How Has Social Media Affected the Relationship Between Celebrities and Fans?
How has social media affected the relationship between celebrities and fans?
These days it seems that the Internet, a post-modern medium, something so complex and vital to our society as being reduce to a mere antiquity of personal feuds and interactive relationships (or at least the satisfaction of what seems like a relationship) between people. The rise of social media applications like Twitter and Facebook allows people to voice their opinions to wider audience, creating a pluralist, postmodern medium in which questions raised about the impact of mediated relationships have surely increased. What is particularly interesting about Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook) is the newfound proximity we ‘normal people’ have to modern celebrities. These Celebrities once performed their professional duties at a distance and were only accessible through one-way relationships; third parties such as tabloids, TV shows, and interviews. Now, however they are within our reach. Newsstand and tabloids enjoyed being filled with negative portrayal of celebrities: Twitter acts as a way for celebrities let their fans know what is happening in their lives, circumventing (equally) biased third parties, and allowing them to portray their own Star Persona.
On the surface it seems as though the use of Twitter is bringing celebrities and their fans closer together by bypassing the filter of the media and conducting a “direct” conversation. Questions remain, however, about the authenticity of the celebrities’ image established and sustained on Twitter. An article by Prof Laura Portwood-Stacer stated that Denver Bronco’s wide receiver Eddie Royal has over 100,000 likes on Facebook and has surpassed 50,000 Twitter followers not by being a great athlete, but through the “connection” with his followers, posting often enough and almost always offering something personal to the fans: a video shoutout, a picture, and the most popular, free tickets to a Broncos game, the article went on to
These days it seems that the Internet, a post-modern medium, something so complex and vital to our society as being reduce to a mere antiquity of personal feuds and interactive relationships (or at least the satisfaction of what seems like a relationship) between people. The rise of social media applications like Twitter and Facebook allows people to voice their opinions to wider audience, creating a pluralist, postmodern medium in which questions raised about the impact of mediated relationships have surely increased. What is particularly interesting about Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook) is the newfound proximity we ‘normal people’ have to modern celebrities. These Celebrities once performed their professional duties at a distance and were only accessible through one-way relationships; third parties such as tabloids, TV shows, and interviews. Now, however they are within our reach. Newsstand and tabloids enjoyed being filled with negative portrayal of celebrities: Twitter acts as a way for celebrities let their fans know what is happening in their lives, circumventing (equally) biased third parties, and allowing them to portray their own Star Persona.
On the surface it seems as though the use of Twitter is bringing celebrities and their fans closer together by bypassing the filter of the media and conducting a “direct” conversation. Questions remain, however, about the authenticity of the celebrities’ image established and sustained on Twitter. An article by Prof Laura Portwood-Stacer stated that Denver Bronco’s wide receiver Eddie Royal has over 100,000 likes on Facebook and has surpassed 50,000 Twitter followers not by being a great athlete, but through the “connection” with his followers, posting often enough and almost always offering something personal to the fans: a video shoutout, a picture, and the most popular, free tickets to a Broncos game, the article went on to