Celebrity culture meets networked media

As Rojek (2012: 10) states, in modern times celebrity value has often been produced in an industrial manner: a team of people, such as media experts and public relations personnel, working together in a setting resembling a factory have turned natural resources, in this case people and their talents, into commodities with market value.

Rojek argues that in recent years there has emerged the domestic system of fame, which utilizes the power of the internet in producing celebrity value. This system can be characterized as a “do-it-yourself approach to fame acquisition”, as it relies less on the teamwork of public relations personnel and media specialists, and more on the work of the individual in achieving and maintaining fame (Rojek 2012: 10-11). Thus, with the help of tools such as the computer and the mobile phone, celebrity production and maintenance has become something in which the star itself has a more active role, something in which celebrity can be seen less as an achieved status of recognizability, and more as an ongoing process, or a practice.

Celebrity as practice is linked to developments in new media technologies and ways in which these technologies are being used. These developments have caused changes to the relationship between celebrity and traditional media institutions. As P. David Marshall writes, “The symbiotic relationship between media and celebrity has been ruptured somewhat in the last decade through the development of new media” (Marshall 2006: 634). Whereas previously celebrities depended on different media industries in to gain exposure and market themselves to a wide public, the possibilities brought by new media applications allow celebrities to take control of these processes and actively participate in the construction and maintenance of their celebrity persona. The change in media and celebrity culture can be described as a shift from a representational media culture to a presentational one (Marshall 2006, 2010). As part of the wide range of new media applications, there have emerged applications that are centered around the presentation of the self. These have been accordingly termed by Marshall as presentational media, and include popular applications like Facebook and Twitter (Marshall 2010: 38). These new media applications for the presentation of the self have come to exist along more traditional forms of media like television and magazines, which traditionally rely on representation. An important point worth mentioning about these recent developments is that new media and presentational media have not come to replace traditional media with its representations, which still play an important role in

the production and circulation of celebrity stories and images. It is evident, though, that the impact of traditional media on social structures is not as powerful and omnipresent as it used to be, and in many cases material that is broadcast through traditional media is re-mediated and processed in online environments (Marshall 2010: 38).

According to Redmond,

Generally, then, the model for work on stars and their audiences has been that of an unstable and contradictory figure, constructed both intertextually (across different films) and extratextually (across different types of material). The relationship between the audience and the star is deemed to be best figured the fan whose knowledge comes from a wide variety of sources and who reworks the material in the interests of working through contradictory questions of identity. This emphasis on the duality of the film star and the relationship with the fan has also become established for work in popular culture more generally. In music, television, sport and beyond, the model is one of a relationship between the public sphere of performance and work and the private sphere of personal lives, of the home and personal relationships as ‘revealed’ through the media. (Holmes and Redmond 2007: 99)

As the practice of celebrity on social media sites such as Twitter has become increasingly common, the relationship between the public and private spheres of a celebrity has been reworked to operate in a shared domain located online. By using Twitter a celebrity can, or is expected to, expose private aspects of their life, like eating habits, but he or she can also use the social media site to report about public

performances, television appearances and promotional material. This has diminished the role of other media in reporting about the ‘behind the scenes’ life of a celebrity, as celebrities are adapting this role for themselves with the help of social media services like Twitter.

It can be argued that one the main changes to media that have been brought about by the introduction of networked media have to do with a shift in the model of communication they rely on. This change has been discussed by several theorists (Holmes 2006,

Marshall 2006). Traditionally, there has existed a broadcast model of communication in which information is sent by one and received by many, as is the case for a print media article or television show (Marshall 2006: 637). In this model information flows in one direction, from the sender to the receivers. In the new model of communication that has emerged along with new media forms, information flows in both directions, as any internet user can both download and upload information from their computer (Marshall 2006). To give another example, the user of an internet message forum can read the messages there, as well as reply to and post new messages. This shift in communication has been noted also by Jill Retterberg who writes:

Blogs are part of a fundamental shift in how we communicate. Just a few decades ago, our media culture was dominated by a small number of media producers who distributed their publications and broadcasts to large, relatively passive audiences. Today, newspapers and television stations have to adapt to a new reality, where ordinary people create media and share their creations online. We have moved from a culture dominated by mass media, using one-to-many communication, to one where participatory media, using many-to-many communication, is becoming the norm. (Retterberg 2008: 31)

The development of networked media has caused significant changes to the ways in which celebrities are produced, promoted and consumed. When the ‘modern’ celebrity emerged in the 1980s, it was promoted by media institutions such as the tabloid press and entertainment television, as argued by P. David Marshall in his article “New Media – New Self, The changing power of celebrity” (Marshall 2006: 634). At that time, the role of the audience and fan was more passive than today, in terms of the production of cultural content. In the current age, the carefully controlled systems of celebrity

production and promotion have become more malleable and prone to change, as information flow has increased and diversified through the increased use of networked media like mobile phones and internet applications (Marshall 2006: 634). What is important here is the shifting of power to produce and control celebrity, away from the established media institutions like print press and television, which were originally responsible for creating and maintaining celebrities, and into the hands of the audience and fan, whose role was originally merely to consume the created celebrity. The modern relationship between celebrity production and consumption has changed from a

traditional broadcast model of communication, in which there is a one-way flow of information from a single sender to many receivers, to a model in which information flows in both directions between multiple senders (Marshall 2006: 637). To give concrete examples, in the broadcast model of communication, a medium, like a printed newspaper or television program, conveyed information to a large number of people, who in turn had very limited means of sending information back and affecting the conveyed information. In the more modern model of communication, there exists a plethora of new communication channels, which allow a freer flow of information between people and media institutions. This allows audiences to have more control over the culture they consume, as well as creates possibilities for audiences to create and distribute their own cultural productions.

To summarize, the developments in networked media technologies and new ways of using these described above have made it possible for individuals like Lady Gaga to take a more active role in increasing and managing their fame, and be less reliant on the

courtesies of entertainment media institutions. These developments have also given celebrities the chance to be in more direct contact with their fans, to communicate with them in real-time, and generally to have more control over the celebrity image they wish to convey to their audiences. The way in which these new possibilities for online self-presentation have evolved into a set of behaviors that make up celebrity practice is linked to micro-celebrity, a term discussed in the following section.