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Slide 1: Fame and Loathing in the Blogosphere Liza Potts MEA 23 June 2005 pottsl@rpi.edu
Slide 2: Presentation Overview       Background Prior Research About this Research The Cases Media Meets Real? Significance
Slide 3: What’s a blog? “A frequently updated webpage with dated entries, new ones placed on top” - Rebecca Blood, early blogger  Over 9.2 mil tracked by Technorati (major blog search engine)  Existed for over seven years, but only recently have become more common online 
Slide 4: Why Celebrities and Blogs?  Marshall: Celebrity and Power  The power of celebrity is to maintain an active construction of identity in the social world.  Studying celebrity offers the reader of culture a privileged view of the representative forms of modern subjectivity that pass through the celebrity as discourse.  Gamson: Claims to Fame  Lack of studio system results in maintaining fame through hired handlers. Stars were encouraged to talk about the film and not their personal lives.  Constant performance of the public self is the only real  Rojek: Celebrity  Emergence of Celebrity: Democracy, decline in organized religion, commodification of everyday life  Inauthenticity of the self due to the split between public/private
Slide 5: Research Issues  Negotiating offline celebrity online  How will the audience know you’re famous?  How do they present themselves - celebs or “ordinary” people?   Audience Production and Sustainability  Daily production of publicity and pseudo events Celebrity and Audience Interaction Online  Do celebrity hierarchies exist online?  Or do fans feel free to engage these celebrities in dialogue? What kind of dialogue?  Further understanding of identity construction, power structures, and internet communication
Slide 6: How is Celebrity different Online?  Speed, Reach, Anonymity (Gurak)  Speed: Information flies on the net - all at a lower cost than MSM’s costs  Reach: Internet Social Networks, links, tags  Anonymity for audience but not for the celebrity   Structure of online communication encourage and expand a false sense of intimacy Publicity and event making often without their handlers nearby
Slide 7: Power Laws and Celebrity   monologue with a certain amount of  Oprah’s audience 22 million = impossiblefit ithave question-answering whenever I can to in. I meaningful, one onthe time to devote to iteach of them wouldn't have one interactions with if each post became a dialogue, and in the blogs I  “Interacting with everyone, is, ahem, small-time.” admire that do have response structures  From Broadcasting (TV) to Interacting (web) (Teresa Nielsen Hayden's marvelous Making Light for example) the  TV, books are one-way mediums feedbackinteraction is where all the interesting  In theory, the Internet is a two or multi-way stuff medium happens. where interaction can take place. -Neil Gaiman If Power ↑ then Interaction ↓ find the time to I can just about manage to “Oprahkeep this blog/journal/diary/thing as a will never talk to you. Ever.” (Shirky)
Slide 8: Negotiating Celebrity  “Didn’t you used to be an actor?” - Hooters Waitress to Wil Wheaton  *the unedited rantings of a fat 43 year old menopausal ex -talk show host * - married mother of four- read at your own risk - my spelling sux - Rosie O’Donnell’s blog formerly Rosie  Occupation: Artist - Fred Durst’s Profile on Xanga
Slide 9: Coding Celebrity Online Fiske Meets the Internet  Offline  Lighting, settings, etc.  Being seen (Awards, Premieres, Humanitarian)  Clothes, makeup, hairstyles  Online  Glamorous URLs? (www.onceadored.blogspot.com, www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=americanalien)  Create your own events!  Hyperlinks = Online Currency on page ranking systems (Google) Linking to other celebrities, events, or causes  Do others link to the celebrity? Blog about the celebrity? Create communities and syndication for the celebrity?   Aesthetics in design - looking professional online
Slide 10: Negotiating the Real  Blending the Media World with the Real World  Media World = Better World (Couldry)  Not based on fact, but unconsciously derived from a particular concentration of symbolic power.  Through the naturalized hierarchy between the constructed terms media world and ordinary world, this division of the social world is general reproduced as legitimate.
Slide 11: Audience/Event Production  Traditional media...  Publicity campaigns for films, TV, and books  Handlers to negotiate the public identities (Stylists, Assistants, PR people)  Pseudo events to generate interest (Boorstin)  New media…  Celebrities can maintain their own identities thanks to ease of online publishing and the lack of studio control  Allows the audience to learn more about the celebrity and maybe even interact with them online (chats, blogs, etc.)  Psuedo events enhanced by speed and reach
Slide 12: How do Celebrities keep their Audience?  “…people read what you write if they want to. If you don’t interest them, they go away. Wil’s life is interesting, and he communicates that well. Also, he’s likeable. He’s having too much fun.” - Gaiman, discussing Wheaton’s success as a blogger and perhaps Gaiman’s own success as a celebrity blogger
Slide 13: Confronting the Fans  Anne Rice  On Amazon, over 318 reviews posted for her newest novel, Blood Canticle. Majority are negative.  Rice then slams her fans in a post on Amazon and invites them to return the book to her for a refund  Amazon removes all of it, then restores it  Rice addresses the controversy in her journal. The blogosphere erupts with gossip over this event.
Slide 14: Conflicts: Offline and Online Celebs  Fred Durst  Maintains a blog on Xanga  Video stolen by “hackers” off Durst’s PC  Sues Gawker (media gossip blog) for providing a link to the “stolen” video. Later drops the suit.  Durst’s blog gets slammed by negative comments (re: Durst as a pseudo event maker, lame blog posts, and references to his anatomy)
Slide 15: Significance   Fans want celebrities to be authentic. This requires a coherent narrative, just as it does for any blogger. While they realize that celebrities are commodities, they also want to know that celebrities are not just what they see on film – that they have real lives, thoughts, and families. It is important for the celebrity to be able to balance this distance, while still being able to show an authentic person behind the mask of the characters they place on screen. Looking at all of these issues of celebrity is critical to understandings how blogging is evolving, both for traditional celebrities, new media stars, and for everyday bloggers who are trying to generate an audience.  