Media and Celebrity Culture

Week 8 - 28th August 2012

  We can get our news and entertainment from more sources than ever before because of the emergence of the Internet. It is an irresistible general trend that the ratio of media environment and representation has changed into an era of personae where an online culture consists of different platforms that allow for different flows of messages, media and images to publish of the self. Celebrity culture is a good example of culture exchange and movement from the private to the public, the individual over the social formations.


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  Celebrity and gossip both are always together, like a person and his shadow; celebrity relay on gossip to generate media exposure while gossip relay on celebrity to produce gossip. This activity can be defined as self-production which “the elaborate celebrity gossip can be seen as providing a continuity of discourse around the presentation of the self for public consumption” (Marshall, 2010, pp.36-37). Generally, gossip is revealing celebrity’s private experiences to uncover a hidden truth about celebrity and their image (Marshall, 2008, p. 499), and usually reveals via paparazzi. But now it reveals via social media and sometimes originally discourse from celebrity their selves. The recent photo scandal of Prince Harry is a good example. 



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I am not a Chinese Twitter Micro Blog user but I am familiar with it as my friend is a Micro Blog user who follows every pages and status of her favorite’s celebrities and brand products, and every time she checks status, she will share and discuss with me. I don’t even have to buy any second-hand sources such as a printed newspaper or magazine to get first-hand news and information, but by “like” or follow celebrity’s Facebook pages or Micro-blog. In which, these “Friends” and follower also created a micro-public networks which is part of an individual’s online persona, and an intercommunication that an individual’s movement (e.g. you “like” Starbucks page and made comments, both physical and virtual movement) exchange between the personal and the highly mediated.

 

Talks and speeches about blogging and microblog in China:

1. Yang Lan: The generation that's remaking China

2. Michael Anti: Behind the Great Firewall of China

 

Reference:
Marshall, P.D 2008, The Specular Economy, Society. Vol. 47, pp.498-502.

Marshall, P.D 2010, The promotion and presentation of the self: celebrity as marker of presentational media, Celebrity Studies, Routledge, London, pp. 35-48.