Abstract
Celebrity articulates a very particular form of public identity that more or less is linked to the extensions of the self beyond one’s primary activity and into the complex dimensions of publicity, fame, and into a wider, and by its very definition, popular culture. Celebrity’s relationship to another form of public identity—the politician/political leader—is conceptually and practically connected by their shared relationship to the popular and its articulation through the various mediated forms of popular culture. This connection to popular culture is one of the ways in which power is legitimized as the politician or celebrity is authenticated by their capacity to embody the citizenry in one sphere and the audience in another. This paper argues that there has been a significant transformation in our constitution of fame in the contemporary moment that has fundamentally shifted this fame/politics nexus. The key element of this shift is the way in which digital media has reconfigured our political-popular cultural landscape. It is argued that via the communicative structures of social media and its avenues of sharing and connecting, there has developed a pandemic will-to-public identity by the billions of users of online culture—what is identified as pandemic persona—that resembles the patterns with which celebrity and politicians have operated over the previous century. Pandemic persona has produced a new instability in the organization of contemporary politics as this new public intermediary insinuates itself in unpredictable ways into the way that the process of representation in both popular and political culture manifests itself in what could be seen as legacy media and legacy formations of political institutions and practices.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
It is important to understand that the concept of representation has been effectively analyzed in many works in political science that inform the characterization outlined in this paper as a “representational media and cultural regime” (see for instance Powell Jr 2004; 273–296, Pitkin 1967, and Urbinati et al. 2008; 387–412). A very good summary of the historical work on representation that acknowledges the intersection of Kantian philosophical traditions and social science disciplines as well as its transition into conceptualizations of democracy is achieved by Colebrook 1999. Nonetheless, there is little research that connects media to these theorizations emerging from political science concerned with representation. The complete linkage of the idea of a (political) regime being connected to its hegemonically supported and consensus building media and its associated production of a particular form of culture is developed here to further accentuate this linkage in the production of a system of recognized and legitimized public personalities.
An active user is generally defined in these statistics as on the social media site at least once a month.
References
Abidin, C. (2015). Communicative intimacies: influencers and perceived interconnectedness. Ada: A Journal of Gender, new Media & Technology, 8, 1–16 Retrieved from http://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/. Accessed 10 July 2018.
Alberoni, F. (2006 - Originally published in 1962). The powerless ‘Elite’: theory and sociological research on the phenomenon of the stars. In P. David Marshall (Ed.), The celebrity culture reader (pp. 108–123). New York: Routledge.
Barlow, J.P. (1996). Declaration of the independence of cyberspace, Retrieved 24 April 2018 from http://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html.
Barney, D., Coleman, G., Ross, C., Sterne, J., & Tembeck, T. (Eds.). (2016). The participatory condition in the digital age. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action: digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Inf Commun Soc, 15(5), 739–768.
Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2013). The logic of connective action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Brejzek, T. (2010). From social network to urban intervention: on the scenographies of flash mobs and urban swarms. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 6(1), 109–122. https://doi.org/10.1386/padm.6.1.109_1.
Brockington, D. (2009). Celebrity and the environment: fame, wealth and power in conservation. London; New York: Zed; distributed in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan.
Brockington, D. (2014). Celebrity advocacy and international development. London: Routledge.
Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2009). YouTube: online video and participatory culture. In Cambridge. Malden, MA: Polity.
Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: social movements in the internet age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cheney-Lippold, J. (2017). We are data: algorithms and the making of our digital selves. New York: New York University Press.
Colebrook, C. (1999). Ethics and representation: from Kant to post-structuralism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Coleman, G. (2014). Hacker, hoaxer, whistleblower, spy: the many faces of Anonymous. New York: Verso books.
Confessore, N., Dance, G. J.X., Harris, R. & Hansen, M. (2018). The follower factory: inside social media’s black market. New York Times 27 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html .
Corner, J. (2000). Mediated persona and political persona. Eur J Cult Stud, 3(3), 386–402. https://doi.org/10.1177/136754940000300306.
Couldry, N. (2010). Why voice matters: Culture and politics after neoliberalism. London: Sage.
Driessens, O. (2013). Celebrity capital: redefining celebrity using field theory. Theory Soc, 42(5), 543–560. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-013-9202-3.
Duffy, B. E., & Wissinger, E. (2017). Mythologies of creative work in the social media age: fun, free, and “just being me”. Int J Commun, 11, 20.
Dyer, R. (1979). Stars. London: Educational Advisory Service, British Film Institute.
Fietkiewicz, K. J., Dorsch, I., Scheibe, K., Zimmer, F., & Stock, W. G. (2018). Dreaming of stardom and money: micro-celebrities and influencers on live streaming services. In G. Meiselwitz (Ed.), Social Computing and Social Media 10th Conference (Vol. 1, pp. 240–253). Las Vegas NV: Springer.
Gal, N., Shifman, L., & Kampf, Z. (2016). “It gets better”: internet memes and the construction of collective identity. New Media Soc, 18(8), 1698–1714.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity.
Grayling, A. C. (2016). The age of genius: the seventeenth century and the birth of the modern mind (1st U.S. edition. ed.). New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Guastella, G. (2017). Word of mouth: Fama and its personifications in art and literature from Ancient Rome to the Middle Ages (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hale, S. A., John, P., Margetts, H., & Yasseri, T. (2018). How digital design shapes political participation: a natural experiment with social information. PLoS One, 13(4), e0196068.
Hardie, P. R. (2012). Rumour and renown: representations of Fama in Western literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hearn, A. (2017). Verified: self-presentation, identity management, and selfhood in the age of big data. Pop Commun, 15(2), 62–77.
Heimans, J., & Timms, H. (2018). New power: how movements build, businesses thrive, and ideas catch fire in our hyper-connected world (1st ed.). New York: Doubleday.
Horkheimer, M., Theodor W. Adorno,T. W. & Noeri, G. (2002) Dialectic of enlightenment. Stanford University Press, 2002.
Karlsen, R. (2015). Followers are opinion leaders: The role of people in the flow of political communication on and beyond social networking sites. European Journal of Communication, 30(3), 301–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323115577305.
Katz, E., Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Columbia University. Bureau of Applied Social Research. (1955). Personal influence; the part played by people in the flow of mass communications. Glencoe, Ill.: Free press.
KickFactory. (2016). The average Twitter user now has 707 Followers. 23 June. We blog. Retrieved 23 December 2018. from https://kickfactory.com/blog/average-twitter-followers-updated-2016/.
Kohn, M. (2013). Privatization and protest: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Toronto, and the occupation of public space in a democracy. Perspectives on Politics, 11(1), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592712003623.
Lee, F. L. F. (2017). Social media, political information cycle, and the evolution of news: the 2017 chief executive election in Hong Kong. Communication and the Public, 3(1), 62–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047317742421.
Lilti, A. (2017). Trans. by Lynn Jeffress. The invention of celebrity: 1750–1850. Malden, MA: Polity.
Margetts, H., John, P., Hale, S., & Yasseri, T. (2015). Political turbulence: how social media shape collective action. Princeton University Press.
Margetts, H., John, P., Hale, S., & Yasseri, T. (2016). Brexit, voting, and political turbulence. Retrieved from http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2016/08/18/brexit-voting-and-political-turbulence/. Accessed 15 Nov 2018
Marshall, P. D. (2010). The promotion and presentation of the self: celebrity as marker of presentational media. Celebrity Studies, 1(1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392390903519057.
Marshall, P. D. (2014). Celebrity and power: fame in contemporary culture (2nd edition (1st edition: 1997) ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Marshall, P. D. (2016). Celebrity persona pandemic. Minneapolis Minn: University of Minnesota Press.
Marshall, P. D., & Henderson, N. (2016). Political persona 2016 - an introduction. Persona Studies, 2(2), 1–18.
Marshall, P. D., Moore, C., & Barbour, K. (2019). Persona studies: an introduction. Malden Ma: Blackwell-Wiley.
Marwick, A. (2016). You may know me from YouTube: (micro-)celebrity in social media. In P. D. Marshall & S. Redmond (Eds.), A Companion to Celebrity (pp. 333–350). Boston: Wiley Blackwell.
Mention Reports (2018). Followers - Instagram report. Retrieved 21 November 2018 from https://mention.com/en/reports/instagram/followers/#2
Milner, R. M. (2016). The world made meme: public conversations and participatory media. MIT Press.
Neely, C. (2018). Japan’s top social media networks for 2018. Humble Bunny. Retrieved from http://www.humblebunny.com/japans-top-social-media-networks-2018/.
Pels, D., & Corner, J. (2003). Media and the restyling of politics: consumerism, celebrity and cynicism. London: Sage.
Perrin, A. (2015). Social media usage: 2005-2015. Pew Research Centre: Internet and Technology. 8 October. Retrieved 25 April 2018 from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/.
Pew Research Centre: Internet and Technology. (2018). Social Media Fact Sheet. 5 Feb. Retrieved 25 April 2018 (http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/).
Pitkin, H. F. (1967). The concept of representation: University of California Press.
Powell, G. B., Jr. (2004). Political representation in comparative politics. Annu Rev Polit Sci, 7, 273–296.
Raphael, J., & Lam, C. (Eds.). (2017). Becoming brands: celebrity, activism and politics. Toronto: Waterhill Publishing.
Senft, T. M. (2008). Camgirls: celebrity & community in the age of social networks. New York: Peter Lang.
Senft, T. M. (2013). Microcelebrity and the branded self. In A. Bruns, J. Burgess, & J. Hartley (Eds.), A companion to new media dynamics (pp. 346–354). Chichester ; Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.
Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in digital culture. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Smith, K. (2017). “Marketing: 47 incredible Facebook statistics.” Brandwatch. Retrieved 25 April 2018 (https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/47-facebook-statistics/).
Smith, C. (2018). Snapchat statistics and facts (February 2018) by the numbers. 17 April. Retrieved 25 April 2018 (https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/snapchat-statistics/).
Statista. (2018a). “Numbers of social network users worldwide from 2010 to 2021 (in billions).” Retrieved 25 April, 2018 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/).
Statista. (2018b). “Most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2018, ranked by number of active users (in millions).” Retrieved 25 April, 2018 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/).
Street, J. (2004). Celebrity politicians: popular culture and political representation. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6, 435–452. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2004.00149.x.
Totman, S. (2017). The emergence of the super-celebrity activist: George Clooney and Angelina Jolie. In J. Raphael & C. Lam (Eds.), Becoming brands: celebrity, activism and politics (pp. 21–31). Toronto: Waterhill Publishing.
Tsaliki, L. et. al. eds. (2011). Transnational celebrity activism in global politics: Changing the world? Bristol, England. Chicago: Intellect Books.
Turner, G. (2010). Ordinary people and the media: the demotic turn. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Urbinati, N., Mark, E., & Warren, M. E. (2008). The concept of representation in contemporary democratic theory. Annu Rev Polit Sci, 11, 387–412.
Van Zoonen, L. (2005). Entertaining the citizen: when politics and popular culture converge: Rowman & Littlefield.
Weber, M. (1968). Economy and society; an outline of interpretive sociology. New York: Bedminster Press.
Wheeler, M. (2013). Celebrity politics: image and identity in contemporary political communications. Cambridge: Polity.
Wilson, J. (2014). Stardom, sentimental education and the shaping of global citizens. Cine J, 53(2), 27–49.
Wong, W. H., & Brown, P. A. (2013). E-bandits in global activism: WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and the Politics of No One. Perspectives on Politics, 11(4), 1015–1033. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592713002806.
Zhang, L., Zhao, J., & Xu, K. (2016). Who creates trends in online social media: the crowd or opinion leaders? J Comput-Mediat Commun, 21, 1–16.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethical Approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Conflict of Interest
The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Marshall, P.D. Celebrity, Politics, and New Media: an Essay on the Implications of Pandemic Fame and Persona. Int J Polit Cult Soc 33, 89–104 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9311-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9311-0