Andrew Ledbetter

TCU professor (and Swiftie) Andrew Ledbetter analyzed Taylor Swift’s lyrics and fan conversations and found the “Taylorverse” is truly intertwined. “It is the connections between the songs. … that animates her art and fuels its success,” he writes. 📖: magazine.tcu.edu/winter-2025/ta…

Honored to have my semantic network analysis of @taylorswift13 lyrics featured in @TCUMagazine ! magazine.tcu.edu/winter-2025/ta…

@ShawnRedd Thanks my friend... and, actually, @taylorswift13 did show up in our article! From Ledbetter & Redd (2016), Western Journal of Communication:

This TCU professor knows Taylor Swift’s music ‘all too well’ fortworthreport.org/2025/10/09/thi…

Honored to appear in this article!

Wrote about Swifties' disillusionment with Taylor Swift's inability to read the room on "TLOAS." “'I like my friends cancelled' is the most tone deaf lyric a white billionaire with MAGA friends could release in this climate,” one woman tweeted. huffpost.com/entry/taylor-s…

Opinion | Colleges Shouldn’t Hike Tuition After May 1 Increasing tuition and fees after National Decision Day is unfair to incoming students, Andrew M. Ledbetter and Jessica L. Ledbetter write. bit.ly/4mTMpbG

Increasing tuition after the national decision deadline is a bait-and-switch practice that balances university budgets on the backs of 18-year-olds. And that's exactly what @UF did this summer. Our editorial in @insidehighered: insidehighered.com/opinion/views/…

How does parent involvement impact young adults' romantic relationships? After publishing research on this in a top-tier journal, Dr. Paul Schrodt shared his insights on @LastShowPizza. You can listen to their conversation about 11 minutes in! open.spotify.com/episode/2tt9UZ…

You can catch alumnus Stephen Bailey (M.S., 2012) on Wheel of Fortune tonight! Here's hoping the wheel was kind to you, Stephen!

Do you work with patients in healthcare? We have a master's student in our department who is doing survey research for her thesis project. If you'd interested in helping, feel free to send her an email!

@agzocar Our campus uses D2L rather than Canvas. I've had a section on the LMS for each day, including in each section the PowerPoint slides and a link to the theory's page on afirstlook.com. But, I'm not an LMS expert, so I haven't done anything that fancy!

@dr_ledbetter How have you done your Canvas shell for this textbook?

@dr_ledbetter adopted the comm theory textbook for my @asu course

My semantic network analysis of Taylor Swift's songs is now out in Comm Quarterly! And if you're curious to see how Taylor's songs rank by semantic centrality in the Taylorverse (including TTPD, which isn't in the main paper!), I've written that up here: andrewledbetter.com/2025/01/25/ran…

In this second post on my semantic network analysis of Taylor Swift's lyrics, I present evidence that the "Taylorverse" is real, and a real reason for the popularity of her music. andrewledbetter.com/2024/12/10/see…

In my Taylor Swift study I wrote, "Swift's rhetorical vision may be... a [new] type of master analog, one of validation, that treats as important what society devalues or ignores." This article, which describes Swift as "validating" women's experiences, resonates with my claim.

I've also written the first of two blog posts that translate the results for a broader audience. So, TSwift may not have dropped Rep TV at the close of #TSTheErasTour... but at least I can drop you this semantic network analysis of her work. andrewledbetter.com/2024/12/09/the…

Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative/rhetorical methods, I identified four distinct types of Taylor Swift songs, and examined the association between lyrics and song popularity. The article is now out in Communication Quarterly. /2 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

This past year, I've been combining my academic identity with my Swiftie identity, and that has now generated a peer-reviewed publication! /1

Carrie Moore's work with our students in our Media Insights Lab is a great example of how @tcucomm is engaging the crucial area of communication technology!