Every month you see a few brand reputation rankings being released:

1.Boy group

*a day later*

2.Girl group

*a week later*

3.Singer (Boy groups, girl groups, individual idols and singers )

*a week later*

4.Boy group individual member

*a day later*

5.Girl group individual member

*a week later*

6.Idols (a group member or a solo male and female)

And the data is collected like this:e.g. Boy group ranking is based on data analysis from April 5 through May 6; boy group indiviual ranking is based on data analysis from April 13 through May 14; idol reputation from April 20 through May 21.

Most of group brand reputation points also include the group members' reputation points as soon as the group and individual members' name are in the same article, topic or comments.

The data points is based is on similar things.
The amount of articles released about an idol, singer or group and the interaction on the article (including page views), the amount of times an idol, singer or group's name was searched, the amount of reactions (emojies) the article about the idol, singer or the group recieves, the amount of times an idol gets gets mentioned in online fan communities as Pann, Blogs, TheQoo etc.

Let's come to the point and explain the manipulation and why fans do it.

Here's an old post proving with SS's that how fans teach other fans to create multiple accounts and spam emojies and comments to increase the brand reputation of idols.  

https://www.allkpop.com/articl...

There are also proofs of the manipulations such as the comment and emoji amounts of certain idols being more than the article's views. Websites like Naver and Nate doesn't counts only 1 view from 1 IP. So when an articles' emojies are more than the page views', it means that multiple accounts in action.

Starting from BTS' comeback with ON, let's check out the this month and last months' brand reputations now. Check out the lists attentively:

MARCH 2020

Boy Groups March 14 (February 12 to March 13):

BTS made a comeback with ON, in February 21 so those rankings above also include that period.

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APRIL

Boy Groups, April 11 (March 9 to April 10):

Singer, April 15 (March 13 to April 14):

There is only 4 day difference between Boy Group and Singer brand reputation rankings. On March 14, Lim Wooyoung won the record breaking show Mr. Trot and became a huge topic everywhere while there wasn't any big news about BTS but in 4 days they gained more than 3 million points, even more points in total than their comeback period. 

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MAY

Boy Groups, May 9

Singers, May 30

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Let's check out boy group members and individual idols' brand ranking

March 29, idol ranking

In this period, it was announced that Kang Daniel was going to collaborate with Zico so it became a big topic.

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April 19, boy group ranking

In this period, Suho released an album.

April 26, individual idols

In this period, Kang Daniel's collab with Zico was released. However Jimin whose points were 7.4 million the previous week, surpassed Daniel with 9.6 million points.

xxx

May16, boy group members

In this period, Baekhyun's solo comeback was announced and news about Cha Eunwoo being 

in talks to play a lead in a drama became a big topic.

May 25, individual idols

In this period, Suga's collaboration with IU was released. However, fans again didn't let the group's own member to surpass Jimin and brand rep. ranking.

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JUNE 20, boy group members (May 18 to  June 19):

What happened in this period? 

On May 19, Dispatch revealed that Jungkook, Jaehyun, Eunwoo and Minggyu went to a bar and it became a huge topic. 

On May 25, Baekhyun released his album. 

On June 12, Changmin announced his marriage.

Those were the hit topics of the period but again you see that no one is able to surpass Jimin.

So, how fans do that? They just follow the other singers' articles and check the amount of their emojies, comments etc. If there is any big news about a singer or an idol, they push their faves more. And the biggest reason why they don't even let the group's other members is that, they want Jimin to be the first idol to rank #1 for 2 straight years since Kang Daniel was the first idol to rank #1 for a year. When Daniel was the #1 in rankings for a year, Jimin barely entered top 5 but then the fans started organizing with international fans' help.

In short, "Brand Reputation Ranking" is not a big deal and is mostly based on fans' spamming.