed.
Data-Collecting Fan Groups and Content-Based Referrals
Some special communities created by BLACKPINK fans keep statistical analyses of when members share which content. For example, an independent group called “Jennie Trend Watch” collects interaction data from the first 60 minutes after each of Jennie's posts and identifies the most effective time slots. This data is used for new campaign timings.
Similarly, a fan initiative called “Blink Stream Metrics” tracks Spotify and YouTube view graphs in real time. When a drop is detected, fans are notified of a “boost time” (engagement boost time). This initiative has caught the attention of digital media consulting firms and is being studied as a case example.
Some fans even deliberately repeat certain keywords to manipulate the search suggestions section of TikTok videos. For example, a suggestion like “Jennie solo 2025?” may start appearing in recommendations, even though there is no official announcement, thanks to the algorithm. Such redirects are used as a strategy to create anticipation and digital curiosity.
BLACKPINK's Digital Impact Extending Beyond the Entertainment Industry
Some universities that offer digital media education use BLACKPINK's social media strategies as case studies. In particular, schools such as USC Annenberg and NYU Tisch School of the Arts in the US have special modules in their media analysis courses on how the “How You Like That” music video rose in the YouTube algorithm.
Harvard Business School examined BLACKPINK's fan engagement tactics in a 2022 digital marketing seminar, comparing them to those of global brands like Airbnb, Nike, and Netflix. Here, fans' time-sensitive engagement spikes were evaluated under the heading of “consumer-generated value creation.”
A Stanford University-affiliated artificial intelligence laboratory trained an “emotion recognition algorithm” using a dataset based on BLACKPINK members' facial expressions. Lisa's facial expressions were used as a reference in the dataset because they align with universally recognized joy and surprise reactions across different cultures.
In a public service announcement released in South Korea in 2023, BLACKPINK members' social media comments were used as examples to combat cyberbullying. Jisoo's “quiet yet impactful” demeanor and her carefully chosen words to fans were presented as model examples in online etiquette lessons.
In AI-powered visual recognition tools, BLACKPINK members' stage outfits, hair colors, and gestures are introduced to algorithms as examples of “high recognizability.” Jennie's facial features and outfit combinations, in particular, are used as reference data in fashion AI systems to classify similar styles.
In Germany, analyses of the spread of content created by BLACKPINK fans concluded that the group's fans have redefined the concept of editing. This is because these fans do not just share content; they also produce professional-level media by synchronizing music, text, video, and images.
A Netherlands-based visualization company listed the group as one of the three most influential names between 2020 and 2024 in its “global pop culture map” based on BLACKPINK's global search trends. The other two were Elon Musk and Taylor Swift. This data map was used as a reference in academic articles to analyze the guiding influence of social media culture on global media.