Internet Celebrity

Crystal Abidin

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787560789
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

The face of internet celebrity is rapidly diversifying and evolving. Online and mainstream celebrity culture are now weaving together, such that breakout stars from one-hit viral videos are able to turn their transient fame into a full-time career.
This book presents a framework for thinking about the different forms of internet celebrity that have emerged over the last decade, taking examples from the Global North and South, to consolidate key ideas about cultures of online fame. It discusses the overall landscape, developments and trends in the internet celebrity economy, and cross-cultural lessons.

1

WHAT IS AN INTERNET CELEBRITY ANYWAY?

In the 2010s, dominant press coverage and conversations around internet celebrity have focused on just one particular type of celebrity: The Influencer. Influencers are the epitome of internet celebrities, given that they make a living from being celebrities native to and on the internet. Several news reports have been celebrating the success and promise of young Influencers, such as Australian Troye Sivan whose home videos on YouTube eventually grew into a singing contract with EMI Australia, an acting career in Hollywood, and being named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 25 most influential teenagers of 2014. Still other reports focus on the shortcomings and scandals of the relatively new Influencer industry, such as when British YouTuber Zoe Sugg, who broke records for being the fastest selling debut novelist, shifting over 78,000 copies in a week in 2014, was exposed for having used a ghostwriter. But internet celebrity is a far broader concept with a much longer history than that of Influencers.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF INTERNET CELEBRITY

There are many theoretical and vernacular accounts of the history of internet fame. But how internet celebrity has come to emerge in various parts of the world varies, depending on the cultural norms of the people, the social practices around media devices and personalities, and the structure of technological capabilities that mediate a population’s access to content. While every effort has been made to consider the diverse cultural variety of internet celebrity around the globe, through in-depth case studies throughout the book, this section focuses on a brief history of internet celebrity that happens to be primarily Anglocentric. This is a result of key scholarship in celebrity studies having been published in the English language and focused on media formats that have been popularized in North American, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As such, the conversation does not comprehensively cover the various cultural and platformed histories of internet celebrities.

For instance, the system of celebrity media in Japan distinguishes “mainstream celebrities” in the traditional media industries, such as actors, musicians, and models, from “idols” who are systemically manufactured to serve as cute icons and role models, and from “tarento” (タレント) who are recurring personalities on various media and are literally “famous for being famous” without having any other attributes of the entertainment industry. This means that the broad English translation of “internet celebrity” cannot accurately account for the historical, structural, and cultural nuances of distinct types of celebrity in Japan alone. In another instance, in China the vernacular term for internet celebrities is “wanghong” (网红), which translates to “red on the internet” with the color red signifying popularity, and broadly refers to highly prolific internet users who are effective conduits for channeling online retail businesses or social media advertising. In other words, these users are assigned celebrity status not for any variety of demonstrable talent, but for their specific ability to attract attention on the internet within the vast ecology of Chinese users. Unlike the connotations of being a “content creator” in the Anglocentric parts of the world, a wanghong is premised on the acute ability to convert internet viewer traffic to money, relying less on content production than the ability to hold an audience’s attention visually. This means that even where the brushstrokes of internet celebrity translations may heed to some cultural specificities, the benchmark and characteristics of being an internet celebrity can also vary drastically across ecologies. As such, given that it is impossible to provide a comprehensive overview of the cultural and structural histories of internet celebrity around the world, this section will instead focus on a theoretical history of internet celebrity. Giving a brief overview of some of the most important scholarship on celebrity culture, we will go through key ideas that have informed the emergence of celebrities in the age of the internet.

Traditional Celebrities

For most people, the mere mention of the word “celebrity” invokes a visual image of a glamorous Hollywood actor, probably strutting down the red carpet at award ceremonies. Or perhaps you imagine a pop singer performing live on stage to thousands of enthusiastic fans raving in a mosh pit. For others, celebrities can also be internationally known public figures who are prolific for their social status, such as the former President of the USA Barack Obama. Regardless, in the traditional or legacy media industries of cinema, television, radio, music, and print, we have tended to associate the idea of celebrity to an achievement, talent, or position. But being a celebrity in the sense of having fame or being well known is not always tied to these rational and tangible sources.

Research by eminent celebrity studies scholar Graeme Turner¹ shows us that even if some celebrities are first parachuted into the limelight through their achievements, talents, or positions, many of them continue to attract public attention for durations way past the initial instigation, even if they do not continue to commit to or demonstrate their initial sources of fame. This occurs, for instance, when the media starts to report on the private lives of cinema and television actors, musicians, or politicians, even if these affairs are not directly connected to the skills or positions that first made them publicly famous.² Considering this, Turner³ argues that when the public begins to take an interest in a person for their personal lives and identities per se, rather than for what they have done, they are no longer merely public figures but have become bona fide celebrities with public personae. This tells us that although celebrity is traditionally thought of as an innate quality gifted to extraordinary people, contemporary celebrity culture has shifted to focus on people and things that are usually constructed, can be transient, are usually sensational, and often visually based, in tandem with tabloid culture. In other words, the quality of celebrity does not naturally attach to or arise from specific people but is constructed through a process.⁴

The construction of celebrity is supported by intentional media coverage on a person, that turns them into a commodity, where the public is massaged to take interest in them continually. Cultural studies scholars like Chris Rojek⁵ have also theorized about celebrity and fame as products of the mass media that specifically highlight a person, attribute special qualities to them, and frame them as being worthy of our attention. Scholars who have studied the industry of creating celebrities have found that it is a networked business comprising entertainment, communications, publicity, representation, appearance, coaching, and endorsement specialists,⁶ and it is facilitated with specialized jobs such as managers, agents, publicists, promoters, and magazine editors.⁷

Ordinary People as Celebrities

Since celebrities can be groomed by experts in the traditional media industry, logically speaking, any ordinary, everyday person can be groomed into celebritydom irrespective of whether they have extraordinary achievements, talented skills, or prominent positions in society. As media formats evolved and television genres diversified, ordinary people were increasingly attaining flash fame as guests on talk shows. Specifically, confessional formats like The Jerry Springer Show and intervention formats like Dr. Phil, where ordinary people are thrust into the spotlight to have their private lives and personal issues turned into public spectacles and commercial subjects, saw the proliferation of fame being attached to the “lived experience of ‘the ordinary’ ”⁸, which Turner terms the “demotic turn.”

However, what is an “ordinary” life anyway? Sociologist of popular culture Laura Grindstaff⁹ contends that “ordinary” does not signpost content as being “average,” “typical,” or “representative of the population in general,” but rather merely conveys that they are not experts or celebrities and are famous for assorted reasons. This includes having first-hand experience of a significant incident or being willing to divulge something attention-worthy from their private lives. Furthermore, as ordinary people are less filtered and orchestrated than traditional celebrities who have been trained in deportment and impression management, it is expected that ordinary people on television are more likely to display intense human emotions in response to specific incidents. This is a moment that Grindstaff¹⁰ terms “the money shot.” These highly lifelike displays of emotions range across the spectrum, from happiness and grief to anger and regret, and the audience’s ability to identify with these emotions on-screen contributes to feelings that ordinary celebrities are more real and authentic than traditional celebrities.

However, just because there has been an increasing presence of ordinary lives on display does not mean that any ordinary person can be famous for merely publicizing their everyday lives. Fame only attaches to particular forms of everyday life that captivate an audience. Thus, despite the demotic turn, the traditional celebrity industry is not necessarily more democratic because not everyone has an equal opportunity to attain fame¹¹. Ultimately, the television industry, like all media industries, relies on public interest and viewership for sustainability, and what attracts attention is entertainment value. In the demotic turn, seemingly authentic and dedicated representations of everyday life “as lived” are but a calculated production of entertainment in the guise of democratic access, and celebrity in the traditional media industries remains hierarchical, exclusive, and gatekept.¹²

Therefore, are there any benefits to the rise of ordinary people and their lives being broadcast on traditional media formats as new forms of celebrity? Scholars argue that there may be several useful outcomes. Broadcasting and celebritizing ordinary lives in traditional media allow viewers to learn and critically assess what is real and what is constructed in the media.¹³ It can teach viewers to self-brand¹⁴ and can persuade viewers to practice more reflection and empathy by identifying with other people’s stories in a practice that visual media scholar Craig Batty¹⁵ has called “emotioneering.” However, despite these apparent benefits, putting ordinary people and their lives on display to reap...