Media and celebrity: production and consumption of "well-knownness".

Hellmueller, Lea C. ; Aeschbacher, Nina

1. Introduction

"Two centuries ago when a great man appeared, people looked for God's purpose in him; today we look for his press agent" (Boorstin, 1972, p. 45). Daniel Boorstin (1962, 1972) pointed out how much of our thinking about human greatness has changed since Shakespeare divided great individuals into three classes: Those who had greatness thrust upon them, those who achieved greatness, and those born great (Boorstin, 1972, p. 45). Within the last century, processes by which Celebrities can be manufactured have been established. (The term celebrity is multifaceted and has changed its meaning over time. Within this essay, the term can either refer to the actual human being represented by the term or to the tradable commodity that a celebrity generates or to the theoretical concept, Bell, 2009, p. 1. To avoid confusion, we will capitalize the human being represented by the term, i.e., "Celebrity.") In fact, since the birth of mass commercial culture, a society-wide system that supports the creation of Celebrities has been in place (Gamson, 1992). Therefore, Boorstin (1972) defines a Celebrity (i.e., the human person) as a "human pseudo-event," that is a product of manufacture--a creation--rather than the result of merit.

The media play a crucial role in that creation of Celebrities: They provide visibility and a distribution channel of Celebrities' activities, which contribute to their well-knownness in society. In the democracy of pseudo-events, everyone can become a Celebrity by getting into the media's spotlight and by staying there (Gamson, 1992; Ponce de Leon, 2002; Boorstin, 1972). Rojek (2001) argues that the "human pseudo-event," that is attributed celebrity as a concentrated representation of an individual as newsworthy (e.g., Boorstin, 1962, 1972), is only one type of contemporary celebrity status. Ascribed celebrity, on the other hand, is the celebrity of biological descent whereas achieved celebrity is the celebrity of accomplishments-that is, individuals who possess rare talents or skills. However, mass media may play a stronger role in the creation of Celebrities than assumed by Rojek (2001). To give an example, not all players who are merely drafted into the National Football League (i.e., achieved celebrity status through talent and skills) receive the same attention in society because they do not receive the same attributed celebrity status by the media. Therefore, the representation in the media and the public's attention to it mainly influences the process of contemporary celebrity creation (Bell, 2009, p. 3). Hence, the media maintain the intersection between achieved and attributed celebrity status. They can decide whether someone who embodies talent and skills is newsworthy or not and thus highly contribute to their celebrity status in society. Due to the emerging omnipresence of created celebrity status (e.g., media can create a celebrity), this review primarily concerns itself with this type of celebrity and its intersections with achieved celebrity.

It is particularly important to highlight the celebrity industry on a space and time perspective, as these two components intertwine and provide the driving forces for change in the celebrity system. During the mass communication culture's early years, each celebrity sector was largely concentrated in a special location (i.e., Nashville's country music made it famous; public art celebrities did so for Seattle; film for Los Angeles, and so on). Due to technological processes, the celebrity industry has evolved into a stage of decentralization. Not only has celebrity manufacturing moved into sectors beyond entertainment (e.g., sports, politics, and business), but Celebrities also do not remain in one sector (e.g., movie actor Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California in 1966 and president of the United States in 1980; bodybuilder and action star Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California in 2003). In terms of time, the celebrity industry constitutes a growth industry: each year more people become involved in producing Celebrities; more institutions use them to create jobs such as travel experts, whose whole function is to smooth Celebrities' movements through airports (Rein, Kotler, & Stoller, 1997, p. 41) or the appearance industry (i.e., costumers, cosmeticians, hairstylists) whose job is to satisfy a competitive market environment that has fueled a race in all sectors to look younger and to better match the appearance requirements of their sectors (Rein, Kotler, & Stoller, 1997).

Nowadays, U.S. popular culture tends to highly influence the global Celebrity market. Economic interests drive boosting this global appeal. Celebrity provides an alternative way to increase revenues in an international market. But using various Western Celebrities for that purpose has not always been successful because consumers grow up in a particular culture and inherit particular cultural values, beliefs, and processes of perception. In fact, research shows that consumers respond to advertising messages congruent with their culture and with people who reflect its values (e.g., Paek, 2005). In a cultural context, a Celebrity always functions as a cultural hero, and individuals consume a particular form of celebrity culture as a way to be informed, entertained, and included in their cultural community (Hofstede, 1991; Paek, 2005; Ting-Toomey, & Chung, 2005). By "hero" we refer to a person who possesses characteristics that serve as role models and are highly prized within a particular society (Paek, 2005; de Mooij, 1998). In studying Celebrity and media, one has to take into account the cultural context in which the data are collected, as Celebrities typically embody characteristics praised within one society or within a particular culture (e.g., Western culture).

In reviewing research in the field of media and Celebrities, we must first specify the terms we use to explicate the concepts. We use the term mass media to describe media organizations that transmit information to a dispersed public, such as news portals on the Internet, newspapers, television, radio, and magazines. Furthermore, we use the term online to refer to information that people receive through the Internet. We will avoid the term new media as we agree with Shoemaker & Vos (2009) that the term is misleading with regards to the Internet, which made its appearance as a serious news medium in 1990 and is now well established. Thus, we will use the particular term for the medium such as Internet. As we will, however, make use of the term social media, we opted to use Kaplan and Haenlein's (2010) definition which states, "Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user Generated Content" (p. 61). Consequently, social networking sites, blogs, and "content communities" like YouTube can all be subsumed under this term (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 62). Further, Reality TV emerged in the last 20 years as an important distributor and creator of Celebrities. By reviewing past academic research about Reality TV, Mielich (1996) detects some discord about which formats researchers can subsume under that term (p. 6). In this context Hill (2005) emphasizes the transitional nature of this TV genre and its variety of formats, which constantly change and find enhancement in new programs (p. 41). Nonetheless, we find specific characteristics associated with Reality TV, namely "non-professional actors," "unscripted dialogue," "surveillance footage," and "hand-held cameras" (Hill, 2005, p. 41).

A. Section outline of this review

This research and literature review will start with a historical approach to provide an overview of how the concept of celebrity was altered into a mass product around 1900. Fame and public prominence transferred from an aristocratic social status symbol into manufactured mass products that become accessible to the masses through the media. Because the media play a crucial role in creating fame, in a third section we will therefore look at the interactions between media (i.e., its industry), Celebrities, and the audience. After providing an overview on how the paparazzi business closely relates to the celebrity industry and how journalists select Celebrities for news stories, we will discuss the extent to which Reality TV, whose participants are also often on the paparazzi's radar, participates in the construction and deconstruction of Celebrities' fame. As the use of social media increases among traditional media outlets (e.g., newspapers), Celebrities, and the audience, we will elaborate their significance for the contemporary celebrity discussion.

Most of the literature reviewed here deals with research done in the U.S. However, we will integrate German literature as well as a case study from Switzerland in order to foster an understanding of cultural differences within celebrity production and reproduction and to further the knowledge of how globalization success still heavily depends on glocalization, which is the adaption of a global product into a local market (e.g., Rao, 2010). In particular, in a last section, Professor Louis Bosshart from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) will discuss the results of qualitative surveys conducted with beauty queens from Switzerland in order to investigate benefits and drawbacks of fame.

2. Historical Approach: From Alexander the Great to Reality TV Celebrities

Celebrities, stars, heroes, and famous and prominent people refer to persons that stand out from the mass. Due to their visibility, nowadays achieved through the mass media, they become well known by a dispersed public. Because people use a variety of terms to describe the visibility of these people, this creates difficulties in conceptualizing and defining these terms. Many of those meanings overlap even though they first occurred as autonomous words. "It is not possible to locate a set of coherent criteria against which these terms are used, nor is it possible to use them objectively" (Holmes & Redmond, 2006, p. 9). Seifert (2010) states that the concepts of stars, Celebrities, and prominent people are social constructs, which are highly complex phenomena, influenced by various forces defining them (p. 38). This essay particularly deals with the origin of the word celebrity and its transformation and will mainly focus on that by taking on Rojek's (2001) categories of celebrity (ascribed, attributed, and achieved celebrity). Without doubt, the concept of celebrity relates to other forms of becoming visible, like fame, notoriety, power, and elite status. But they are not interchangeable concepts.

In order to understand the emergence of the cultural meaning attached to the term celebrity, we have to delve deeper into historical dimensions. This will allow for a better understanding of how those terms have undergone and still undergo constant meaning changes because of cultural and technological developments (Seifert, 2010, p. 38). The history of celebrity ultimately deals with the history of individuals (Giles, 2000, p. 12). In his dissertation, Bell (2009) argues that one of the hallmarks of contemporary society consists in the shift from a collectivistic to an individualistic society, from a "we-society" to a "me-society." Culture and technology also combine to produce celebrity (Inglis, 2010), and the historical approach will thus manifest the origins of modern celebrity. In order to have a better understanding of when the concept of celebrity first attracted human attention, this section will also provide a visual timeline. Writing about historical origins poses its challenges as it always refers to a particular culture, a particular point of view. Different scholars discussed the roots of the concept (Inglis 2010; Bell, 2009; Gamson, 1992; Boorstin, 1972) from various angles. For example, Boorstin (1972) focused on the graphic revolution, the revolution of the image, whereas Gamson (1992) focused on celebrity in 20th-century America. The interaction between celebrity, culture, and technological progress is dynamic and can alter the concept of celebrity. Not only today, but also from an historical perspective, change matters and has altered the concept of celebrity in various ways. How that meaning transformation came about and how it affected celebrity culture and society will form a part of further investigation.

A. The historical origin

The first really famous man in Europe's history was Herostratos. To make sure that his fellows and generations to come would remember him he set the famous temple of Artemis in Ephesus on fire. That was in 356 B.C. Now, more than 2,000 years later one has to admit that, in this regard, he certainly succeeded.

A millennium ago, a title such as monarch or one's status as a warrior formed one of the best ways to become a Celebrity. Some of the first Celebrities were, in fact, winners in the ancient Olympic Games (BBC News, April 4, 2003). They won the right to lifelong free meals, and poets would advertise their fame by hymns of praise. In fact, in the era of ancient Rome, the cities advertised their most famous inhabitants by imprinting their faces on coins as a mark of immortality. Known as the "first famous person," Alexander the Great received celebration for his conquests. The Roman era acknowledged for the first time that it could bestow civic honors upon even those who were not born into nobility (Giles, 2000, p. 15). Julius Caesar became the first Roman to appear on a coin while still alive. Later, the gladiators achieved fame during the Roman era and many celebrated them for their skills in the bloodthirsty contests that attracted thousands of spectators (BBC News, April 4, 2003).

As a matter of fact, the word origin of celebrity has its roots in the language of the ancient Roman civilization, deriving from the Latin word celeber, meaning "crowded, frequented, or populous." It makes reference to the Latin word inclytus mostly pertaining to things, and seldom as belonging to persons, except in poetry (Von Doederlein, 1841, p. 35). The Handbook of Latin Synonyms (Von Doederlein, 1841) mentions clarus, illustris, and nobilis as synonyms for celeber. Clarus means renowned for eminent services to one's country; illustris, renowned for rank and virtues; and nobilis, as the belonging to a family whose members have already been invested with the honors of the state (p. 35).

We can track the first appearance of the word "celebrity" in a dictionary back to 1612. The word originally referred to "a solemn rite or ceremony, a celebration" (Oxford English Dictionary online, 2010). The condition of being famous was the main meaning of the word (i.e., the condition of being much extolled or talked about; famousness, notoriety). At the beginning of the 19th century, leading writers in the U.S. began to promote the concept of fame, thanks to copper engraving and to the printing press that enabled extensive dissemination of images of individual faces (Bell, 2009, p. 99). While Benjamin Franklin promoted the self-made man in American society, Jean-Jacques Rousseau promoted fame for naturalness and inner qualities, in Europe.

In the 19th century, the contemporary meaning of a famous person emerged. Nowadays the particular meaning of the word is still that of a "person of celebrity, a celebrated person: a public character" (Oxford English Dictionary online, 2010). One of the oldest books on Celebrities dates back to the 19th century, to 1874, when the meaning of celebrity became personalized. Written by Malcolm Maceuen and entitled Celebrities, it serves as an excellent example of how people use the word "celebrity" during this year and before. The book consists of a collection of stories of Celebrities. Celebrities of this time period involved political persons--one chapter, for example, is devoted to Cardinal Richelieu, a Prime Minister of France known for his intelligence and energy (pp. 5-49). Moreover, people also celebrated saints as Celebrities, because of their evident good lives, their observance of rites and ceremonies, and their intellectual spirit. Other Celebrities were people admired and celebrated because of their beauty, their spirit, or their relationship to high society. Madame Recamier provides one example. She lived in Paris about the middle of the 17th century and was known as "a distinguished lady of rank ... whose wit and success in society gave her more lasting distinction than her title and high position" (Maceuen, 1874, p. 125). At the age of 16, she married a rich banker and became known as a queen of fashion and beauty. Whenever she appeared in society, she found herself surrounded, admired, and loved (p. 128). Furthermore, another group of Celebrities consisted of poets, as the era considered poetry as the melody of the mind (p. 197). The biography of John Milton, a British poet, includes a discussion as an example of how the power of an author "extends beyond giving instructions or mere pleasure, that his thoughts may become the means of inciting thoughts in others, and that his ideas, without being copied, may be reproduced under various forms, time and again, by thinkers in other countries or ages" (Maceuen, 1874, p. 201).

To summarize, the Roman "fame through action," the Christian "fame of the spirit," or the literary "fame of the wise" came originally to those with the power to control their audiences and their images, often political and religious elites (Gamson, 1992, pp. 2). The rise of new technologies of communication gradually detached fame and public prominence from an aristocratic social status and transferred it into a product accessible to the masses. A new mass market in faces and reputation marked the ending point of fame as the validation of a class distinction. Boorstin (1972) criticizes the shift of our admiration to a focus on synthetic products that are manufactured (p. 47). Further, he states, "the qualities which now commonly make a man or a woman into a nationally advertised brand are in fact a new category of human emptiness" (Boorstin, 1972, p. 49). Celebrity, he argues, has become in a modern sense a "human pseudo-event" fabricated on purpose to satisfy our exaggerated expectations of human greatness. The Graphic Revolution he refers to is the revolution of visuals. In other words, the emergence of photography in post Civil-War America led to an explosive growth in such mass publications as newspapers and magazines: The circulation of daily papers increased by 400% between 1870 and 1900 (Ponce de Leon, 2002).

B. The birth of celebrity journalism

The introduction of yellow journalism in the last quarter of the 19th century made stories about people a central feature of journalism. Images, no longer only available to those who could paint or engrave, became accessible for everyone through photography.

Thus, we can trace the origin of celebrity journalism to the mid-19th century. The reporting that makes up the genre, however, did not mature until the 20th century mainly because change within journalistic routines never occurs very fast nor very easily. In fact, the newspapers' and magazines' producers that wanted to meet the needs of new kinds of readers had to increase their commitment to the publication of feature stories. Ponce de Leon (2002) argues that a turning point occurred in 1880, when journalists began crafting new techniques for depicting Celebrities. But it still took 40 years for the new representational mold to find a place. The mission of celebrity journalism around 1900 consisted of the illumination and exposure of the subject's real self (Ponce de Leon, 2002, p. 7). Ponce de Leon comes to the conclusion that with a few notable exceptions, celebrity journalism has not fundamentally altered its mission since its maturation around 1900. "The discourse of true success, with its emphasis on self-expression and the accompanying belief that the real faces of the stars are revealed in private, is still a fundamental tenet of celebrity journalism" (Snyder, 2003, p. 446). Forces beyond human control can thwart lives. In that sense, celebrity journalism raised the awareness that even millionaires can have unhappy love lives. Human-interest journalism advanced the tendency to judge Celebrities and the rich more by their lives at home than by their power to sway public events (Snyder, 2003). By the 1920s the Celebrities in popular magazines represented those of consumption (entertainment, sport) rather than production (business, natural sciences). Other important advancements for the concept of celebrity included the boom in literacy and the growth of over 23 million new immigrants entering the U.S. and bringing with them new markets (Bell, 2009, p. 101). The structure of U.S. society changed in 1920 largely due to this boom of immigration.

The television industry altered the celebrity culture yet again by providing every household with celebrity news, bringing the news into individual houses, whereas before people had to leave their house to see Celebrities. Right from its initial boom, television has provided the most significant new outlet for image creation. The accompanying economic push created a new world of fame where people became known for who they are rather than for their actions. Boorstin (1972) describes this change with a new approach to celebrity as a person "known for his well-knownness" (p. 57). In the 1950s, Celebrity began to show its usefulness not only to selling and business, but sales in turn created Celebrities by selling them as a business itself (Gamson, 1992, p. 14), which led into a culture obsessed with celebrity news.

Celebrity journalism transformed itself into a communication industry--an image industry where, for example, Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, through his commitment to high visibility, assembles different experts to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the celebrity industry. In some ways, his celebrity helps the marketing of Microsoft products. Within the celebrity industry--the collection of people, materials, and processes that together produce an output that has value to the market (Rein, Kotler, & Stoller, 1997, p. 30)--this part of the communication industry (i.e., celebrity journalism) plays a crucial role because it distributes the celebrity product and, with rare exceptions, we know Celebrity entirely through the media today. Celebrity journalism therefore has shifted into new technical ways of distribution to satisfy the celebrity industry's needs: for example live-telephone chat, call-in shows, infotainment TV venues, or twittering. Celebrities who understand the logic of the industry have tremendous advantages over those who do not. The omnipresence of Celebrities in the communication industry calls for a closer examination of the latter by working out which specific role(s) they inherit within celebrity culture in general.

As the meaning of celebrity will redefine itself in a quickly changing world, we will discuss the contemporary meaning of celebrity in relation to their markets and media in more depth in Section 3. Nevertheless, to summarize historical changes that led to the celebrity culture we witness today, the time line in Table 1 will provide an overview of how the concept of celebrity has transformed from an aristocratic good into a mass manufactured product along with a secularization of society. One problem with presenting a time line of the history of celebrity stems from the fact that the transformation has not reached its end yet. We still experience fundamental change, as for example through the rise of social media which leads to a highly heterogeneous concept of contemporary celebrity culture. Looking at contemporary celebrity phenomenon such as American Idol, Bell (2009) argues that at the extreme end achievement and celebrity are inversely proportional. That is, Celebrities can be manufactured without any personal achievement involved. Therefore this time line tries to integrate the idea of fame as a product of Celebrities, to highlight what they are known for. This is not an easy task, however. The concept of celebrity clearly overlaps with the concept of fame and with the motor of change in society. Nevertheless, they are not interchangeable.

Table 1 outlines the differences between the Celebrity and fame (the derivation of greatness, the achievement) and the change in society that serves as outcome or precondition of fame. Because this review particularly looks at media and Celebrity, change within the media industry will provide the focus. Moreover, this time line is not exhaustive. Rather it provides a way to conceptualize the history of celebrity to aid in understanding contemporary celebrity culture by integrating different research results (e.g., Riley, 2010; Bell, 2009; BBC News, April 4, 2003; 2004; Gamson, 1992; Boorstin, 1972).

3. The (Mass) Media's Role in Creating Fame

Without the (mass) media's supplying the public with information about Celebrities, recipients would have no awareness of their existence (Hollander, 2010, p. 150; Schierl, 2007b). From the media's standpoint, "celebrity" has nowadays become a precious economic good, because the demand for such content has gradually but consistently increased (Schierl, 2007a, p. 7).

News and entertainment media, for example, gossip magazines such as InTouch, People, or US Weekly and blogs like TMZ, feature an abundance of Celebrity pictures and video footage that render celebrities visible for a wide audience. Visibility, according to Rein, Kotler, and Stoller (1997) is vital for a Celebrity (p. 7). However, they also highlight the drawbacks that can come with high visibility: "Becoming visible means that the media will not only glorify acts but also magnify sins" (p. 3). In the case of Celebrity gossip this results in catching celebrities on tape/camera not only when they make a glamorous appearance on the red carpet, but also when they display deviant behavior (e.g., Britney Spears spontaneously shaving her head at a hairdresser's). On one hand, paparazzi serve the accumulative demand for such pictures. On the other hand, the audience itself participates increasingly actively in the production of the celebrities' visibility, as pictures and videos can nowadays be taken easily from various devices (e.g., mobile phones) and then spread in a matter of minutes.

Pictures that get published in the media show a wide range of Celebrities. How did these people acquire fame and thus celebrity status? Schierl (2007b) argues that the media today have altered their selection criteria concerning the people they prominently cover because the demand for Celebrity content has increased. Consequently, traditional sectors of society, like politics or the arts, can not provide a "sufficient" number of famous people anymore for the media's coverage (p. 103-104). Holmes (2010) emphasizes the rise of "ordinary" people in the media landscape because their appearances symbolize the significant change that has occurred in celebrity culture (p. 74). Turner (2006) characterizes this change as a shift "from the elite to the ordinary," which has especially taken place in today's television and Internet content production (p. 154). This shift results in an increasing media visibility of the ordinary, what Turner (2010b) names "the demotic turn" (p. 2). In this context he also highlights the active involvement of the media machinery: "The most important development, in my view, is the scale with which the media has begun to produce celebrity 'on its own'" (p. 156). With these changing developments, we can no longer consider the media only as "mediators" or "translators" of cultural identity but also as "authors" that produce their own texts (p. 159).

Aside from Celebrities who are well-established through other channels (e.g., sports or music), television's production itself keeps on growing, introducing and selling its own Celebrities through different TV programs such as Reality TV (Turner, 2006, p. 156-157). We will discuss Reality TV's role concerning the construction and deconstruction of fame, as well as the profitability and sustainability of its "self-produced" celebrities later in this section. Furthermore, in the face of emerging trends on the Internet, a new, not to be neglected force in the context of celebrity culture has recently further enhanced the traditional mass media landscape: social media.

In any discussion of contemporary celebrity culture, the media play an important, but not the only role that we must take into account. The paparazzi have become one of the biggest occupational groups that contribute to Celebrity visibility. The subsequent section will therefore elaborate their significance for the contemporary media and celebrity culture, as well as the relationship between paparazzi, Celebrities, and their followers.

A. Relationship between paparazzi, Celebrities, and their followers

Both the general public and journalists consistently view paparazzi as more negatively than other groups of photographers, denigrating them as the "worst of worst" (Mendelson, 2007, p. 169). We can best define a paparazzo nowadays as a "freelance photographer who aggressively pursues celebrities in order to take candid, often compromising photographs of them for publication" (Gold, 2001, p. 111). They are often criticized because of their overaggressive search of an unexpected picture of a Celebrity. The word paparazzi comes from an Italian word for "buzzing insects" and first appeared in La Dolce Vita, a film by the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini as the name borne by one of the characters in the movie. Fellini chose this name for the most prominent of the Celebrity-hounding freelance photographers who haunted cafes on the Via Veneto in hopes of catching some movie star in some ridiculous behavior or abusive consumption of alcohol (Gold, 2001, p. 111). The question remains, though, of how Fellini chose the name. Fellini, who died in 1993, never publicly mentioned how he came up with the name. However, Fellini was quoted as stating that he chose this name because it was the name of one of his childhood friends, who liked to imitate the buzzing sounds of pesky insects (Gold, 2001, p. 112). Though there are number of theories about the name Paparazzo, Fellini may be the only person to know the original meaning of the word.

These days, scholars distinguish between paparazzi and traditional photojournalists by the fact that the former focus on Celebrities rather than on war or politics or people caught up in current events, and the fact that financial gain drives their motivation more than social responsibility (Mendelson, 2007). If "journalism is the business or practice of producing and disseminating information about contemporary affairs of general public interest and importance" (Schudson, 2003, p. 11), should we then consider paparazzi as journalists because they produce information about contemporary celebrities of general public interest and importance? The answer to this question remains the subject of an ongoing debate and heavily depends on an in-depth investigation on how to define "general public interest" and "importance" as these two elements of Schudson's definition are rather vague criteria and would need further explanation. The term paparazzi became (in)famous as an impingement on right of privacy. It all escalated in the death of Princess Diana. The ambivalent position of the paparazzi became the most discussed topic surrounding her death and some hints appeared in the news coverage that the paparazzi borne some responsibility (Mendelson, 2007; Smolla, 1998). But, as Smolla (1998) argues, if the paparazzi killed Diana, they also made her, and we as the public make the paparazzi. All three arguments are oversimplified. As a matter of fact, none exists without the others. But, nowadays, the Hollywood news media have become more aggressive and combative than ever. In order to earn substantial income, they constantly follow Celebrities around town, lurking for best selling photograph.

With the rise of violent encounters between Celebrities and the paparazzi, the California legislature enacted an "anti-paparazzi statue" in 1997 and amended it in 2006. The law allows Celebrities to recover punitive damages against trespassers and to compel them to forfeit all funds earned from such reporting; they may also prevent photographers from climbing fences and chasing limousines (Willis, 2008, p. 176). Nevertheless, Willis (2008) concedes that no state law prohibits the paparazzi from snapping pictures of Celebrities in public places. Because the freedom of the press holds a landmark position in the united States constitutional system, people refrain from going so far as to preventing media outlets from publishing photographs of Celebrities. Another important point in the debate arises from the fact that the courts usually consider Celebrities as public figures who have essentially waived their right to privacy. That is because their talents attract public debate and commentary, and photographs taken in public places cannot fall subject to privacy claims (Willis, 2008, p. 179). However, we should bear in mind that balancing rights to privacy with the competing right to freedom of expression is contextual and cultural. Different judges come to different conclusions. To give but one example, Princess Caroline of Monaco found judges of German Federal Constitutional Court unsympathetic to her claims for breach of privacy (Bruggemeier, Colombi Cracchi, & O'Callaghan, 2010, p. 34). Princess Caroline filed a series of civil law suits against publishers in Germany because of paparazzi photographs of the Princess taken without her consent. But the Court defined her as an absolute person of contemporary society and therefore denied the validity of her claim. But the chamber of the Strasbourg Court, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided that the restricted protection of the privacy of public figures by German law infringes on Art 8(1) ECHR, which states that all persons have the right to respect for their private and family life, their home, and their correspondence (Bruggemeier, Colombi Cracchi, & O'Callaghan, 2010, p. 36). The judges in Strasbourg chose the opposite argument from the German courts.

Even though, many people perceive paparazzi as the worst of the worst who often go on trial, the number of paparazzi has not dropped but rather increased. What motivates the paparazzi to live such a stalking life? of course, money plays a central role. A single photo can sell from anywhere between $6,000 to $100,000 and some estimate that a paparazzo can earn up to one million dollars a year (Howe, 2005, p. 32). And, driven by money within a market-driven media system, it seems logical that as long as readers are willing to pay to see these pictures, editors will continue to support and pay paparazzi whatever they ask for to get their pictures published. Further, the Internet has removed any waiting by the public for Celebrity photos to become available. It has created a way for pictures to appear in public in a matter of a second (Willis, 2008, p. 178). In this instance web publishers will pay paparazzi for their photos to post them on their blogs or websites. That adds another contemporary enticement that will not help to reduce the number of paparazzi.

Celebrities, on the other hand, also depend on the paparazzi to become famous, to get published, to involve their audience by encouraging their becoming fans and followers. The main concern of the Celebrities stems from their charge that those who publish paparazzi photography have wrongfully appropriated their images. Hence, Mendelson (2007) argues that we should view the issue of image for paparazzi and Celebrities less through the lens of privacy than through an image control lens (p. 171). Celebrities also use their private lives to market themselves. The right image for them means that they gain more money and attention from producers and scripts, larger salaries because of greater ratings on TV (p. 172). Therefore, they constantly safeguard their image, concerned to provide a coherent performance. The press considers Celebrities willing to present these private parts of their lives, and so it seems that one cannot hold to the privacy argument as the root of the problems. In fact, the control of these moments of privacy is at stake.

Willis (2008), on the other hand, wants to balance the rights of press freedom with the rights of privacy of Celebrities. This means the establishment through legislation of a "much needed buffer in which Celebrities can more privately enjoy their lives" (p. 202). Such legislation would allow courts to hold that information serving only to satisfy mere curiosity is not newsworthy and that no First Amendment protection should apply to paparazzi who constantly exploit celebrity images. Willis (2008) concludes that a "narrowly tailored rule can be drawn which would prevent publication of non-newsworthy ... photographs while still allowing the media to report the last celebrity romances, break-ups, and exploits" (p. 202).

If we look at the relationship between paparazzi and Celebrities, we should also consider looking at the audience, who indirectly support that kind of reporting; here we must reconsider media education issues in order to balance voyeurism and newsworthiness. This is because we can define the interdependency among the public, the media, and Celebrities as a market of exchange where paparazzi exchange pictures for money, Celebrities exchange visibility and privacy for fame, the media industry exchanges information for attention and subscribers or followers, and the public exchanges attention and maybe money for access to Celebrities' information to satisfy their need for voyeurism. As long as the process of this market remains viable and beneficial for the parties involved and as long as we consider that everyone involved acts to maximize their rational self-interest, paparazzi will not stop following celebrities, celebrities will not stop exposing themselves to such intrusiveness, and media organization and the public will not stop buying these pictures or news items. On the other hand, Bourdieu's (2005) field theory states that humans do not simply act to maximize their rational self-interest. In fact, the individual only acts as a social and collective actor; and thus one can only understand the dynamics in the journalistic field by understanding the degree of autonomy of the field and within the field--for each of the actors. Bourdieu locates the journalistic field within the field of power, caught between cultural and economic power, with economic power generally retaining the upper hand. That may explain why some media outlets seem to remain immune to Celebrity pictures and have more autonomy to look behind the scenes than other people-oriented magazines that can only survive by selling pictures of Celebrities. If we look at the audience side, one of the major forces driving voyeurism comes from our expectations and changing conception of what information should remain closed and private and what information should become available to the public. Calvert (2000) points out that "as our expectations of privacy decrease, our expectations for receiving more information--our expectations of what are public--increase" (p. 78). Particularly in a market-driven media system, the audiences' demand for celebrity content can explain the increasing market for celebrity photography. Because both scholars and practitioners consider the audience an influential factor on media routines (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009), the audience has come to influence news content inasmuch as journalists develop routines based on assumptions or institutional pre-suppositionss about the consuming audience. To the extent that journalists believe audiences value drama and human-interest stories, news content will feed that need (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p. 54).

Battles for visibility and control. How should journalists determine the right thing to do? The argument that they should not cover Celebrities at all ignores the cultural and economic power Celebrities have in society. Another option presented by Mendelson (2008) seems more reasonable: Mass media should cover the entertainment industry like any other powerful cultural institution (like politics or industry), with celebrities as the businesses, trying to present an image to the public to improve their salaries. Journalists should become aware of the possibility of looking more deeply behind the scenes, testing the stars' images--using the same strategies as they use for politics and business institutions (p. 178).

The celebrity industry has become the scene of constant battles for control and battles for visibility. A staff writer for People magazine points out that

 It's a very fine line we have to tread between
 doing journalism and just being an outlet for
 whatever a Celebrity wants to say. It's very hard
 to have any integrity and cover Hollywood,
 because so many people are trying to manipulate
 image. (Gamson, 1992, p. 85)

There is a negative correlation between external influences such as profit expectations and advertising considerations, and professional autonomy (Hanitzsch, 2011). This correlation explains from the structure of the journalistic field how it has lost more and more of its autonomy and, according to Bourdieu (2005, p. 42), how this results from economic constraints and increased audience research. When we look at constraints of journalism, we see external forces dramatically challenging the field of journalism and the professional autonomy of celebrity journalists by the power of other fields such as the entertainment industry or the advertising companies since media outlets more and more depend on considerations of the market and advertising. Entertainment media become less powerful the more they depend on Celebrity images for sale; the more they depend on such images, the less they retain control of making editorial evaluations and determining content. Particularly in the area of celebrity reporting, the boundaries between PR and journalism have become blurred and more and more Celebrity handlers use the relationship with the press for damage control. Often, publicists think of themselves as editors and subsequently try to influence editorial decisions. Gamson (1992) claims that most entertainment media in fact no longer function as autonomous gatekeepers and, although they may remain formally free of commercial culture producers, they institutionally depend on them: "Whereas the media guard the gates of exposure, the publicist guards the gates of access" (p. 89). These battles between publicists and journalists, but also between paparazzi, journalists, and publicists constitute an ongoing battle for autonomy and power--a war in an economy of information. Nevertheless, many feel that this war needs some kind of guardian; it should at least follow professional ethics and values in order to maintain a professional relationship in a professional news environment. But this professional relationship once again faces challenges through new powerful forms of celebrity diffusion such as Reality TV formats, social media networks, or personal access to fans over Twitter.

B. Reality TV: Construction and deconstruction of fame

The strong presence of Reality TV on television and its role in celebrity culture makes it important to have a look at its origins. Following Hill's (2005) description of the characteristics often associated with Reality TV, namely "non-professional actors," "unscripted dialogue," "surveillance footage," and "hand-held cameras" (p. 41), we find indications that the starting point of Reality TV dates back decades. Simon (2005) offers the instance of Allen Funt's Candid Camera (debut, 1948), a show which secretly taped normal people who unwittingly found themselves in a funny but real situation induced by the TV producers (p. 180). Murray and Ouelette (2004) mention the PBS program, An American Family (1973), which documented and televised the life of the ordinary California family, the Louds. They note that many considered it as the first Reality TV program (p. 3). An American Family became very popular among American audiences; ten million people watched it regularly during its broadcast (PBS, n.d.). MTV's The Real World, which debuted in 1992, then introduced new features, such as cast participants, a staged setting, i.e. a house equipped with several cameras, and thereby paved the way for a "new" Reality TV era with shows like Survivor or Big Brother (Murray & Ouelette, 2004, p. 3).

During its first season Big Brother in Germany became one of the most popular television shows ever to appear on German TV. Consequently, Big Brother fans were shocked when Zlatko Trpkovski, the show's most popular participant got evicted from the house. The Reality TV participant became famous thanks to his lack of knowledge about high culture leading him to ask, for example, "Who was William Shakespeare?" and thanks to his close friendship with roommate Jurgen. Shortly after the eviction his celebrity status further flourished. He produced his first record, climbed to othe top of the singles charts, got his own TV show, and several times adorned the front page of the German teenage magazine BRAVO. One of the latter's headlines then said "Zlatko: Star aus dem nichts" ["Zlatko, a star out of the blue"] (Nr. 24, 2000). Only one year later, this same man got booed off of the TV stage for his singing performance at the national contest to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest. Zlatko's former and "out of the blue" celebrity status had hit rock bottom. The former Big Brother contestant exemplifies the possibly accelerated rise and fall of celebrities that have occurred since the format successfully established itself on the television landscape. It also demonstrates that a normal and totally unknown person can become widely known in a short period of time through a Reality TV show. Shows like Big Brother stand as a landmark for the increasing presence of ordinary people on TV or, as Kjus (2009) calls it, for the "participatory turn" (p. 286).

Altered (perception of) Celebrity value through Reality TV. In a survey among students (5th to 8th grade) from Rochester, New York, Halpern (2007) found that among those who watched at least five hours of TV per day, 29% of the boys and 37% of the girls chose fame over intelligence as desired traits. Furthermore, 17% of all students questioned believed that most celebrities either owed their fame to "luck" or to the "arbitrariness" of the media industry, which had the power to make them famous. Another study, conducted in 2006 in the UK, showed that one in six teenagers (from age 16 to 19) envisions becoming famous one day and that 11% of the respondents were "waiting to be discovered." When asked what benefits fame entails, 9% of the teens questioned found it "an easy way of earning money without skills and qualifications" (LSC, 2006). On one hand, these survey results show that teens at least perceive celebrity status as something desirable and within one's reach. On the other hand, it indicates what skills teenagers ascribe to a part of today's Celebrities. When considered in the light of past and present Reality TV shows and their participants, both of these findings do not surprise. Rethinking what specific behavior had provided recognition for past Reality TV contestants (e.g. from Big Brother), Cashmore (2006) notes "people who displayed ignorance, dishonesty, or some kind of depravity became praiseworthy" (p. 189).

One trait that set Reality TV apart, though, comes from the heterogeneity of its subgenres (Murray & Ouelette, 2004, p. 3-4). Consequently, Holmes (2010) draws attention to how the various formats encounter the traditional myth of fame differently. Shows like Big Brother induce the "demystification" of fame, as people can become famous despite lacking "talent" and for displaying leisure time activities. On the other hand, Reality talent shows such as American Idol or X Factor and their most successful participants, e.g., Susan Boyle in the UK, nourish the traditional beliefs that in the end real talent will prevail (p. 73). Andrejevic (2004) points out that by publicly scouting for a new talent the "apparatus of celebrity production" becomes apparent. Shows like Making the Band, where professionals (without the audience's participation) decide on who suits a new music group best, contribute in some ways to a "demystification" of Celebrity, because aspiring artists are not (only) judged on the basis of their talent, but also on the extent to which they fit into a foreseen marketing formula, that is, into the image of the new band (p. 5).

Whether the audience or the industry professionals make the final decision on the winner(s), all of the aspiring Celebrities have to go through an extended casting process, where the "professional side" separates the wheat from the chaff. Prior to auditions in front of the judges, a pre-casting that drastically minimizes the number of people for the televised casting (Kjus, 2009, p. 185) takes place. The audience thus gets a compressed insight on these casting try-outs. In a case study of the Norwegian version of Idol, Kjus (2009) found that one in five of those people who made it past the pre-casting were chosen because of their non-existent talent (p. 286). The casting footage that gets aired on TV consequently does not only feature the very best but also the very worst: contestants missing rhythm, lacking vocal talent, wearing crazy outfits, exhibiting scary behavior, and oftentimes showing hubris. One example of such an aspiring singer, Menderes Bagci, tried out for the German version of American Idol in 2002. After his "squeaky" musical interpretation of Usher's U Remind Me, the judges openly certified him fully absent of any singing talent. Nevertheless, Menderes kept on attending the following season's castings and receiving a devastating verdict from the judges each time he showed up. Among the audience, Menderes acquired despite, or more likely because of, his lack of talent, cult status. We should note here that, for each season Menderes returned, he actually got admission to perform in front of the judges, and not just at the pre-castings. Consequently, his returns culminated in continuous media visibility. He is not the first. Looking back in history, one woman, Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944), also acquired cult status due to her earsplitting singing. The audience loved listening in gloating joy to the musical performances of the rich New York socialite and self-appointed soprano singer, who herself though was not aware of the audience's mocking but ever more convinced of her talent (Luehrs-Kaiser, 2008; Mischke, 2010). Cashmore (2006) argues that people take pleasure in watching motivated ordinary people embarrass themselves and get criticized by cynical judges (pp. 200-201). For Kjus (2009), such participants reinforce the nature of the reality formats, which need winners as well as losers (p. 286). In 2007, the audience's ongoing Schadenfreude paid off for Menderes, as he received an offer to perform live during one of the show's finals, as a "special guest." He then performed a song (still with his "squeaky" voice) in front of millions of TV spectators. He owed the possibility to perform on stage more to his general popularity among the audience than to any singing talent. In relation to American Idol, where the audience has the final vote on who emerges as the winner, Amegashie (2009) notes, "American Idol is a singing contest, but it sometimes runs the risk of becoming a popularity contest" (p. 267). During the preliminary rounds only the designated judges decide about who can proceed to the next round, but after that the voting remains wholly with the audience (p. 267). For Fairchild (2007), the involvement of the audience in finding a new Idol is one of the central elements that contribute to an economic success of the format and its winners. The interplay between the audience and their "Idols" creates a feeling of togetherness that commits the audience to the participants and vice versa (p. 372). Reichertz (2007) shares this view and argues that with the jury-function of the public, the gap between the audience and the new "star" is shrinking, resulting in an approximation of the two (p. 94).

Notwithstanding that the audience indeed has the possibility to affect the development of a show (through different voting options), Kavka (2008) emphasizes the prevalence of casting choices. The latter precede the launch of the program and often consciously depend on the deliberations on who would be suitable for the show or for TV in general (p. 59). Consequently, we can only vote for those Big Brother contestants who actually made it through all the castings, that is, into the house. But production companies want the audience to believe that anyone could successfully be part of a Reality TV program (Turner, 2006). Televising auditions, where big crowds show up to participate, connotes such a general accessibility to the competition and hints to the audience that they themselves might have a chance at fame. Turner (2006) emphasizes that media industries primarily follow their own interests (p. 158). We therefore turn to the economic reward structures of the production of Reality TV and its participants in the following section.

Reality TV production from an economic perspective. Most Reality TV programs feature normal, non-professional participants, who wish to get attention. Turner (2010a) therefore compares Reality TV and its "ordinary" contestants who desire "celebrification" with the economic process of demand and supply. The ongoing success of Reality TV and its new formats results in an increased number of contestants needed for these shows. Turner characterizes the supply and demand cycle in this regard as reciprocal and accelerated (p. 13). "The audience's attention to itself" (Collins, 2008, p. 89), which refers to the rise of reality shows and their featuring normal people wanting to participate in a program and to become well-known, results in multi-layered economic benefits for the producers. on one hand, they can reduce spending as they can forego hiring expensive professional actors and instead fall back on the "vast reservoir" of ordinary people who wish to become Celebrities (p. 92.). On the other hand, they can further engage those new Celebrities, if promising, in subsequent programs. In this context, Curnutt (2009) mentions MTV's The Real World, which "reuses" its participants for spin-offs such as The Real World/Road Rules Challenge (p. 252). Various Reality TV formats have adapted the concept of further marketing the most saleable participants. Tiffany Pollard, better known as "New York," provides an example of someone who owed the launch of her "own" TV shows, e.g. I Love New York, to her popularity among the TV audience after having participated in VH1's Flavor of Love (Campbell, Giannino, China, & Harris, 2008, p. 22).

As Reality TV introduces a lot of prospective new Celebrities, the economics of supply and demand means that the permanence of their fame statuses gets challenged. In this context, Collins (2008) introduces the term "dispensable" to highlight the instability and unpredictability of a Celebrity's status (p. 89). Because of the ever-changing presence of different new Reality TV Celebrities, their value fluctuates, depending on how they can legitimate their presence to the audience and how the producers wish to place them in further engagements (Collins, personal communication, September 2, 2010). According to Riley (2010), Reality TV produces a lot of "instant Celebrities" whose fame status has only a temporary nature (pp. 297-298).

Due to the imminent instability of their celebrity statuses, the field for potential protagonists for Reality TV nowadays has become highly competitive. Aside from "ordinary" people who would like to have their television debut on a Reality TV format and alumni who want to get further airtime, the format itself also has focused on former stars or Celebrities who got famous outside of the Reality TV field. The economic benefit of promoting an already well-known person seems obvious. The producers need not take a chance on unknown talent or on an audience's fickle devotion. The success of The Osbournes in 2002, which documented the life of former rock star Ozzy Osbourne and his family, played a pioneering role in the future trend of the genre. Since then, many new celebrity formats have emerged. To sum up the formats, the CBS network created the term "celebreality." The contemporary television landscape features a wide range of "celebreality" programs, for example, celebrity talent shows like Dancing With The Stars or Celebrities looking for a significant other as in Rock of Love (Waggenspack, 2010, pp. 254256). Andrejevic (2004) argues that such shows further contribute to the "demystification" of celebrity, as a celebrity reality show "offers to make real people out of stars," whereas traditional reality shows promise the reverse (p. 10).

Balance of power between Reality TV and its participants. In what way can the participants benefit from their appearance and from prospective celebrity status? From an economic point of view, the benefits Reality TV talent show contestants acquire seems rather one sided. Franck and Nuesch (2007) describe this one-sidedness as followed: "Even though the winners of Pop Idol enjoy enormous fame and publicity, financially they do not profit likewise" (p. 215). In this context Collins (2008) mentions the strict contractual conditions to which Reality TV participants have to comply. Some contract clauses make it impossible for a contestant to independently benefit from his or her celebrity status because such clauses often bind people legally to the show's production company/television network, which can prevent participants from being able to accept certain (lucrative) jobs (p. 98).

In the case of other reality formats, it is not only the contracts that pose obstacles for the contestants to further develop their celebrity status. MTV's The Real World or Road Rules participants acquire lots of publicity while the show airs. Most often though, they can not develop a career outside of the Reality TV business, since they became famous due to portraying their "real" selves in front of the camera. In comparison with professional actors, they thus find it complicated to cultivate a "public persona" detached from their TV appearance (Curnutt, 2009, p. 264). Susie Meister, a former Road Rules participant confirms this assertion by stating that aside from taking part in other MTV shows, alumni of such programs have very constricted job opportunities. Some of them get assignments to do commercials or to endorse products, some may received requests to speak on campuses, or others may find work in association with travel agencies who hire them to attend certain holiday destinations to socialize with teenage and young adult customers (Curnutt, 2009, pp. 258-260).

If a Reality TV show becomes successful and can draw a large audience, it will also catch other media's attention. As Andrejevic (2004) points out, the Reality TV participants have gotten more and more aware of the extensive financial benefits the production side reaps from these programs. They have tried to profit likewise by pressuring producers. As the recruiting field for contestants is almost inexhaustible, the potential power of such pressure remains too low (p. 11). Turner (2004) notes that the prospective Celebrities inherit a weak negotiation position, as they have to rely on the show that made them visible to the audience in order to maintain their television presence and celebrity status (p. 54). In the case of MTV's Jersey Shore, the unequal balance of power has started to shift, though, in favor of the cast's side. In January 2010, news reports and celebrity gossip sites announced that the original cast of this Reality TV show became dissatisfied with the network's payment offer for taping a second season and demanded a higher wage. Although producers allegedly made threats to replace the cast members if they didn't assent to the network's offer (Connelly, 2010), the cast and the producers came to an agreement (Hibberd, 2010) and filming of Jersey Shore's season two took place with the same participants. Whoever profited from these wage negotiations at that time, in the end it paid to keep the same cast on the show, as the first episode of season two drew 5.3 million viewers, three times the number of people who watched the first episode of Jersey Shore's first season (Nakashima, 2010). Additionally, we can assume that the media's involvement in this dispute (by taking it up in its agenda) might even have contributed to the increased number of viewers.

Media coverage of Reality TV participants. Reality TV and its participants provide profit not only for their production companies, but also for gossip news media outlets. Turner (2010b) mentions the example of US and UK tabloid newspapers, which have to serve the audience's "hunger" for celebrity news. The continuously growing interest in celebrity news and gossip calls for a substantial amount of diverse coverage. Hence these newspapers rely on Reality TV formats that present new contestants (prospective Celebrities) whose stories they can mention in their editions (p. 34-35). To study the steadiness and continuity of the media's coverage of Reality TV participants, which also includes the coverage after the airing of the show's final episode with these participants, researchers conducted several different content analyses, of which we will further present two here.

Frohlich, Johansson, and Siegert (2007) focused on the media's coverage of the participants of the first season of Ich bin ein Star, holt mich hier raus! (the German version of I'm a celebrity, get me out of here!). They wanted to analyze the longevity of the participants' new celebrity statuses during and after the episodes got screened. Although the contestants' fame statuses underwent a short-term increase as they all got extensive media coverage during the show's airings, the researchers could not generally confirmed this on a long-term basis and found that the status varied among those who participated, resulting in a subdivision of the participants into three groups: the "non-famous," the "past-famous," and the "starlets." While the "non-famous" participants had either already passed their zenith of fame long before the show or had not yet achieved a recognizable celebrity-status at all, the "past-famous" had recently had their fame-peak (like Daniel Kublbock who came in third place in the German talent show Deutschland sucht den Superstar) but were not able to prolong their statuses past their participation in Ich bin ein Star, holt mich hier raus! The "starlets" were the only ones to pursue their career successfully by obtaining further job offers (like Lisa Fitz who received an offer to star in a new fictional series) after their appearance on the celebrity reality show (p. 157 ff.). This study provides an indicator that reality shows can offer a path but no guarantee to become famous (again) for a longer period of time and that the media's coverage of a person often attaches to the Reality TV show itself rather than to the person.

Frank and Nuesch (2007) examined the media sustainability of the top 10 American Idol contestants from the first three seasons by reviewing popular tabloid and quality newspapers as well as music magazines and press agencies' articles (p. 217). They found that with the exception of Kelly Clarkson, who after the show had several hit-albums and who managed to profile herself as a "superstar" beyond the TV show, none of the other 11 contestants of the first season managed to stay in the public's eye. The study revealed a similar result for the two subsequent American Idol seasons, out of which only the winner and runner-up of season two managed to prolong their presence on the media's agenda (Franck & Nuesch. 2007, pp. 218-220).

These findings indicate that the general outlook for an on-going celebrity status and consequently for a steady media coverage of a Reality TV alumni indeed remains rather gloomy. Collins (2008) describes a participant's most probable future after his or her "15 minutes of fame" on Reality TV as follows: "Most of these Reality TV vets find that in the 16th minute, they are not absorbed into the celebrity system: rather, their celebrity currency runs out and they are channeled back into obscurity" (p. 89).

Can certain factors contribute to a prolongation of a Reality TV contestant's media presence and thus celebrity status? According to Collins (2008), a personal scandal or high involvement with controversial sociopolitical issues offers a possibility to provide a (Reality TV) Celebrity with subsequent media coverage and visibility (p. 92). Out of the American Idol participants from seasons one to three, there was one person (Corey Clark), who got voted off early during season two in 2003, but then temporarily got back on the media's agenda in 2005, after he had falsely claimed to have had an affair with Paula Abdul, one of the show's judges in 2003 (Franck & Nuesch, 2007, pp. 218-219).

C. Interplay between mass and social media communication channels

To attract the media's attention, the Internet now offers an alternative: social media.

In fact, in 2009, GLM (Global Language Monitor) declared Twitter as the Top Word of 2009, as it was the most used term in print and digital media (Lea, 2009). The microblogging service Twitter allows users to post (status) updates of up to 140 characters in length on their profiles. If people don't explicitly change the default settings, their posted tweets become accessible to the whole Twitter community. Furthermore, users can follow (each other's) profiles in order to see when someone posts a new update. The activity of following, though, does not necessarily need to be reciprocal (Jansen, Zhang, Sobel, & Chowdury, 2009, p. 217).

Also in 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared unfriend (a term for removing a friend from a social network's friend list) as its Word of the Year (Gross, 2009). These labelings indicate the growth and emerging importance of social media and its platforms for the contemporary media environment and, consequently, for society's culture. One can access these platforms through different technological devices such as laptops and mobile phones, which enable users to access the platforms in order to update statuses or upload pictures independently of location. As the latter circumstance fosters the fast spreading of new posts amongst friends, "followers," and "anonymous" web users, social network sites have emerged as an important source for the news media. The emergency landing of a US Airways plane on the Hudson River in 2009 stands as a landmark in this development, as the first news and pictures on the incident got posted on Twitter by user Janis Krum. His posting then set off an online avalanche of retweets, comments, and discussions. His photo of the plane floating on the river became widely prominent on the web and even got posted on professional news sites (Patalong, 2009).

This popular Twitter picture and the follow-up news coverage indicate tendencies for networking structures between the traditional media, social networks, and their users. How can we depict these ties? What impacts do social networks have on the media landscape and on (the coverage of) Celebrities? How do the Celebrities react to the emergence of social media and how can people aspiring to prominence benefit from the latter?

The place of social media in the traditional media's landscape. Social media networks inherit at least one key attribute from the Internet: the open accessibility for all users. In theory, every person has the possibility to upload a video to YouTube, open a Twitter account, or write their own blog. As Drake and Miah (2010) argue, the Internet and therefore social networks and blogs downsize the gatekeeping processes that exist in other mass media forms (p. 55). This means that online information can spread unfiltered and thus does not rest on strict framework conditions such as those on television or in newspapers. This, however, remains subject to an ongoing debate within research (e.g., Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). As a matter of fact, information posted on blogs is highly redundant and often could not have been experienced first hand. In other words, information may diffuse from mass media to the bloggers because information travels through many gates and channels. By arguing that blogging foretells the death of gatekeeping theory one denies the fact that bloggers or online journalists themselves fit the definition of gatekeepers. Nevertheless, thinking about gatekeeping theory requires some revision of the original gatekeeping model for the 21st century (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p. 129).

Sites that cover celebrity news rank, along with political and technology blogs, among the currently most popular. Murray (2009) ascribes a pioneering role to the celebrity blog PerezHilton.com, whose success other celebrity gossip sites such as TMZ or JustJared (p. 33) soon followed. Mario Lavandeira launched PerezHilton.com in 2004 (originally named PageSix SixSix.com). In 2009, for the third time in a row, Forbes honored Perez Hilton, the self-appointed Queen of all Media, as the most famous Web Celeb (Ewalt, 2010). It is important to note that the contemporary celebrity blog landscape appears well-differentiated. On one hand, celebrity blogs inherit different organizational structures; whereas individual bloggers lauched and own Dlisted or Pink Is The New Blog, TMZ, started as a joint venture by AOL and Telepicture Productions, remains corporate owned and managed (Burns, 2009, p. 21). On the other hand, some blogs have set their focal point on one specific area within the celebrity culture, e.g., Go Fug Yourself(fashion) or Babyrazzi (relationships, parenthood, and Celebrities' children).

Their 24-7 accessibility, dynamic content, and immediacy generally set blogs apart from traditional celebrity gossip in magazines or TV shows. As a consequence, most celebrity blogs become well-known for their topicality; they get updated several times a day or rather even shortly after a news story or a revealing picture arises (Petersen, 2007). Tremayne (2007) highlights the rapidity with which information provided on blogs spreads (p. x). In the case of Michael Jackson, TMZ published the very first message about his death and served other news media as the primary source (Macnamara, 2010, p. 45).

These factors all contribute to celebrity blogs' emergence as a serious competitor for other (celebrity) news media. Burns (2009) ascribes to blogs an increasing agenda-setting function that has an effect on mainstream news organizations and their featured stories (p. 151). As exemplified by the story about Michael Jackson's death, the latter use and quote blogs in and for their own editions. An interesting study might elaborate the extent to which traditional media such as newspapers, as well as their online editions, make use of the news presented on celebrity blogs, or vice versa. Most of the current studies that investigate the probable reciprocal impacts of (citizen) blogs and traditional media outlets focus on political issues, i.e. political blogs (e.g., Wallsten, 2007; Meraz, 2009). The fact that an independent person/company or a big media company (such as TMZ) can create different online celebrity blogs suggests that the difference between citizen and corporate celebrity blogs might also provide a good topic for further development.

As traditional media outlets have become well aware of the increasing prevalence of online sources, social media, and their quick pace of news dissemination, these traditional media now also follow this online trend by their own representation on the different social network channels. US Weekly as well as The New York Times, for example, both have profiles on Facebook and both have Twitter accounts. At the same time, blogs also make use of social networks by a presence there as well. These developments point to fluid boundaries and networking tendencies among the different (social) media channels. How this presence of the same brand (e.g., US Weekly) on different media channels appears provides yet another avenue for further research. Do they show the same information or rather complement each other? This can matter greatly for media outlets which have print versions as well as the online ones; why does the audience remain willing to buy a magazine that contains information they could get faster and maybe even for free on the Internet? Studies which have focused on the evolution of online news and/or on the relationship between online and print versions of the same news outlets (e.g., Van der Wurff, Lauf, Balcytiene, Fortunati, Holmberg, Paulussen, et al., 2003; Franklin, 2008; ) can shed some light on the issue and offer help for possible future research in this field.

Celebrities' use of social media. How do Celebrities react to the increase of gossip blogs and news stories about them and the audience's use of social media? Celebrities started to make use of their online platforms, some of them very efficiently. Kwak, Lee, Park, and Moon (2010) indeed found Twitter profiles of Celebrities rapidly increasing in popularity. Studying the characteristics of this social network and its users, they found that the top 40 profiles followed on Twitter by over a million people belonged either to a Celebrity, a TV show, or another mass media institution, e.g., The Ellen DeGeneres Show or the The New York Times. Table 2 shows this same tendency for the most followed Twitter profiles in October of 2010. Apart from President Barack Obama, all of the top 10 Twitter profiles belong to Celebrities who have primarily gained their status through the media/entertainment industry.

Muntean and Petersen (2009) examined the interplay between today's media and the tendency for Celebrities to use Twitter. Due to new technologies such as cell phone photos and videos and thus due to a variety of new communication channels that capture celebrity news (e.g., blogs like TMZ), the discourse about Celebrities has evolved, as all these new channels contribute to the Celebrity's public image. These channels oftentimes focus on gossip and scandal stories, so it became hard to keep a (famous) person's image sacred and stable. Stars and Celebrities always need to keep in mind the fact that anyone might capture any deviant behavior by them and then publicize it in the media. Consequently, Celebrities themselves have started using social media channels like Twitter in order to guide how the various channels depict them and therefore how the media and the public perceive them. For Murray (2009), Celebrities who self-publish stories try to gain back the power they lost to the fast-paced gossip industry (p. 39). According to Muntean and Petersen (2009), direct blog and Twitter messages from stars and Celebrities inherit a key role in the flood of information sources, because audience members perceive these as the "authentic celebrity voice" and a "privileged channel to the star him/herself." Therefore, in a kind of full circle, the news media themselves makes use of these (online) first-hand footage/quotations and publish them in various on- and offline media channels. When Ashton Kutcher posted a picture of Demi Moore's backside on Twitter, the news media soon after picked up the "story" (e.g., Parker, 2009).

Through presence on social media platforms, stars and Celebrities attempt on the one hand to participate in the production of their image; on the other hand, they must remain present in these media in order to stay on the media's and consequently on the audience's agenda. According to Daschmann (2007), the masses of (aspiring) Celebrities all have to compete for the public's (limited) attention (p. 186). In such a competitive environment a famous person must therefore remain present on all the accessible media channels (Seifert, 2010, p. 60).

Fame through social media and user generated content. Social networks do not only present an opportunity for the well-established, but also for the aspiring Celebrities and ordinary people to participate or to get themselves "out there." Stefanone, Lackaff, and Rosen (2008) argue that in addition to Reality TV, new online technologies like social networks have had an influence on where the public locates itself within the media system: "Rather than simply being the target of mediated messages, they can see themselves as protagonists of mediated narratives and can integrate themselves into a complex media ecosystem" (p. 107). In this context Marshall (2010) highlights the changing "face" of celebrity culture, which has been moving away from a pure representational towards a more presentational system (p. 45). Due to social media platforms like Twitter, Celebrities, on one hand, have started to present themselves in more unfiltered ways to the audience, without the interference of other mass media outlets (Marshall, 2010, p. 41). On the other hand, the audience members themselves have taken more and more to present themselves online and on the various platforms and have begun to produce their own content (Marshall, 2006, p. 638). Choi and Berger (2009) believe "that the global Internet has dramatically magnified the global quest for fame and celebrity" (p. 194).

Posting self-made videos on MySpace and YouTube can provide an alternative way to gain a potential world-wide audience and to become famous. Bruce Daisley (2010), head of YouTube UK, remains convinced that "if you're good enough, YouTube's users will make you famous." As an example of a person achieving fame and landing a record deal through a social media platform, he mentions Justin Bieber, whose mother posted videos of him singing on YouTube, which then got several million views and caught the attention of his first manager, Scott Braun (Hampp, 2010). Although some noticeable examples exist of people/artists making it thanks to the presence on a social media platform, Totty (2007) highlights the competition an aspiring online star faces when trying to get famous online, e.g. on YouTube. Not only must one appear among millions of other videos, but the presence and popularity of the traditional media and their content on these sites complicate the matter of someone unknown stepping into the online limelight. Kruitbosch and Nack (2008) also detected the strong presence of professionally edited content on YouTube. In their juxtaposition/analysis of the structure and the popularity of user-generated content (UGC) and professionally edited videos, they found that user-generated videos were comparatively shorter than the ones made by professionals. Although in numbers a lot of UGC appears on the website, they hardly (with a few exceptions) found themselves among the most viewed videos and generally got fewer clicks than the professional content (p. 8).

If a video on a social network can draw an immense online audience, mass media channels such as newspapers might notice it, take it up, and thus grant the content further publicity. The involvement, i.e., the mediation and participation of the traditional media becomes crucial, especially when a person tries to obtain a celebrity status over a longer period of time (Seifert, 2010, p. 62). Burgess and Green (2009) attest to the traditional media gatekeeping function concerning the establishment of a Celebrity, as it validates the latter's success through its own acceptance, e.g., through a record deal (p. 24).

In YouTube's history, a variety of videos, due to their online success, did get mentioned in other media channels. We will discuss one example, which illustrates the process and its complexity. In 2009, the YouTube video of marriage guests dancing at the entrance to the church to the song Forever of Chris Brown got several million clicks in only a matter of days. Because of the fast growing number of views, this video and its protagonists caught the traditional media's attention, and got featured in print and Internet news articles, as well as on TV shows. The popularity of the video resulted in increasing downloads of Chris Brown's song (to which the wedding crowd entered the church). Forever rose to the top of the iTunes sales list. By posting a "click-to-buy ad" on the YouTube video itself Sony Music (the song's publisher) fostered the song's promotion and tied the social platform to a sales platform (Stone, 2009), resulting in an economic advantage and positive publicity for the production company and its artist. What makes this example even more multi-faceted stems from the fact that before the video's success Chris Brown had tarnished his image because of his physical altercation with ex-girlfriend Rihanna (Caulfield, 2009). The video's emerging just after the damage to the singer's reputation threatened to have a harmful impact on his career spurred rumors that the video might not be as amateurish (that is, the video appears as shot with a handheld camera) as it first seemed, that it formed part of a marketing strategy to promote the song Forever, and that it consciously but indirectly fostered a more positive image of Chris Brown (Feld, 2009). This case, disregarding whether or not the video did in fact play part of a strategy, exemplifies the interdependence between media outlets, publicity machines, and promotions agencies, which now all take an active part in the contemporary media economy (Turner, 2010a. p. 16). As suggested in the example, such shared spaces also bring up the question about the authenticity of the content provided on social media platforms, as the latter remain available not only to the audience, but also to professionals. Consequently, it could be informative as well as revealing to get an insight on how Celebrities and thus professionals make use of social media platforms as a part of their (viral) marketing strategies. Turner (2010a), who calls for an intensive investigation of the role/influence of publicity agencies, argues that the latter oftentimes try to mask their actions. This thus complicates investigative and scholarly work (p. 16), as companies and their working methods seem shrouded by professional secrecy. In the case of the "wedding dance" video, the agency GoViral at first had confirmed their involvement in a possible marketing strategy but later on distanced themselves from their earlier statement (Feld, 2009).

A closer look at YouTube's history indicates that its users, the media, and the public seem to have become sensitized to the subject of authenticity of uploaded content. Burgess and Green (2009) mention the example of Lonelygirl 15 alias Bree (p. 27), whose diary-style vlogs were presented as if the teenage girl herself had produced them. A vlog is a video blog. users produce these user-generated short videos by using various devices (e.g., web cams or cell phones), and then place them on a social media platform such as YouTube (Molyneaux, O'Donnell, Gibson, & Singer, 2008). In the case of Lonelygirl 15, it turned out that the teenage girl in reality was a 20-year old actress and that two filmmakers, R. Flinders and M. Beckett, initiated and authored these videos (Heffernan, & Zeller 2006). Many of the vlog's followers simply assumed the genuineness of the videos, not realizing that they had tuned into fictional material. Such examples made the public more and more aware of questions surrounding the authenticity of presented content and even fostered "detective work" investigating which videos are "real" and which are not (Burgess & Green, p. 29).

4. Interaction among Audience, Celebrities, and Media

Due to the ever-growing amount of media content, attracting a wide audience remains challenging. Generally, the media industry has to adapt to the conditions of the "Attention Economy," where a surplus of "capital, labor information, and knowledge" results in scarcity of available attention. Therefore, the latter becomes valuable all the more (Davenport & Beck, 2001, p. 3; see also Franck, 1998). As an "earlier" example for strategies to grasp the audience's attention, Davenport and Beck (2001) mention the emergence of "people" magazines, who started to use more and more Celebrities as "vehicles of attention" in order to attract their readers (p. 106-107).

The aforementioned changes and tendencies in the contemporary media landscape, as well as the modified ratio between Celebrities and the different media channels, urges a more detailed consideration of the audience and the roles they play in relation to these developments.

A. The position of the audience in the celebrity cultural industry

The audience's consumption and reception symbolizes the necessary "fuel" to keep the economic enterprise of celebrity going (Redmond & Holmes, 2007, p. 310). Outlining the interdependency between celebrity status and the audience, Wippersberg (2007) emphasizes that a Celebrity can only become and remain a Celebrity if the audience embraces and thus perceives the individual Celebrity as a Celebrity (p. 248). Seifert (2010) argues that although the media can introduce and present potential new Celebrities to an audience, the consent of the audience remains essential (p. 38). The "accepted" Celebrity thus marks the audience's power position vis-a-vis the media industry, as Celebrities symbolize the impersonation of the collective audience, on which the industry depends (Marshall, 2006, p. 636). Consequently, television shows and their casts depend on the endorsement of their viewers and gossip magazines, on their readership to legitimize their position in the media landscape and to draw and maintain the advertising industries' interest. Therefore, the media count on the involvement of the public in order to financially sustain themselves. Marshall (2006) argues that the constitution of the celebrity system and its economic power has always strongly relied on the audience's involvement with it. Involvement includes investing and dedicating time in Celebrities by writing fan mail or by becoming a member of a fan club (p. 635). Writing fan mail and investing time in a fan club imply the audience's potential active role when it comes to supporting a Celebrity. This activity spectrum, through time, has undergone significant changes, resulting in further levels of engagement. Reality TV provides a good example for the media industry's counting on the involvement of the public, by granting the audience an alleged say in who deserves gaining celebrity status, through letting the audience vote for the best American Idol participant or against the least-liked Big Brother roommate. Furthermore, producers directly encourage the audience to participate in their shows by promoting open casting calls for future shows. Interestingly, we can also trace this shift towards the audience's participation in shows that originally did not count (that strongly) on the involvement of the public. We will therefore present two examples.

The audience of MTV's The Real World originally did not have the possibility to choose who should become part of the cast. Then, for the 20th season, taking place in Hollywood, MTV introduced a new online casting process through which Internet users could decide on who should complete (along with the seven people who the producers cast the "traditional" way) the show's cast (MTV.com).

In Switzerland, the televised election of the Miss Switzerland pageant underwent "democratization" in 2005, when the public's opinion received more weight than ever. Before, the audience had had only one out of nine votes that counted for the election of the next beauty queen. Nowadays, during the two preliminary rounds, the public's vote counts just as much as all the official judge's votes together (resulting in a 50/50 ratio). Out of the top three contestants, it then becomes wholly up to the audience to decide who they want to see as the new Miss Switzerland (Bosshart & Witmer, 2007, p. 48). According to Bosshart and Witmer (2007), the producers modified the participation mode in order to foster the audience's involvement and integration and to diminish possible gossip about unfair elections.

B. The audience as a consumer, producer, and promoter of mediated celebrity content

The emergence of the Internet, including blogs and social networks, and the growing amount of (audience-generated) celebrity media content (Marshall, 2006, p. 634) brings up the question of the extent to which the audience participates in the consumption, production, and promotion of this content.

As a matter of fact, a study conducted in Belgium showed that the consumption of certain media outlets (newspapers, gossip magazines, and television) correlates positively with the interest in celebrity gossip, and that younger people form the biggest consumers of this content (De Backer, Nelissen, Vyncke, Braeckman, & McAndrew, 2007, 346). Furthermore, the results indicate that the motives for consuming gossip differed between younger and older respondents. Whereas Belgian adolescents seemed to show interest mainly in glamorous international Celebrities who can "teach" them something (e.g., how to dress), young adults and older people showed interest in Belgium Celebrities, with whom, due to the geographical and linguistic proximity, they could feel a certain connection (pp. 346-347).

Interviewing both male and female readers of the tabloid newspapers The Sun and Mirror, Johansson (2006) noted that identification and distance at the same time characterize the relationship of the readers and the depicted Celebrities. On one hand, readers did indeed feel empathy for Celebrities and their issues. On the other hand, the high economic wealth of some Celebrities kept the readers away from fully identifying with them, at times even resulting in feelings of envy. The interviews further showed that tabloids do fulfill a social function, as their articles serve as "talking points" for the interpersonal communication, for example, between co-workers. Through discussion of the issues depicted in the coverage (e.g., a Celebrity betraying his/her partner), people negotiate or reinforce social norms, activities which positively contribute to a community building (p. 349-357).

Feasey (2008), who questioned female heat readers about their motivations to read celebrity gossip, found that these women also took pleasure in talking to other people about celebrity gossip. Furthermore, it also often served them as a starting point for having a broader discussion (to which personal thoughts and experiences could then be added) about a certain topic, as for example, romances or diets (p. 693).

Rossler and Veigl (2005) also detected a general significance of a social interaction function of media consumption. When comparing readers and non-readers of "people" magazines in terms of what gratifications they were expecting to obtain through using media/people magazines, they found, similar to the study of De Backer et al. (2007), that these magazine readers had a more distinct wish to learn something about Celebrities (p. 453).

Due to the growing demand for celebrity content, gossip media, whether published online or not, on one hand counts on the contribution of professional reporters and paparazzi, but on the other hand also counts on the ordinary public/audience for up-to-date celebrity news, pictures, and videos. Blogs like PerezHilton.com and TMZ provide information on their front webpage about how to contact their staff in case their clientele sees, tapes, or photographs a Celebrity, or simply has a tip about a newsworthy celebrity story (e.g. www.tmz.com/tips). The easy transmission of pictures through cell phones and other devices makes so-called "citizen paparazzi" (Burns, 2009, p. 13) a not-to-be-neglected news source.

Lerman (2007) ascribes the evolution of the social media a meaningful role, as it stands for the growing participation of its users: "[U]sers are actively creating, evaluating, and distributing information" (p. 1). In 2006, Soukup conducted a study on fan websites dedicated to different Celebrities, analyzing their structures and contents as well as contacting the producers of such websites to examine what gratification they get from hosting such a site (Soukup, 2006, p. 325). He concluded that the producers of these websites were active readers of and contributors to the production of celebrity texts, by providing information, pictures as well as (alternative) interpretation of the Celebrity's works (p. 332). Furthermore, through forums and interactive features, other people/fans can take part in discussions or provide and exchange other celebrity-related content. The interaction between people from all over the world results in online communities, which the producers of the websites perceive as gratifying (p. 326). We could therefore also view the audience as a promoter or processor of mediated (celebrity) content.

In a study of the most popular videos on YouTube, Burgess and Green (2009) found that the majority of the most viewed content came from traditional media sources and showed an informational nature (that is, gossip stories or celebrity interviews). Non-professional users often uploaded the content, originally produced by professionals, (p. 43-46). This illustrates how the audience, through social media, substantially contributes to the dissemination of information and more specifically, of celebrity content. other social media platforms like Facebook offer similar options for users to publish (celebrity) content or communicate what content they find worth publishing and consequently making it "visible" for their (online) friends. By clicking the "like"-button or direct (re-)posting, users can show to their friends which pictures, status updates/stories, videos, or links (outside the Facebook community) they favor or what and who they would like to talk about. As a consequence, the liked or published content reaches a wider audience and therefore obtains more publicity. The new people who then view the published content then can ignore or spread it further or start an (online) discussion about it. Anschlusskommunikation, i.e., subsequent communication after the primary consumption (such as a discussion after having seen a TV show) ensures an augmentation of attention to the TV show and its cast (Bohme-Durr, 2001, p. 13), which holds importance for the manifestation of celebrity status. If someone becomes a talking point for people, the public level of awareness becomes bigger. This awareness then results in enhanced celebrity (Wippersberg, 2007, p. 257).

C. Relationship between Celebrities and their audience through online media

Most Celebrities, aware of the rising importance of social media (for their audience), now themselves actively use these networks, by obtaining their own profiles and thus making information and content available to the social media community. It allows them to promote themselves and their "products" by directly communicating with their audience (Marshall, 2010, p. 43). Hampp (2010) ascribes the rapidly rising success of the singer Lady Gaga to her effective usage of the social media channels, resulting in millions of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and views of her videos on YouTube (p. 42). Her Facebook page gets updated on a daily basis with private pictures, music videos, and personal status messages. Fans comment on her personal status messages and pictures to show their appreciation for the singer. When fans camped outside of the Today Show venue the day before Lady Gaga's performance on the show in July, 2010, the singer gratefully mentioned them in several of her Facebook status updates (e.g., Lady Gaga, 2010). In October 2010, the effectiveness of her social media use got respectively validated. She set a YouTube milestone, as she was the first person ever to receive over one billion views of her posted videos (dpa, 2010).

According to Marshall (2010), the connection between the audience and their Celebrity has intensified through the "pathways" that social media offer. online media channels such as social networks pose the possibility for fans to get "directly" in contact with a Celebrity. Through this channel the audience tries to get closer to the very reality of the Celebrities (p. 44). After analyzing different online fan clubs and celebrity websites, Theberge (2005) concluded that Internet fan clubs set a changing milestone for the relationship between Celebrities and their audience, as the latter becomes more and more reciprocal.

These changes pose important considerations for the audience, Celebrities, and the theory of parasocial interaction. Initial research showed parasocial interactions as one-sided, quasi-interactions between viewer and media figure (Horton & Wohl, 1956). Parasocial interaction in regard to Celebrities and fans originally appeared as a one-way relationship between the two. The fan feels an intimate but imagined closeness to his or her Celebrity (Stever, 2009, p. 4; for a closer examination of the concept of parasocial interaction see, e.g., Horton & Wohl, 1956; Giles, 2002). In addition to the Horton and Wohl study of film actors, other research has detected parasocial relationships between viewers of certain television programs and their protagonists (Derrick, Gabriel & Hugenberg, 2009; Vorderer, 1996).

Nowadays when a fan can more easily to get "in touch" with Celebrities (as fan mails don't need to be hand-written and sent though regular mail anymore), the development of parasocial relationships between the audience/fans and Celebrities is facilitated. The process also calls into question the one-way nature of parasocial interaction because Celebrities, on the outer surface seem to try to get more and more in contact with their audiences. Researchers now raise the question of how social media, i.e., social networks, have modified these parasocial interactions between the Celebrities and their audience. Marshall (2010) notes that the "new" parasocial connection between the two indeed gets challenged when skepticism about the authorship of status updates or messages, written on a Celebrity profile, emerges (pp. 43-44). We should also take into account the fact that the online-connection on these networks can indeed remain one-way. Taking the example of Twitter, Kwak, Lee, Park, and Moon (2010) found that the majority of the connections between two people (especially between a Celebrity and a member of the public) were not reciprocal, meaning that a person who follows another person on Twitter is not necessarily followed back by the latter. Table 2 on page 19 offers a similar finding: the most popular Celebrities on Twitter only follow back a small segment of the profiles that follow them. For example, Kim Kardashian, who initially got famous through the Reality TV show Keeping Up With The Kardashians, has over six million followers. She, however, only follows less than 100 profiles. Celebrities thus decide on whom they want to follow. The different options a Celebrity can enable or disable on an Internet platform, like a social network profile or even their personal web-page/blog (e.g., if they want to allow comments by fans or not) indicate the continuous controlling position of the Celebrity in their relationship with their fans (Burns, 2009, p. 60).

After reviewing the literature on the contemporary tendencies in the usage of the Internet and the social network environment in relation to Celebrity and its audience, we find that researchers still need to have a closer look at the audience's side, to elaborate how they perceive the presence of Celebrities online in general and how this presence might have an effect, altering the perception of the relationship between Celebrities and their audience/fans.

5. From the Celebrities' Point of View: Case Study of Switzerland's Beauty Queens

by Prof. Louis Bosshart, University of Fribourg

Celebrity nowadays depends on the mass media and their capacity to generate big audiences. The mass media, on the other side, depend on the presence of a Celebrity, which creates marketable news values. These news values provide so much profit that many mass media outlets started to create Celebrities themselves. one specific way to create Celebrities while simultaneously ensuring the interest of other media lies in organizing beauty contests. The tremendous success of beauty contests led to an inflationary creation of contests of this kind. To name a few Swiss examples: Miss Molly (contestants who weigh more than 170 pounds), Miss Handicap, Miss Teenie, Miss Earth Switzerland, and Miss Altersheim (women who are older than 70 years and are still able to walk on stage without any help).

What does the chance of becoming a Celebrity mean to young women who submit an application form to participate in a beauty contest? And, after having gone through an extensive selection and evaluation process, what does it mean to become a famous widely known beauty queen? We transformed these research questions into interview questions. We then interviewed six Swiss beauty queens--who all won beauty pageants between 2004 and 2009. We focused on two pageants, Miss Bern and Miss Switzerland, because they have taken place for more than a decade and therefore are well known. We sent the questionnaires to the beauty queens who completed them between 2008 and 2009.

The survey questions revolved around which role the expectation of becoming a Celebrity played when the interviewees decided to participate in the pageant contest. What is their perception of "becoming or being a Celebrity?" Is celebrity a value in itself? What are the benefits and drawbacks of being a Celebrity, in the professional as well as in the private sphere? How much ambition or even narcissism does it take to maintain a celebrity status? What kind of sacrifices are the contestants willing to accept? Furthermore, the women also had the possibility, if they wished, to write down additional thoughts on the topic of celebrity that seemed of note.

In response to the question about their reasons or motives to participate in a pageant contest, the beauty queens stated:

* "At first I wanted to take the chances that come with participating in a pageant contest. At that time I did not even realize that this chance had a side effect, called 'celebrity'."

* "I saw it as a nice opportunity and sort of a fun experience."

* "It was like applying for a job that would offer me financial independence and a sort of an adventure."

* "It was something new, unknown, and provided the opportunity to make some extra money. I did not take the aspect of celebrity into consideration, at least not well enough."

The answers indicate that most of the women interviewed did not primarily sign up for the contest in order to become a Celebrity. These beauty queens wanted to become successful in their respective fields and wanted to get access to interesting, well paid jobs (especially as fashion models). They primarily took the pageant contest as a kind of assessment, which would allow them to get a professional evaluation (on their looks and abilities), as well as providing a fun experience.

What consequences obtain for young women (aged between 18 and 24) acquiring celebrity statuses? on the positive side, they enjoy a tremendous amount of privilege: complementary holidays in fancy hotels and sea cruises, discounts for a variety of goods, and many invitations and front row seats at various events (sports, fashion-shows, movies). Celebrity can thus function as a virtual door opener, providing access to a big (lucrative) social network. On the negative side, celebrity status results in the loss of privacy. Celebrities become a part of the public sphere and therefore public interest. As a result, people touch them physically, randomly speak to them on the street, ask for autographs, call them by their first names, and take pictures with electronic devices (e.g., cell phones) without asking for permission.

The beauty queens indicate that the fact Celebrities lose their status as anonymous, private persons seems the biggest burden that comes with such a status:

* "Celebrity gives me a stronger position in my job, better payments, and more chances for promising jobs. On the other hand, me and my private (love) life are under permanent observation, e.g., when I go shopping."

* "People would like to cut a piece out of my life. There is no distance anymore. I have better access to many resources but at the same time lost my anonymity and I have to fight constantly against prejudices (which stem from media's coverage)."

* "I do earn quite some money but I pay for it with the loss of anonymity!"

In terms of how beauty queens see the role of mass media in the construction and deconstruction of a Celebrity, they make it clear that they see the mass media as major players in the process of making celebrity status possible. The media generate "well-knownness" not only to promote Celebrities, but also to financially benefit themselves from this business. The triple concert of models-markets-media creates a profitable win-win situation. The problem with the media--from the Celebrities' point of view--lies in the fact that they reduce complexity. Rich, multi-dimensional personalities must become reduced to simply labeled persons to fit in coherent stereotypes and/or cliches.

In other words, Celebrities receive an image that does not necessarily correspond with their real characters. Furthermore, discrepancies between the mass-mediated public image of Celebrities and their private behavior create news values, i.e., marketable information for the media. For the beauty queens we interviewed this can entail consequences they do not like. They may not fit the public image all the time. This does not have to result in schizophrenia, but the discrepancy between what they are and what they are expected to be puts quite some pressure on them. Sometimes they thus prefer to say nothing in order not to destroy their public image or not to disappoint the (erroneous) expectations of the audience. This reaction has not only to do with the clear cut image the media build, but also with the glamorous world of the Celebrities they report.

The beauty queens are conscious about this reduction of complexity:

* "You get a very specific image."

* "The media define a certain image and you have--strategically spoken--to correspond with this image."

To sum up: celebrity provides social capital, which improves chances and success in professional careers in a significant way, but this social capital does not come without any extra costs. These costs have to be paid with private capital. The wish to become a well-known and successful "participant" in the world of show business ranked high among our sample. "Show business" for beauty queens means activities that guarantee a minimum of public acceptance and appreciation. As a consequence, many of them became and still perform as actresses, singers, models, announcers, promoters, DJs, or journalists.

Being a Celebrity improves the chances of becoming and remaining successful. But it has its price. To say it with the help of a metaphor: Celebrity has in its two hands two double-edged swords or two coins with two different sides each. One sword represents the dichotomy between being well known, successful, and famous on one hand, and the loss of privacy and unlimited public exposure on the other hand. The second sword represents the media, which grant Celebrities access to the public sphere while simultaneously constructing a specific image of that Celebrity. These often over-simplified images then have an important influence on how audiences see and decode Celebrities.

Are there ways to limit the negative consequences that can come with being a Celebrity and therefore being at the center of public interest? More than half of the interviewed beauty queens mentioned Roger Federer as a (Swiss) role model for someone who has solved the problem of success and modesty, of reconciling intimacy and distance. On one hand, he is a well-known, well earning, highly successful tennis player; on the other hand he is still the sympathetic, nice, and quiet "boy next door." And that highlights the very problem of beauty queens in Switzerland: they start as pretty normal people with some talent in their respective fields. Then they become successful in a certain way and all of a sudden have to ask themselves: What price for a successful professional career (that may also grant celebrity status), and how much am I willing to pay for it? As long as the investment proves profitable, these young women will continue investing, well aware of the fact that celebrity works a good currency in the market of show business. Investing means not only accepting the loss of privacy but also showing ambition, energy, endurance, and the elaboration of well-defined strategies; this sums up the ambivalence of celebrity.

6. Research Prospectives for Media Celebrity Scholars

"[M]edia exposure is the oxygen that sustains the contemporary Celebrity" (Drake & Miah, 2010, p. 55). But, that describes only one side of the contemporary celebrity culture. Today, the media play an important role within the celebrity industry, but other forces of power also work to regulate that relationship between media and Celebrities. According to Rein, Kotler, and Stoller (1997, p. 42) the celebrity business merged into a celebrity industry, where a wide range of different but related industries have become involved in the production and consumption process of the celebrity industry. We can define an industry "a collection of people, materials, equipment, and processes that collectively produce an output that has values to the market" (p. 30). The celebrity industry needs specialists who manage their clients' rise to high visibility. Acknowledging the developments media and technology have undergone and the change in contemporary celebrity culture, we have enhanced and modified the Rein, Kotler, and Stoller (1997) model of the celebrity industry (p. 42). Figure 1 outlines a summary of our literature review that we integrated into our conceptualization of the celebrity industry. Not every celebrity industry utilizes every sector, but it helps to understand why and how the field of contemporary celebrity must remain extremely heterogeneous. By adding the audience as an industry, we acknowledge the involvement of the audience in the consumption, production, and promotion of celebrity content. The audience's willingness to invest attention and money into the celebrity industry is fundamental. Further, social media foster these activities of the audience, but also contribute in their own way to the celebrity industry by providing platforms where individuals or corporations can promote Celebrities, by letting Celebrities communicate directly with their audience, and/or by providing content for the traditional media industry.

Furthermore, we should note that the three main elements reviewed in this essay, celebrity, media, and the audience, connect somewhat to each other in a triadic way. They all depend on but also benefit from each other (see Wippersberg, 2007) in order to "function" adequately. Therefore we added a triangle that links the three elements to each other. Past studies have indicated which fields were and should be further investigated (e.g., how the audience finds pleasure in consuming celebrity gossip). With new elements like social media coming into play, questions on their role in the triadic relationship between media, Celebrities, and audience arise in themselves but also in terms of the entire celebrity industry.

The entertainment industry plays an important role by producing entertainment and entertainers. The celebrity industry uses such venues as baseball games to remain in the media's spotlight (e.g., by singing the national anthem before the game). The representation industry, on the other hand, organizes the busy schedule of Celebrities (e.g., a personal manager or personal assistant), or acts as promoters to arrange events and to arrange publicity for their clients. The publicity industry has a very close relationship to the representation industry. This industry consists of public relations specialists, the advertising market, and marketing research specialists. They have the goal of promoting visibility through the skillful generating of publicity (Rein, Kotler, & Stoller, 1998, p. 47). The appearance industry has become the fastest growing industry, because Celebrities have to manage their appearance in order to gain publicity. Another industry particularly important to support celebrities in their daily lives is the legal and business industry. Many Celebrities have "relinquished control over every conceivable facet of their financial lives" (p. 54) and firms take responsibility to receive their income, pay all their bills, etc.

Figure 1 highlights all these related industries and tries to provide an understanding of different powerful industries involved in the construction and consumption of Celebrities as a business. Such related industries can prove extremely challenging for the celebrity industry as well as for the communication industry as their interaction reduces the power of each by making them more dependent on each other.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

As Figure 1 indirectly indicates, various aspects of the celebrity industry need further investigation. According to Turner (2010), we can approach and define celebrity "as representation, as discourse, as an industry, and as a cultural formation--and what kinds of research agendas or analytical approaches could flow from these definitions" (p. 13). He further states that previous research has in particular focused o the first two of the aforementioned categories (p. 14). To counter this imbalance and to focus more thoroughly on the social and cultural significance of celebrity, Turner (2010) has called for a closer examination of the industrial production and the audience's consumption of celebrity, while embracing "[m]ulti-factoral, conjunctural, and multi-disciplinary approaches" (p. 19). Scholars should apply a rather macro-perspective research on media and celebrity by not only investigating the relationship between the media and the celebrity industry, but by also taking into account how the other (external) powers of related industries structure that relationship.

Furthermore, to keep up with technology and its fast-developing communication channels, research needs to follow up with these new trends as soon as they occur. The fast-paced technology trends can pose problems in conducting well-founded research, as the latter takes its time, while technology keeps on growing incessantly. The amount of celebrity content has risen immeasurably with the advent of social media, complicating the matter of getting an overall view of it. Even so, we would find it interesting to elaborate how the general audience encounters this celebrity information flood (on all media channels) and to ask whether and how they try to filter the content they want to consume. This can also lead to an understanding concerning the self-perceived role of the audience within celebrity culture as such.

With the rise of celebrity blogs as information channels, researchers should test the gatekeeping model (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009) within celebrity journalism. What forces are at work by gatekeeping celebrity news? How do traditional media and online media differ in their way of selecting celebrity news stories and sources? Following Boorstin's (1962, 1972) idea of human pseudo-events, researchers should empirically test how human pseudo-events outweigh spontaneous events. A study that recently tested Boorstin's concept of pseudo-evens in the Philippine press within the news sector finds that his theory still holds true (Tandoc & Skoric, 2010). Institutional and organizational constraints make journalists valuable to "staged" events in news gathering, and reporting on Celebrities can turn into a battle of control of the public sphere, where the powerful industries or individuals may manage to manipulate the media (by taking power over them) which indirectly leads to a manipulative reporting that in the end can affect audience's perception of the celebrity industry. Therefore a replication study should test how the journalism industry weighs human spontaneous events in relation to human pseudo-events when they report about Celebrities and how that affects their reporting. This study could then also expand to include a trend analysis of how celebrity coverage in terms of human pseudo-events has changed by increasing in frequency.

We also see a need for more analysis of research on how social networks alter the relationship between Celebrities and their audience and how immediacy affects and challenges the concept of parasocial interaction.

To conclude, the omnipresence of Celebrities and the "celebrification" tendencies affirms its significance for our society and simultaneously confirms the importance of academic research about it that takes into account the heterogeneity of its origin and the industries involved in the production of celebrity status. Well-knowness is the test of celebrity. As Boorstin (1972) would say, "Anything that makes a well-known name still better known automatically raises its status as a celebrity" (p. 58).

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Lea C. Hellmueller and Nina Aeschbacher

lea.hellmueller@unifr.ch

nina.aeschbacher@unifr.ch

Authors note: The authors would like to thank Prof. Louis Bosshart for his support, feedback, and contributions to this essay.

Table 1. Origin and transformation of the Celebrity concept

Time Period Celebrity Fame and Change in Society

Thousands of Monarchs, Impact on lives
years ago warriors of others

ancient Greece, olympic winners victory life-long free
Rome meals

340 BCE Alexander the Acknowledgement Dissemination
 Great of images

44 BCE Julius Caesar appeared on Featured in
 coin in his sculpture or
 lifetime coingage

Roman era Gladiators Fame despite Thousands of
 bad reputation spectators

16th century Queen Elizabeth Status of Theatre as mass
 I royalty entertainment

18th century Jean Jacques Philosopher Egalitarian
 Rousseau version of fame

1776 Benjamin First International
 Franklin international attention
 Celebrity

1833 New York Sun First penny Introduction of
 paper penny paper

1860 Samuel Warren Creation of Attention to
 and Lewis idea of privacy privacy rights
 Brandeis law

1893 Lilly Langtry Appears on soap Stars give
 package their images to
 promote
 products

1890-1920 Mass press,
 leisure time

1929 The oscars Academy Awards Film
 begin achievement

1930-1940 Marlene Glamor of Studio system,
 Dietrich, Greta actors publicity
 Garbo machines

Post World War Advent of
II television

1959 Federico Created Era of
 Fellini "paparazzi" celebrity
 photography

1961 Daniel Boorstin Celebrity as an Academic study
 academic of celebrity
 phenomenon

1968 Andy Warhol "15 minutes of Sets tone for
 (artist) fame" an era

1973 An American Reality TV Documenting
 Family starts ordinary family

1981 MTV Music Celebrity
 television enters homes
 begins

1984 Bob Geldof Draws attention using celebrity
 to Ethiopian status to aid
 famine victims fundraising

1986 Rupert Murdoch Fox Confessional TV
 Broadcasting begins
 Company

1986 oprah Winfrey Confessional TV
 nationally

1992 The Real World First Reality Celebrity as a
 TV with staged recycling
 setting product

2004 Mark Zuckerberg Facebook Advent of
 social networks

2009 Twitter Plane lands in Celebrity and
 Hudson River higher
 immediacy

2010 Facebook 500 million Access to
 users Celebrity's
 profiles

Table 2. Ranking of the most followed Twitter profiles
(Twitaholic, 2010)

 Name
Rank (Twitter screen name) Followers Following Joined Twitter

1 Lady Gaga (ladygaga) 6,752,203 147,126 31 months ago

2 Britney Spears 6,139,076 417,468 25months ago
 (britneyspears)

3 Ashton Kutcher 5,926,756 612 21 months ago
 (aplusk)

4 Justin Bieber 5,714,396 87,025 19 months ago
 (justinbieber)

5 Barack Obama 5,653,466 712,163 44 months ago
 (BarackObama)

6 Ellen DeGeneres 5,349,677 49,647 26 months ago
 (TheEllenShow)

7 Kim Kardashian 5,080,319 94 19 months ago
 (KimKardashian)

8 Taylor Swift 4,414,166 48 23months ago
 (taylorswift13)

9 oprah Winfrey (oprah) 4,407,648 19 21 months ago

10 Katy Perry (katyperry) 4,268,730 63 20 months ago