In June 2010, Jonathan Metz, a Connecticut man, caught his left arm in the basement furnace while attempting to repair the boiler. Being stuck and having 12 hours to reflect on his ordeal, Metz asked himself âWhat would MacGyver do?â1 By calling on a well-known television character, Metz was able to come to a decision: amputate the arm. When Metz invoked MacGyver, he was invoking a media figureâsomeone Metz did not actually knowâin order to make a life-altering decision. In fact, MacGyver isnât a real person; rather, he is a character from a television program. And while this may be an extreme example, it serves to illustrate the important role that celebrities, including the characters they play, perform in a mediated culture. Similar to the ways in which spirits may have guided members of traditional societies, in contemporary society, celebrities not only guide us to make important decisions but serve as role models, mentors, teachers, best friends, love interests, father or mother figures, and brother, sister or cousin figures; in other words, we form social relationships with people we do not actually know. Relationships such as these, formed through media consumption, may begin in early childhood, where deep feelings that may develop can endure, oftentimes lasting decades, perhaps a lifetime.2
Establishing and conducting a parasocial relationship with a celebrity is an idea that grew out of early television research based on observations of parasocial interactions between viewers and media personalities who appeared to look out of the television at the viewer, giving the impression that the viewer was being spoken to directly.3 In fact, as television executives realized that audiences were developing emotional connections to performers, those performers were encouraged to adopt personality characteristics that would imbue them to their fans.4 In the 1980s anthropologist John Caughey coined the term imaginary social relationships that he described as one-sided relationships in which the individual knows a great deal about the media figure but the relationship is not mutual.5 And in the early 1990s I first wrote about the ways in which advertising served as a mediating force that held the potential to stabilize as well as destabilize the imaginary social relationship.6 With the addition of media experiences extending from legacy formats like television, radio and print, we entered into an era 30 years ago of the World Wide Web and digital media through which to connect to others, including celebrities. In the early 2000s came the ability through Facebook and later Twitter to connect with friends, current and past, as well as acquaintances or other like-minded individuals, and media figures. Although with the latter, who may be more like Stanley Milgramâs familiar strangers, connection is most likely voyeuristic.7 And yet more recently platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, among other social media platforms, are impacting the ways in which people present themselves to one another. This is a mediated world of reciprocity in which celebrities provide a model of communication in the ways in which they reach out to fans and the ways in which fans attempt to interact with celebrities. This chapter explores the nature of mediated social connections in an era of digital media. The mediated world of familiar strangers advanced to consider parasocial interaction between the TV screen and the individual and on to imaginary social relationships in which the connection extended to our inner worlds. With regard to mediated social connections, both the nature of what it means to be social and the nature of connection have changed. This chapter frames the discussion of those changes within three concepts: place, imagination, and sociality or togetherness. The chapter describes the ways in which individuals develop mediated social connections, and it addresses the changing nature of those connections brought on by newer ways of communicating through digital media.
Place, Imagination and Togetherness
There was a time when media consumption was location bound. By this I mean that if you wanted to watch a movie, you had to do so in a theater. If you wanted to watch television, you would have to be sitting in a particular room where the TV was located. With digital media and related technologies we are no longer bound to the location where the communication might have otherwise occurred. For example, you no longer have to watch the news on your TV when you can be pretty much anywhere watching or reading the news as long as you have an Internet connection and app on your smartphone. Having established that locative media allow us to make content transportable, the notion of place also refers to the ways in which media allow usâencourage usâto be in more than one place in our mind at a time, promoting movement through multiple realities. This applies to both consumption of fixed media and locative media, as we are no longer talking about technology but what the mind does with media content. Moving through multiple realities may refer to consuming multiple media simultaneously, and it may refer to the kind of finger surfing we do when shifting among social media platforms. In addition, we can be physically here in the present and there, meaning mentally elsewhere, at the same time. Based on the content we consume, the experience becomes layered, based on the mediated social connections we conduct with others, some of whom we may know, but others we know about, like celebrities.
Celebrity as a Practice
Marwick and boyd define celebrity as a practice, using terms like âcelebrity practitionersâ or âfamous peopleâ to avoid the binary implications of the noun.8 Here I am thinking about the term celebrity more expansively to include media figures like a sports person, an actor, even the character they may play or a pop singer. While we recognize many celebrities because of their talent as singers, performers or athletes, there are other so-called celebrities who demonstrate no particular talent but have become noteworthy for other reasons. It is important to include micro-celebrities , individuals who are likely to be ordinary people but who do extraordinary things that they document on social media. Celebrities, micro-celebrities and media figures are terms that are often used interchangeably; however, there are distinguishing features that will be critically analyzed in this book. Additionally, anyone who engages with social media operates in the same or at least similar manner as do celebrities. Anyone can have a Facebook or Instagram account or a Twitter feed. Of note, however, are issues related to authenticity and sincerity and the seemingly different requirements for celebrities and micro-celebrities and the rest of us. There is the related issue of sociality or togetherness, which refers to the changing nature of our social world including strong and weak social connections to others, like the superficial nature of having many hundreds of âfriendsâ on Facebook. We increasingly live in a world in which being together with others is simulated through the use of technology rather than through actual social interaction. As Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) social psychologist Sherry Turkle so aptly put it, we are alone together. However, the innate need for connection and intimacy drives us toward mediated social connections, and it is the desire to experience the emotional connection to others through social media that keeps us coming back for more. The authenticity of relationship that we seek is not a state of being; rather it is questionable whether through the use of social media individuals can experience authentic connections or whether those connections remain illusory.
Everyday Routines and Media Experiences
Driving an automobile in a routine manner is analogous to the ways in which people navigate through much media consumption, and it illustrates how people can mentally be in two places at once. Consider the following scenario: you drive to work or school just about every dayâwhat we might call a routine experience. Oftentimes you arrive at the location only to ask âHow did I get here? I donât remember driving here.â Such an important yet routine activity like driving to the same place every day promotes a shift from what we are supposed to be doing (in this case paying attention to pedestrians and other drivers) to thinking about other things. In a sense, we are in two places at once: here in the present driving and mentally elsewhere thinking about other things. We understand the importance of remaining mentally present while driving, and yet we are so well practiced at this taskâdriving routinely to school or workâthat many of us find our minds wandering. If we can so easily employ an attention strategy while driving an automobile that allows for thinking about other things (hopefully without causing an accident), media consumption that involves little riskâwatching, listening or reading, perhaps simultaneously with multiple mediaâpresents opportunities to turn away from what is before us and engage in our imaginary worlds. The fluidity with which we move between what is before us and our imagination is important to the ways in which we use media, but the ways in which people utilize digital media may vary as the requirements for finger surfing or using a keyboard or mouse are different from passively watching television, listening to the radio or reading a magazine or book. While people create their own regular route through legacy media along the way, elaborating in their own minds about what they are reading, hearing or seeing, use of digital media requires a greater degree of attention and interactivity.9 In a less interactive media environment, the regular route through media provides the opportunity for a fan to shift from attending to the medium before them to their stream of consciousness thinking or fantasy as they have learned over time to fluidly move from the medium or content to elaboration in their own minds based on that which is salient or relevant. This may not be the case with digital media that not only draw our attention but al...