In this section, I will briefly go through and explain the differences and similarities in self-expressions of English-speaking and Finnish participants of celebrity gossip. Comparisons of these two corpora were made in Articles 1–4, whereas Article 5 focused on only one English-language forum (ONTD). I will first summarize the main findings based on the comparison of English-language and Finnish gossip sites. After that I will explain the differences and similarities.
The reason why the comparison of English-language and Finnish comment sections of celebrity gossip is relevant lies in the fact that celebrity gossip in English welcomes participants from a variety of cultural and national backgrounds; whereas Finnish gossip sites limit the potential participants to those who share Finland as their national or cultural home. Thus Finnish-language participants were connected to one another through a stronger sense of offline proximity based on their shared national background. National background is a symbolic form of togetherness as well but it is somehow more ‘fixed’ compared with the contextual ‘liquidity’ of online communication. English-language participants, accordingly, had a stronger need to create their proximity to co-participants rhetorically in and for the closed online environment. The majority of these English-language participants were most likely Americans (because the celebrities were Americans) and therefore members of a collective where different cultural and national backgrounds are joined together. Moreover, the English-language gossip sites may potentially welcome participants from other parts of the globe because of English as the lingua franca on the Internet and the global well-knownness of American celebrities. I regarded the English-language gossip sites as environments involving more global and heterogeneous potentiality when compared to the Finnish-language sites. In line with what was assumed at the beginning, this did not mean that English-language gossip sites would be more global than Finnish ones in terms of heterogeneity, since discursively created proximity in the English-language material also was fundamentally exclusive.
Firstly, findings of Article 1 indicated that autobiographical moralizing in general is very marginal in online celebrity gossip, both in Finnish and English. Self-expressions involving autobiographical moralizing, however, were slightly more common to English-language gossip sites than to Finnish ones. Many of these comments, as discussed in Section 3.1.1, were self-expressions that contributed to the oppression of those represented as moral ‘inferiors’. Thus autobiographical moralizing as both confessions and testimonies can also be seen as the rhetoric of emotivist morality. Many English-language self-expressions categorized as autobiographical moralizing came from a YouTube comment section related to a video in which the pop singer Rihanna tells about her experiences as a victim of domestic violence. Although autobiographical moralizing was more common to English-language sites, this did not mean that arete as the self-reflective component of ethos was more characteristic of online gossip in English than in Finnish. Autobiographical moralizing on YouTube, in particular, was a way to contribute to the object-focused relationships characteristic of emotivist morality.
YouTube, in general, is unmoderated and ‘welcomes’ self-expressions with highly oppressive motives.
According to the findings of Article 2, comments contributing to moral values were more common on Finnish gossip sites than English-language sites. In other words, obedience to certain norms of society or culture was frequently brought up in Finnish comments on celebrities. Thus self-expressions of Finnish participants were closer to the moral project of Enlightenment highlighting strictly normative moral positioning (see Chouliaraki 2013: 15–21). This also indicates that Finnish participants took distance from one another through their norm-based evaluation, while English-language participants contributed to stronger feelings of intimacy in their online gossip discourse. For instance, hedonistic values characterizing playful togetherness between online gossip participants were slightly more typical of English-language gossip sites than Finnish ones. When commenting on violence involving female celebrities, English-language participants criticized celebrities as characters of a ‘frivolous’ reality television show, while Finnish participants criticized celebrities for their fame-seeking behaviour. Particularly ways of referring to a norm according to which women should be humble and not strive for personal success were prominent in Finnish online celebrity gossip.
There were both similarities and differences in the construction of ‘others’ in English-language and Finnish comment sections. In both contexts, women were seen as moral ‘inferiors’ to be mocked or moralized. These findings are in line with those of Meyers (2010; also 2013), whose study uncovers sexist contributions to online celebrity gossip.
Considering the specific groups that were oppressed, there were also differences between Finnish- and English-language corpora. While the ‘others’ to the Finnish participants were more obvious representatives of non-wealthy people, English-language participants saw ‘others’ more frequently as a certain racial group.
These results cannot be generalized, however, because all the Finnish celebrities involved in the gossip topics were white. The results might have been different if the Finnish celebrities were seen as ‘others’ because of their ethnic background.
This indicates that online celebrity gossip is ‘framed’ in accordance with each topic of gossip, and the construction of ‘others’ may vary along the given topic and celebrities involved in it. Consequently, self-expression in online celebrity gossip is a highly contextual phenomenon.
In terms of comparison, the findings of Article 3 are in line with the findings of Article 2. Comments representing digital enthymemes were more common to the English-language gossip sites: in the research material of this study, there were 464 English-language comments and 344 Finnish-language comments that I categorized into digital enthymemes. This means that comments without articulated moral reasoning were more typical of sites whose participants were not necessarily connected to one another through their national background. Thus
also the findings of ‘phronesis’ indicate that in English-language comment sections, proximity was more concrete and more intensively emotional, created in and for online communication. Theoretical and categorical enthymemes strictly referring to moral norms were more prevalent in Finnish celebrity gossip. Thus ways of referring to shared norms connected Finnish participants to one another.
In terms of ‘ultimate dialectic’ (Burke 1969: 189), therefore, rules as forms of distance became forms of proximity for Finnish online gossip participants.
Consequently, a specific national culture, such as that of Finland, serves as the common ground for online gossip participants who can be assumed to have a certain ethos beyond their online self-expressions.
In general, English-language gossip participants contributed to a more ‘liquid’
rhetoric compared with Finnish participants for whom the shared national and cultural background served as the serious, ‘rationalistic’ framework within which they evaluated celebrities and their behaviour. In terms of this seriousness, a Finnish woman, for instance, ‘should’ be humble and pursue selfless goals.
Conversely, playfulness, particularly in English-language celebrity gossip, is a way of reducing distance between gossipers and challenging the seriousness of celebrity ethos. According to Silverstone (2007: 125), ‘what counts in play is essentially a betrayal of the rules’. On the other hand, as Silverstone (ibid. 126) also suggests, media consumption can be seen as a way of playing a game in which the players trust one another to play in accordance with certain rules but do not take responsibility for the game itself. Such playful communication contributes to intimacy without any burden of moral reasoning. Play takes place
‘here and now’ by creating its own norms that the players are expected to obey.
Thus play as a rhetorical motive is ‘light’: it focuses on creating new rules in new contexts by calling for new individuals to participate. Play distinguishes itself from all ‘heavy’ concerns and ignores, therefore, moral problems relating to physical violence. Through playfulness, online gossip participants showed their lack of moral concern. The highly contextual nature of play became evident when celebrity gossipers participated in word plays and competed with one another in
‘making the most inflammatory comment’ (see Meyers 2010: 266). Playfulness as a rhetorical motive fits with online spaces that are individualist but still rely on global consuming, for playfulness (not a particular play with its specific rules) is always flexible to the interests of individuals coming from various cultural backgrounds. The apparent flexibility to individuals’ interests may explain why playful rhetoric was so common to English-language, more global, online spaces involving gossip about celebrities well-known all over the world.
Accordingly, the ethos of Finnish gossip participants was more explicitly associated with an ideological construction of proximity through moralizing,
while the ethos of English-language participants highlighted playful online discourse as the sign of trustworthiness and contributed to a more instant form of proximity between gossipers. By ideological construction of proximity, I mean the construction of the second persona (the preferred audience, see Black 1970) versus the third persona (the excluded others, see Wander 1984) as the audience representing ‘others’. While English-language participants contributed to the ethos of online performance as a light-modern construct, the ethos of Finnish participants, deriving from their national identity, was closer to a heavy-modern idea of discourse-external authority, such as the state and its right to sentence its individuals by limiting their physical freedom (for more about the two phases of modernity, see Bauman 2000). Thus the ideological construction of gossip explicitly involved in categorical enthymemes was more typical of Finnish comments, while the English-language ones contributed to sexism through the crowding behaviour that is characteristic of digital and less obviously hierarchical enthymemes. Despite the interest in emphasizing the role of the state in the treatment of individuals, the categorical enthymemes of Finnish-language participants also had their individualist side. Such comments were still object-focused self-expressions characterizing individuals’ choices of liking and disliking. In the Finnish context, however, individual intimacy with objects was considered a rhetorically shameful relationship and moralizing, as a rhetorical guise, played a persuasive role.
Overall, there were many similarities between the two corpora. Both English-speaking and Finnish celebrity gossip participants contributed to emotivist morality in their self-expressions. Thus togetherness was created at the expense of distanced ‘others’, groups represented by the celebrities. Typical ‘others’ in both language groups were women who represented moral ‘inferiors’ to gossipers.
Accordingly, what seems to be ‘global’ in online comments on celebrity gossip is not any particular type of self-expression but the tension in which distance from
‘others’ is simultaneous with proximity not simply connecting the ‘self’ to the
‘other’ but building that rhetorical relationship through intimacy with objects representing celebrities. Such proximity objectifies, that is, materializes, otherness in general. This explains why practical enthymemes as self-expressions based on moral problem-solving (see Jonsen & Toulmin 1988: 35) were rare in both English-language and Finnish online celebrity gossip. Practical enthymemes involving means of identification are ways of treating distant ‘others’ as acting beings, not as dehumanized objects. The general contributions, as well as the limitations, of this study will be discussed in a more detailed way in the following section.