“cr azy white men” 251followers each had on his Twitter page looked like this—W hite Nigerian:
6,122, Mzungu Kichaa: 5,655, and EES: 672. This ranking corresponds to
the frequency of tweets sent by each musician each day. It reverses if we
look at the number of “likes” on their Facebook pages, which reflect a com-
bination of both how long each artist has been on this platform and the
duration of his career: W hite Nigerian joined Facebook in 2010 and, as of
January 28, 2014, had more than 5,000 “likes.” Mzungu Kichaa also joined
in 2010 and could count about 30,000, whereas EES got on Facebook in
2009 and had more than 80,000. Of course, these figures are nothing more
than mere indicators of interest by Facebook users and should not be
mistaken for expressions of real fandom—whatever that is. Moreover,
since Facebook “likes” (and Twitter followers, too) have been turned into
commodities that can easily be bought in bulk for small amounts of money
and, in the case of Facebook, may also be gotten through its sponsored ad
service, the analytical value of these figures must be treated with some
reservation.
In terms of commitment, the total number of subscribers to a page
is a better indicator. However, only the page owner knows this. A page’s
weekly interaction rate remains a somewhat weaker indicator of user com-
mitment: As of January 28, 2014, W hite Nigerian had 167 people “talk-
ing about this” (3.3 percent of his total likes), Mzungu Kichaa had 3,211
(10.7 percent), and EES had 1,977 (2.5 percent).^21 Facebook offers its page
owners statistical tools allowing them to learn some basic facts about the
people who “like” their pages. Some of this data can also be extracted
with the help of external tools.^22 As table 8.1 shows, with respect to the
three musicians in particular, it is possible to learn from which countries
the “likes” of a page originate. Regarding the pages of the three musi-
cians, it comes as no surprise that the vast majority of “likes” are from
those countries with which the musicians most identify: 72.8 percent of
M zu ng u K ichaa’s “ l i kes” were f rom Ta n z a n ia (a lso, 10.8 percent were f rom
Kenya and 3.2 percent from other African countries), 59 percent of W hite
Nigerian’s “likes” were from Nigeria (and 3 percent from other African
countries), and 38 percent of EES’s were from Namibia (and 13 percent
from other African countries).^23 W hile W hite Nigerian had a considerable
number of likes from Britain (12.4 percent) and the United States (11.3 per-
cent), which correlates with the high number of diasporic Nigerians living