Download or read book Presumed Intimacy Parasocial Interaction in Media Society and Celebrity Culture written by Chris Rojek and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-12-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Presumed intimacy’ refers to a relationship that requires instant trust, confidence, disclosure and the recognition of vulnerability. Chris Rojek investigates the impact of relationships of ‘presumed intimacy’, where audiences form strong identifications with mediated others, whether they be celebrities, political personae or online friends. Arguing that the way the media are able to manage these relationships is a significant aspect of their power structure, the core of the book is an investigation into the complicity of the media in encouraging presumed intimacy and the cultural, social and political consequences arising from this. Beyond this, it examines how intimacy is performed as a masquerade in many social settings – the scripts we follow in social settings that try to manufacture a shortcut to intimacy. A compelling look into mediated relationships in the network society, Presumed Intimacy will be a key contribution to the critical analysis of society, media and culture.

Download or read book Presumed Intimacy Parasocial Interaction in Media Society and Celebrity Culture written by Chris Rojek and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Presumed intimacy’ refers to a relationship that requires instant trust, confidence, disclosure and the recognition of vulnerability. Chris Rojek investigates the impact of relationships of ‘presumed intimacy’, where audiences form strong identifications with mediated others, whether they be celebrities, political personae or online friends. Arguing that the way the media are able to manage these relationships is a significant aspect of their power structure, the core of the book is an investigation into the complicity of the media in encouraging presumed intimacy and the cultural, social and political consequences arising from this. Beyond this, it examines how intimacy is performed as a masquerade in many social settings – the scripts we follow in social settings that try to manufacture a shortcut to intimacy. A compelling look into mediated relationships in the network society, Presumed Intimacy will be a key contribution to the critical analysis of society, media and culture.

Download or read book Celebrity Society written by Robert van Krieken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On television and in films, in magazines and books, on the Internet and in the realm of politics, celebrities of all sorts seem to dominate our attention. Celebrity Society: The Struggle for Attention brings new perspectives to our understanding of how the figure of ‘the celebrity’ is bound up with the structure and dynamics of society, economics, and politics. It outlines how the ‘celebrification of society’ is not just the twentieth-century product of Hollywood and television, but a long-term historical process, beginning with Christian saints, the printing press, theatre, and art. Drawing on the ideas of Norbert Elias, the book explains how contemporary celebrity society is the heir (or heiress) of ‘court society’, taking on but also transforming many of the functions of the aristocracy. As well as examining celebrity in all the familiar arenas – film, television, music, fashion, and sport – Celebrity Society also includes the analysis of celebrity in business and management, politics, humanitarianism, and philanthropy. A key feature of the book is its development of the idea that celebrity is driven by the ‘economy of attention’, since attention has become a form of capital – attention capital – in the Information and Internet age. In this second edition the author has updated and significantly revised this path-breaking book to include a more detailed discussion of attention capital, the question of gender and celebrity, populism, fans, fandom, and self-formation, micro-celebrity, and personal or self-branding, the ‘worker celebrity’, and the impact of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Celebrity is an exciting and rapidly expanding field of social science, making this engaging book a valuable resource for students and scholars in sociology, politics, history, celebrity studies, cultural studies, the sociology of media, and cultural theory.

Download or read book Celebrity written by Sean Redmond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrity introduces the key terms and concepts, dilemmas and issues that are central to the study and critical understanding of celebrity. Drawing on two dynamic models from two different modes of enquiry – the circuit of celebrity culture and the circuit of celebrity affect – this book explores the multi-layered, multi-faceted contexts and concepts that sit within and surround the study of celebrity. Through building a critical story about celebrity, Sean Redmond discusses key topics such as identity and representation; the celebrity body; the consumption of celebrity and celebrity culture; and the sensory connection between fans and celebrities, gender, activism, gossip and toxicity. Including case studies on Miley Cyrus, David Bowie, Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet, Celebrity is a dynamic and topical volume ideal for students and academics in celebrity and cultural studies.

Download or read book Inter Facing Death written by Sam Han and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern times, death is understood to have undergone a transformation not unlike religion. Whereas in the past it was out in the open, it now resides mostly in specialized spaces of sequestration—funeral homes, hospitals and other medical facilities. A mainstay in so-called traditional societies in the form of ritual practices, death was usually messy but meaningful, with the questions of what happens to the dead or where they go lying at the heart of traditional culture and religion. In modernity, however, we are said to have effectively sanitized it, embalmed it and packaged it—but it seems that death is back. In the current era marked by economic, political and social uncertainty, we see it on television, on the Internet; we see it almost everywhere. (Inter)Facing Death analyzes the nexus of death and digital culture in the contemporary moment in the context of recent developments in social, cultural and political theory. It argues that death today can be thought of as "interfaced," that is mediated and expressed, in various aspects of contemporary life rather than put to the side or overcome, as many narratives of modernity have suggested. Employing concepts from anthropology, sociology, media studies and communications, (Inter)Facing Death examines diverse phenomena where death and digital culture meet, including art, online suicide pacts, the mourning of celebrity deaths, terrorist beheadings and selfies. Providing new lines of thinking about one of the oldest questions facing the human and social sciences, this book will appeal to scholars and students of social and political theory, anthropology, sociology and cultural and media studies with interests in death.

Download or read book Celebrity written by Chris Rojek and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contemporary society, the cult of celebrity is inescapable. Anyone can be turned into a celebrity, and anything can be made into a celebrity event. Celebrity has become a part of everyday life, a common reference point. But how have people like Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Bill Clinton or Princess Diana impressed themselves so powerfully on the public mind? Do they have unique qualities, or have their images been constructed by the media? And what of the dark side of celebrity – why is the hunger to be in the public eye so great that people are prepared to go to any lengths to achieve it, as numerous mass murderers and serial killers have done. Chris Rojek brings together celebrated figures from the arts, sports, politics and other public spheres, from O.J. Simpson and Marilyn Monroe to Hitler and David Bowie, and touches on many movements and fads, including punk, rock-and-roll and fashion. Rojek analyzes the difference between ascribed celebrity, which derives from bloodline, and achieved celebrity, which follows on from personal achievement - the difference between Princess Margaret and, say, Woody Allen. He also shows how there is no parallel in history to today's ubiquitous "living" form of celebrity, powered by newspapers, PR departments, magazines and electronic mass media.

Download or read book Celebrity and Mediated Social Connections written by Neil M. Alperstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrity and Mediated Social Connections is a critical examination of the multiple realities of the mediated culture we traverse, extending from our imaginary inner worlds to the imagined communities of digital media. Chapters explore the dialogic at work when we connect with celebrities and internalize aspects of their personas due to the various social roles they serve within our everyday lives. What might begin as strong identification and internalization within our imaginary worlds, in this digital age, sometimes seeps out as we connect to celebrities, their fans, friends and followers in ways that were not formerly possible. The book contains topics that range from the degradation of micro-celebrities, the role of celebrities in promoting prescription drugs and their role in contemporary social movements. The common thread that runs through the book presents a mediated world that paradoxically allows if not encourages people to daydream, engage in stream of consciousness thinking and fantasize about celebrities, all while concurrently compelling us to engage in a digitally based objective world. The possibility of interaction on and through digital media intensifies the emotional connection between celebrity and fan. The more personal details one gives up, the closer we feel we become—digital intimacy based on the excessive self. Digital media entice us to engage and remain tethered to technology, staying continuously connected so as not to miss the latest post or meme. To suggest we should build a proverbial wall between the two—imaginary and objective worlds—runs counter to the reality of an always on, always connected culture in which we presently live.

Download or read book Studies Of China And Chineseness Since The Cultural Revolution Volume 1 Reinterpreting Ideologies And Ideological Reinterpretations written by Chih-yu Shih and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2022-11-29 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of China and Chineseness since the Cultural Revolution Volume 2: Micro Intellectual History through De-central LensesWhy have the influences of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (roughly 1966-1976) in contemporary China been so pervasive, profound, and long-lasting? This book posits that the Revolution challenged everyone to decide how they can and should be themselves.Even scholars who study the Cultural Revolution from a presumably external vantage point must end up with an ideological position relative to whom they study. This amounts to a focused curiosity toward the Maoist agenda rivaling its alternatives. As a result, the political lives after the Cultural Revolution remain, ulteriorly and ironically, Maoist to a ubiquitous extent.How then can we cleanse, forget, neutralize, rediscover, contextualize, realign, revitalize, or renovate Maoism? The authors contend that all must appropriate ideologies for political and analytical purposes and adapt to how others use ideological discourses. This book then invites its readers to re-examine ideology contexts for people to appreciate how they acquire their roles and duties. Those more practiced can even reversely give new meanings to reform, nationalism, foreign policy, or scholarship by shifting between Atheism, Maoism, Confucianism, and Marxism, incurring alternative ideological lenses to de-/legitimize their subject matter.

Download or read book Life Writing and Celebrity written by Sandra Mayer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the relationship between life writing and celebrity in English-language and comparative literary and cultural contexts, focusing on historical as well as contemporary auto/biographical subjects. With contributions on the 18th-century actress Peg Woffington, Charles Dickens, Mary Pickford, Sergei Eisenstein, W.H. Auden, Marilyn Monroe, and Michael Jackson, amongst others, the book encompasses a wide range of disciplines and approaches. It explores the representation of famous lives in genres as varied as TV documentary, biopic, biofiction, journalism, (authorized) biography, and painting. The contributors address broad themes including authenticity, self-fashioning, identity politics, and ethics; and reflect on the ways in which these affect the reading and writing of celebrity lives. This volume is the first to bring together life writing and celebrity studies—two vibrant and innovative areas of research which are closely connected through their shared concerns with authenticity and intimacy, public and private selves, myth-making and revelation. As such it will be of interest to a wide range of scholars from across the humanities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Life Writing.

Download or read book Virtual Influencers written by Esperanza Miyake and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book identifies the converging socio- cultural, economic, and technological conditions that have shaped, informed, and realised the identity of the contemporary virtual influencer, situating them at the intersection of social media, consumer culture, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and digital technologies. Through a critical analysis of virtual influencers and related media practices and discourses in an international context, each chapter investigates different themes relating to digitality and identity: virtual place and nationhood; virtual emotions and intimacy; im/ materialities of virtual everyday life; the biopolitics of virtual human-production; the necropolitics of pandemic virtuality; transmedial and mimetic virtualities; and the political economy of virtual influencers. The book argues that the virtual influencer represents the various ways in which contemporary identities have increasingly become naturalised with questions of virtuality, mediated by digital technologies across multiple realities. From practices relating to AI- driven, invasive data profiling needed for virtual influencer production to problematic online practices such as buying digital skin colour, the author examines how the virtual influencer’s aesthetic, social, and economic value obfuscates some of the darker aspects of their role as an extractivist technology of virtuality: one which regulates, oppresses, and/ or classifies bodies and datafied bodies that serve the visual, (bio)political, and digital economies of virtual capitalism. In the process, the book simultaneously offers a critique of the virtual influencer as a representational figure existing across multiple digital platforms, spaces, and times, and of how they may challenge, complicate, and reinforce normative ideologies surrounding gender, race, class, sexuality, age, and ableism. As such, the book sheds light on some of the more troubling realities of the virtual influencer’s existence, inasmuch as it celebrates their transformational potential, exploring the implications of both within an increasingly AI- driven, digital culture, society, and economy. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, this book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and students working in the area(s) of: Popular Culture and Media; Internet, Digital and Social Media Studies; Data justice and Governance; Japanese Media Studies; Celebrity Studies; Fan Studies; Marketing and Consumer Studies; Sociology; Human– Computer Studies; and AI and Technology Studies.

Download or read book Difficult Death Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture written by Sharon Coleclough and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-11-25 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book responds to a growing interest in death, dying and the dead within and beyond the field of death studies. The collection defines an understanding of ‘difficult death’ and examines the differences between death, dying and the dead, as well as exploring the ethical challenges of researching death in mediated form. The collection is attendant to the ways in which difficult deaths are imbricated in power structures both before and after they become mediatised in culture. As such, the work navigates the many political and social complexities and inequalities – what might be deemed the difficulties – of death, dying and the dead. The book seeks to expand understandings of the difficulty of death in media and culture through a wide range of chapters from different contexts focused on literature, film, television, and in online environments, as well as several chapters examining news reportage of difficult deaths.

Download or read book Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster written by Anthea Taylor and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book-length study of celebrity feminism, Anthea Taylor convincingly argues that the most visible feminists in the mediasphere have been authors of bestselling works of non-fiction: feminist ‘blockbusters’. Celebrity and The Feminist Blockbuster explores how the authors of these popular feminist books have shaped the public identity of modern feminism, in some cases over many decades. Maintaining a distinction between women who are famous because of their feminism and those who later add feminism to their ‘brand’, Taylor contends that Western celebrity feminism, as a political mode of public subjectivity, cannot in any simple way be seen as homologous with other forms of stardom. Moving deftly from the 1960s to the present, focusing on how feminist authors have actively worked to manufacture their public personas, she demonstrates that the blockbuster remains crucial to feminist celebrification but is now often augmented with digital media. Advancing celebrity studies by placing the figure of the feminist front and centre, Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster is essential reading for all those interested in gender, popular feminism, and the politics of renown.

Download or read book Germaine Greer Celebrity Feminism and the Archive written by Anthea Taylor and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive, the first scholarly book on this internationally renowned feminist, draws upon Greer’s largely unexplored archive to demonstrate her impact on readers and viewers since the 1970s. Across many decades in the limelight and through multiple media forms, the provocative Greer has worked to shape audience understandings of gender, sexuality, and feminism. Through deep engagement with archival material, Anthea Taylor offers a compelling reassessment of Greer’s celebrity feminist labour and its effects over time. Examining archived letters from fans, anti-fans, and those in between, this innovative volume shows how and why readers and viewers have come to affectively invest – or disinvest – in this iconoclastic feminist. Advancing debates about the social and political function of celebrity, Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive is essential reading for scholars in Gender Studies, History, Archival Studies, and Media and Cultural Studies.

Download or read book Lifestyle Gurus written by Stephanie A. Baker and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of blogs and social media provide a public platform for people to share information online. This trend has facilitated an industry of self-appointed ‘lifestyle gurus’ who have become instrumental in the management of intimacy and social relations. Advice on health, wealth creation, relationships and well-being is rising to challenge the authority of experts and professionals. Pitched as ‘authentic’, ‘accessible’ and ‘outside of the system’, this information has produced an unprecedented sense of empowerment and sharing. However, new problems have arisen in its wake. In Lifestyle Gurus, Baker and Rojek explore how authority and influence are achieved online. They trace the rise of lifestyle influencers in the digital age, relating this development to the erosion of trust in the expert-professional power bloc. The moral contradictions of lifestyle websites are richly explored, demonstrating how these technologies encourage a preoccupation with the very commercial and corporate hierarchies they seek to challenge. A timely account of how lifestyle issues are being packaged and transacted in a wired-up world, this book is important reading for students and scholars of media, communication, sociology and related disciplines.

Download or read book The Consumer Society written by Jean Baudrillard and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jean Baudrillard′s classic text was one of the first to focus on the process and meaning of consumption in contemporary culture. Originally published in 1970, the book makes a vital contribution to current debates on consumption. The book includes Baudrillard′s most organized discussion of mass media culture, the meaning of leisure, and anomie in affluent society. A chapter on the body demonstrates Baudrillard′s extraordinary prescience for flagging vital subjects in contemporary culture long before others. This English translation begins with a new introductory essay.

Download or read book Parasocial Experiences written by David C. Giles and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-11 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers key aspects of parasocial relationships (PSRs), or the relationships people have with media personalities, including fictional characters. The principal feature of a PSR is that it is not individually reciprocated although when the parasocial object is a real person, usually a celebrity, that celebrity often has a reciprocal relationship with their audience as a group. The authors begin by addressing the many instances where relationships exist in a gray area that is neither fully social and reciprocated nor parasocial and non-reciprocated. In describing parasocial experience, the authors address social relationships vs. parasocial relationships as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. They also discuss prominent theories in psychology and how they should be applied to parasocial theory, as well as psychoanalytic theory and the role of the unconscious in parasocial relationships. This is followed by chapters on applications of evolutionary psychology, attachment theory, and the effects of social media on PSRs, particularly a very new social media service, Cameo. Through a meaningful exploration of social theories as they influence parasocial experiences, this book unveils areas for future study and opens up pathways for new, more sophisticated research.

Download or read book David Bowie and Transmedia Stardom written by Ana Cristina Mendes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the interart, intertextual, and intermedial dimensions of David Bowie’s sonic and visual legacy, this book considers more than five decades of a career invested with a star’s luminosity that shines well beyond the remit of pop music. The book approaches the idea of the star David Bowie as a medium in transit, undergoing constant movement and change. Within the context of celebrity studies, the concept of stardom provides an appropriate frame for an examination of Bowie’s transmedial activity, especially given his ongoing iconic signification within the celestial realm. While Bowie has traversed many mediums, he has also been described as a medium, which is consistent with the way he has described himself. With contributions from a wide range of disciplinary areas and countries, each chapter brings a fresh perspective on the concept of stardom and the conceptual significance of the terms ‘mediation’ and ‘navigation’ as they relate to Bowie and his career. Containing a multitude of different approaches to the stardom and mediation of David Bowie, this book will be of interest to those studying celebrity, audio and visual legacy, and the relationships between different forms of media. It was originally published as a special issue of Celebrity Studies.